Category Archives: Alumni Relations

Myspace takeover 2.0: New videos track students’ creative progress and problems

Art Center invades Myspace homepage

Art Center invades Myspace homepage

Update: Our quartet of students leading our Myspace occupation has produced a new batch of posts — three videos and one written narrative. Visit our Myspace profile for the latest news on how these artists and designers are devising solutions to the roadblocks and detours they encounter en route to their destination: creating something of lasting value that didn’t exist before.

Space. Whether it comes in the form of a blank canvas, an empty sound stage, a blinking cursor on a computer screen or a room of one’s own — space itself has always been fundamental to the act of creation. Art Center has long provided that space for its community of compulsively creative forward-thinking doers and makers, united by a desire to disrupt the status quo with explosive feats of imagination and artistry.

At its most basic level, it’s an invitation to create, explore and invent. And put simply, artists need their space. This was the operative principle behind the supernova success of Myspace, the 1.0 generation social network that became a hub where music lovers connected to their favorite bands. Ten years later, Myspace has reinvented itself, beginning with its June 2013 relaunch, as a social network “purpose-built to empower an infinitely expanding creative community.” The new Myspace has been designed around 21st Century creators’ needs to “connect, make, discover, collaborate, promote and expand.”

And what better place to seed that artistic ecosystem than the hothouse of creativity that is Art Center? So, for the next week, Art Center’s unique approach to bringing audacious ideas to fruition will receive unprecedented exposure as it stages an occupation of the MySpace homepage, which has a massive global reach of 35 million users.

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LEAP Day 3: Tools and takeaways to activate social innovation career tracks

by Wendy McNaughton

by Wendy McNaughton

This is the third in our three-part Dotted Line series covering “The New Professional Frontier in Design for Social Innovation: LEAP Symposium,” hosted by Art Center College of Design Sept. 19–21, 2013.

Overheard (Random quotes from the day)

  • “Fire it up.”
  • “This has been like a wonderful summer camp.”
  • “I can’t tell you how in awe I am of the amazing, creative people I have met.”
  • “You fired every synapse in my brain, especially those that have been dormant for the last three or four years.”
  • “The conversation has really progressed since I joined this field in 2009 and it’s been like amazing to be a part of this.”
  • “I love the word designer.  It’s sexy, it’s powerful and it’s dynamic just like me and that’s what’s important.”
Mind-blowing Ideation session at LEAP. Photograph by Terry Bond

Mind-blowing Ideation session at LEAP. Photograph by Teri Bond

Practical tools, next steps and taking action were the focus of the third and final day of the LEAP Symposium presented by Designmatters, the College’s social impact department. A key aim expressed by many attendees was to bring the valuable new tools they gained during the confab back to their home base organizations to help establish solid career pathways for young design talent and clarify the direct link between great design and success.

The last day was choreographed in three parts. First, working groups who had self-organized in to small thematic clusters, spent a few hours finalizing proposals that were later displayed on giant poster boards all around the student dining room, taking a page from grade school science fairs. Then, a spokesperson for each project pitched it to the larger group.

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Glow shines a light on cutting edge artist and designer Rebeca Mendez

Rebeca Mendez brings her film, CircumSolar, Migration 1 to Glow

Rebeca Mendez brings her film, CircumSolar, Migration 1 to Glow

Tomorrow night, keep an eye out for a westward migration, as culture vultures flock to Glow, the dusk-till-dawn exhibit of immersive public art installations where the sea meets the sand in Santa Monica.

Those who do make it to the Burning Man-on-the-beach all-nighter will be poised to witness an extraordinary feat of long-distance migration on the 25-foot circular screen displaying CircumSolar, Migration 1, Rebeca Mendez‘ (GRAPHIC DESIGN’84; GRAD ART ’96 ) film which captures a small sea bird’s annual journey from the Arctic to Antarctic and back again.

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Khora leverages 3-D tech to add a personal dimension to home decor

The CNC machine creates 3-D objects from digital files

The CNC machine creates 3-D objects from digital files

In a world where personal branding has become a social and professional imperative, our surroundings and possessions have become vehicles for self-expression. And not just the kind we drive. This is particularly true of a person’s home and the things within it.  But for anyone attempting to work within an Ikea budget, creating a one-of-a-kind living space has always been more challenging than, say, buying a customized ride.

But that may not be the case for long, thanks to the team of Art Center designers behind Khora Image, a soon-to-launch start-up that will use 3-D technology to blaze a trail through the unexplored frontier of customized home décor. “We’re trying to democratize a process to everybody and get it out to as many people as we can and empower them to design their own things,” says Product Design student Jacques Perrault, who teamed up with Art Center alums Jason Pilarski, Steve Joyner Jonathan Kim and Ryan Oenning to create a company that would revolutionize the home furnishing space by providing a digital platform where consumers can use templates to create personalized wall hangings.

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Alum Neil Shigley makes the invisible visible

 

Illustration alum, Neil Shigley with block prints including, at left, Michael 67 (Pastor Shelby).

Illustration alum Neil Shigley with block prints including, at left, Michael 67 (Pastor Shelby).

For the portrait artist, block printing is a particularly labor-intensive form. For San Diego-based Neil Shigley, it’s a labor of love.

The Art Center Illustration alum, who documents his adopted city’s homeless in search of “the most honest portrayal that I can get,” is among 48 artists whose work is included in the Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition, a juried exhibition at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery on view through Feb. 23, 2014.

“They are people who are, to most of us, invisible. They are the homeless,” says Shigley’s artist statement. “I have focused my art on capturing the incredible character that life on the streets has given these individuals, many of whom are from my neighborhood near downtown San Diego. As a human being I can’t help but feel compassion . . . and by presenting them in this large format perhaps it will bring them into focus. Making them visible.”

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Creativity 101: Harnessing the power of students’ imaginations

Photographs by Chris Hatcher, PHOT '05

Photographs by Chris Hatcher, PHOT ’05

In 30 minutes, visualize your creative process and recreate it using an 8-and-a-half-by-11 sheet of paper.

This is the first assignment in Creative Strategies, a popular undergraduate Product Design course taught by instructor Fridolin “Frido” Beisert PROD 98, INDU 08, faculty director of Art Center’s Product Design Department.

All 14 students accept the challenge. Walking to the front of the classroom, they each select a single sheet of colored construction paper and take a seat along the row of bare metal tables. As a digital timer, projected onto the wall, starts ticking, the students immediately start cutting, tearing, folding and drawing.

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Finalist in Ron Howard’s Project Imaginat10n experiences Art Center flashbacks. The good kind.

Kalman Apple's "A Day in the Country"

Kalman Apple’s “A Day in the Country”

Go Back to Art School in your head.  You can see it right? Germanic block letters tattooed between the shoulder blades, or etched in a delicate script on the hip or across the belly. I’m a little old fashioned that way, so I’ve kept it simply as a personal mantra. Whenever I’ve been stumped or creatively blocked, I invoke the mantra to help me get away from the mediocre solutions I’m hoping to avoid.

Recently, the meaning of that phrase came back to me-­‐ and this time from an unlikely place. In this instance, I was up against a seemingly impossible deadline to finish a film. I started shooting on a Wednesday for a project due by 6 AM on the following Tuesday. The deadline was for a contest Canon USA was sponsoring to promote its latest DSLR camera.

The contest was to be judged by Ron Howard and his daughter, Bryce Dallas Howard. You probably remember him best as a child star, brilliant director or the guy who introduces the magic of movies on the tram ride at Universal Studios. When I first heard about Project Imaginat10n, it sounded very much like an Art Center class assignment. Take ten still images, each representing an aspect of storytelling and create a 1-10 minute film inspired by those images. The genesis of this contest comes from a statement Ron Howard made years ago, “We’re all creative.” And to prove it, Canon has stepped up to provide the forum.

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Art Center in the News, July 2013

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Alumnus Jim Root, art director at Cramer-Kasselt, was featured in the Milwaukee Wisconsin Journal Sentinel.

From fuel efficiency standards changing the look of your car to top ranked film schools, from Gibson Guitartown to backyard beehive designs – here’s where you can catch up on any Art Center news you may have missed with our latest media roundup.

The Hollywood Reporter, “The Hollywood Reporter Unveils the Top 25 Film Schools of 2013” July 31, 2013: Art Center moves up from #23 to #15 in  annual film school ranking.

The New York Times, “Carlab Mixes Natural Gas and Gasoline for More Efficient Vehicle”  July 9, 2013: Transportation Design instructor Eric Noble featured throughout the Wheels blog about rethinking the size of the natural gas tank.

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Photo alum captures veterans’ emotional deployment to WWII Memorial

Millions of people regularly travel to Washington D.C. to see the National WWII Memorial. And yet, sadly, many of the veterans this memorial celebrates don’t have resources to make that trip. I feel strongly that they should have the opportunity to experience the respect and admiration embodied in the memorial. 

So, with that in mind, in April of 2012, I got involved in Honor Flight, a nonprofit organization dedicated to bringing veterans to visit the WWII memorial in Washington D.C. Fortunately, I was able to fill a need for a photographer to capture these men and women during their journey to the nation’s capital to glimpse this monumental tribute to their service.

My grandfather was a WWII veteran, and I wanted to do something and give back to the Greatest Generation. This desire became even more urgent after I learned that WWII veterans are dying at a rate of more than 600 per day; and that there are veterans on Honor Flight’s waiting lists who have passed before they were chosen to go.  The organization’s director told me that Honor Flight Kern County’s inaugural trip would launch the following month, on May 25, 2012 (Memorial Weekend).

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Inside the making of a new teaser for J.J. Abrams’ mystery project

When J.J. Abrams‘ production company, Bad Robot, tossed out a teaser trailer for a tantalizingly mysterious new project, it didn’t take long for pop culture vultures to peck away as if it were a juicy porterhouse left by the side of the highway. Since Hollywood feels the same way about secrets as nature does about vacuums, speculation about what exactly this spot is teasing has turned into a digital cage match in comments sections across the web. And while we can’t confirm or deny any of the out-there theories circulating about the nature of the project. Is it a “Lost” spin-off? Or a tease for NBC’s “Believe“?

As the teaser says, Soon we will know. In the meantime, we have gotten ahold of one meaty tidbit worth sharing: The teaser’s cinematographer is Chris Saul, a 2010 alum of Art Center’s Graduate Film department. Below, Saul re-traces the path that lead him to find this creepy stiched-mouth character on an abandoned beach at night. 

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