Category Archives: Awards

Students design cars around engine, win scholarships

From left: "Top Gear" host Tanner Foust, Bruno Gallardo, JJ Hwang discuss Gallardo’s design for a full-size pickup at LA Auto Show.

Art Center students’ car concepts won top honors Wednesday at EcoMotors Future Design Challenge, from a paired-down pick-up to a “Brosome” dad wagon.

The Michigan-based company challenged more than 20 students from Detroit’s College for Creative Studies and Art Center to design a concept around its unusual engine. The OPOC (opposed piston, opposed cylinder) delivers 12- to-15-percent better efficiency than conventional piston engines but looks like nothing else under the hood.

Students were challenged to create a vehicle around the engine’s wider and shorter shape, and winners in three categories — mid-size sedan, full-size pickup and emerging-market vehicle — were announced at the L.A. Auto Show. Here are Art Center students’ winning designs.

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Designmatters UNFPA campaign wins top Spark Award


This past spring, students in a Graphic Design Department-hosted Designmatters studio were challenged to create an integrated campaign for the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) to advocate for young people’s rights to health, education, protection, respect and participation in decision-making for their future.

Not only did the students meet that challenge with aplomb with “We Are Youth,” their campaign which premiered this past summer at Rio+20, the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development in Rio de Janeiro, but now their work has also won a top honor at the annual Spark Design Awards.

The “We Are Youth” campaign—designed by students Pamela Abolian, Brett Beynon, Kenneth Chan, Andrew Chen, Lisa Chen, Ka Kit Cheong, Daniel Choi, Il Chan Chun, Heather Grates, Crystal Kim, Kevin Lam, Esther Park, Jerod Rivera, Lamson To and Hyunsun Yoo—won the Spark Awards’ highest honor, the Spark!, in the competition’s Communications student category.

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Art Center announces Alumni Award winners

Art Center is proud to announce the Alumni Award winners in the categories of lifetime achievement, outstanding service and young innovator. The annual honors allow Art Center to publicly recognize the talent, service and design influence of our alumni. Awards will be presented at the Fall Graduation ceremony Dec. 15 at 4 p.m.

Bruce Burdick ENVL 61: Lifetime Achievement Alumni Award

Bruce Burdick at Art Center in 1961

Bruce Burdick’s credits include designs for Charles and Ray Eames, John Follis and Herb Rosenthal. The flexible office furniture Burdick designed for Herman Miller was named Time magazine’s the Best of 1981 for Industrial Design.

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Tesla snags top Motor Trend, Popular Science honors

Tesla Motors’ Model S sedan might be the best thing on four wheels.

Designed by Art Center alum Franz von Holzhausen, the battery-powered sedan this week was named Motor Trend magazine’s 2013 car of the year and topped the Popular Science “Best of What’s New” list.

The family-size sedan beat out some high-power competition — BMW’s new 3-Series, Honda’s revamped Accord and Toyota’s 2013 Lexus GS — to become the first electric car to earn the Motor Trend honor.

“It is a testament not only to the luxury sedan and electric car segment, but to American engineering overall,” said Edward Loh, editor-in-chief of Motor Trend. “To be the first car in the 64-year history of the award to be powered by something other than gasoline must mean it is very special.”

Popular Science gave the Model S the grand prize ahead of on- and off-wheel innovations in the auto category – from Ferrari’s fastest car, the 730-horsepower F12 Berlinetta, to MyLink, which integrates a smartphone into the dashboard.

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Graphic Design student wins Adobe Design Achievement Award

Recent graduate Jeff Han GRPH 11 (top) and current Graphic Design student Jerod Rivera represented Art Center at last week's Adobe Design Achievement Awards.

Recent Graphic Design graduate Jeff Han GRPH 11 walked away a winner at last week’s 12th annual Adobe Design Achievement Awards.

The event, which was held at the DesignThinkers 2012 conference in Toronto, honored students and educators whose winning projects were selected from 41 finalists out of nearly 5,000 total entries from 70 countries.

Han’s museum re-branding project for the fictional Contemporary Museum of Architecture (COMA), which he created as a seventh term student in instructor Brad Bartlett’s Transmedia course, won the award in the the Print Communications category.

“I’ve always had a very strong interest in architecture,” said Han of his winning design, which utilized a typographic solution inspired by the generative creation of forms in contemporary architecture. Part of the rebranding project included creating a series of posters promoting an (also fictional) exhibition by Greg Lynn, an architect whom Han lists as a creative inspiration.

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Survey: Art Center ranks No. 1 for industrial design

Art Center’s industrial design graduate and undergraduate programs have ranked No. 1 by the Design Futures Council in its DesignIntelligence survey of America’s best architecture and design schools.

Additionally, DesignIntelligence named Integrated Studies instructor Randall Wilson among the 30 Most Admired Educators for 2013.

Art Center’s undergraduate industrial design programs — which include Product Design, Environmental Design, Transportation Design and Entertainment Design — were praised for teaching students communication, computer applications and design.

Deans and department heads surveyed said they most admired Art Center’s Graduate Industrial Design program, “For its forward-looking focus on the role of design in business and research.”

Art Center’s industrial design undergraduate program has ranked No. 1 in the survey since 2006, while the graduate program has ranked in the top three during the same time.

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GM design chief, alum Wayne Cherry receives lifetime award

Wayne Cherry (inset) and the Cadillac Sixteen

General Motors design chief and Art Center College of Design alum Wayne Cherry will receive high design honors a decade after retirement.

Cherry will be awarded the Detroit Institute of Ophthalmology’s 2013 Lifetime Design Achievement Award at the EyesOn Design show in June.

Cherry joined GM in 1962 after graduating from Art Center, and his 41-year career with the carmaker yielded such classics as the 1966 Oldsmobile Toronado and the 1967 Chevrolet Camaro. He also oversaw the creation of Pontiac Solstice, Chevrolet Corvettes and Hummer H2 while serving as vice president of design from 1992 to 2003.

But perhaps the most legendary design during his tenure was never built: the Cadillac Sixteen, a 2003 concept car with a 16-cylinder engine and more than 1,000 horsepower (a sedan has 150).

Despite rumors (and hopes) of a limited production, the ultra-luxury, four-door sedan was shelved in favor of the Cadillac XTS. But the Sixteen has resurfaced on screen, including in Adam Sandler’s 2006 comedy “Flick” and, more recently, in the 2011 film “Real Steel,” starring Hugh Jackman.

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Designmatters Safe Agua Peru wins Tech Award

Safe Agua Peru projects Balde a Balde, left, and GiraDora.

The Art Center team behind Safe Agua Peru has won a Tech Award for creating cost-effective ways to clean and conserve water in Peru.

Each year, Silicon Valley’s Tech Museum of Innovation honors 12 “techmanitarians,” humanitarian efforts with a tech angle, in six categories, including health, education and sustainable energy.

Selected from more than 1,000 international entrees, the Safe Agua Peru Designmatters project is being honored with the Katherine M. Swanson Young Innovator Award, along with Angaza Design, which allows off-the-grid Africans to pre-pay for clean solar power.

Two cash prizes of $75,000 and $25,000 will be awarded in each category. Winners will be announced Nov. 15 at the 12th annual Tech Awards gala at the Santa Clara Convention Center.

The Designmatters products being recognized are GiraDora, a human-powered washer and spin dryer, and Balde a Balde, a portable faucet that delivers running water from any bucket. Both products were designed with families living in Cerro Verde, a 30,000-person slum surrounding Lima, Peru.

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Alums compete for potential $25,000 prize in Lexus Ignition Project

From left: Conscious Commuter and SpnKiX M

A pair of alums’ bike-like designs are competing to win up to $25,000 as part of the Lexus Ignition Project.

Conscious Commuter, co-founded by Gabriel Wartofsky, and spnKiX, co-founded by Peter Treadway, are finalists in the online contest. Users can vote via Facebook to determine which start-up project best blends “high-tech and high-style” and wins the funding.

Conscious Commuter — part bike, part scooter — is crafted from lightweight carbon fiber and features an electric motor with speeds of up to 20 mph.

SpnKiX M — a folding electric scooter — let’s riders sit or stand while traveling up to 15 mph, and has room for a basket and perhaps another passenger, at least according to the product’s video.

Users can cast their votes once per day Oct. 15 to 21.

The monthlong contest started Sept. 24 and pits a pair of similar products against each other each week with the fan favorite winning $25,000 to move into production.

Prior winners include UrbanFidelity Speakers, which mix artwork with eco-wood construction, and SolarPOP, a solar-powered charger for smart phones and tablets.

Which scooter would you buy? Vote here.

Film student’s photography nominated for Lucie Award

Eric Chang's "Time-Trap" was nominated for a Lucie Award.

Art Center College of Design Student Eric Chang has been nominated for a Lucie Award for “Time-Trap,” a photo series that could soon adorn Elton John’s walls.

The 22-year-old is among the eight nominees in the Discovery of the Year category — which recognizes emerging image-makers in editorial, advertising, fine art and other photo-centric industries — and carries a $5,000 prize.

Winners will be announced Oct. 8 at the 10th annual Lucie Awards, presented by the Lucie Foundation, which works to cultivate the craft of photography worldwide.

The gala dinner and awards presentation at the Beverly Hilton hotel will feature stars from both sides of the lens, including Jessica Lange, Aisha Tyler, Ryan Murphy and Joel Meyerowitz, who will be honored with the Lifetime Achievement award.

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