Category Archives: Awards

Tequila Avión’s $10,000 video competition challenges Art Center students to induce thirst

Image from video by finalist, Tatyana Kim

Image from video by finalist, Tatyana Kim

Tequila Avión, in collaboration with the Film Department at Art Center College of Design, has challenged students to create a commercial or viral video for a chance to win a $10,000 grand prize. Through this partnership with one of the world’s premiere design schools, Tequila Avión encourages fans to tune in to the Tequila Avión YouTube Channel to vote for their favorite video. In mid-July, Tequila Avión will announce both the winning viral video and winning commercial, rewarding each with $10,000.

To kick-off the competition, Ken Austin, Founder and Chairman of Tequila Avión, visited Art Center College of Design to share the Avión story.  Film and Advertising students were challenged to create a commercial video or viral video inspired by the “World’s Best Tasting Tequila.” Entries were narrowed down to compete for the $10,000 grand prize in each category.

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Designmatters and Aspen Institute examine the social, creative and economic impact of the new culture of ‘intrapreneurs’

Mariana Amatullo speaking at Desigmnatters' Leap Symposium on the New Professional Frontier in Design For Social Innovation." Photo by Alex Aristei

Designmatters’ Mariana Amatullo opening the Leap Symposium: The New Professional Frontier in Design for Social Innovation. Photo ©2013 Alex Aristei for LEAP

This week the Aspen Institute launched a new series of essays on the growing importance of social intrapreneurs — change-agents within organizations large and small who are fusing business success with positive social and environmental impacts — and the value they are adding to their organizations and society. To kick off the series, the Institute, in collaboration with The Huffington Post, published the following piece by Mariana Amatullo, co-founder and vice president of Designmatters at Art Center College of Design.

Safir BellaliThe Institute also named 2001 Art Center alumnus Safir Bellali, Design Innovation director for Vans, to its incoming class of 2014 First Movers Fellows. Each fellow will tackle a project that will have a positive financial, social and environmental impact on both their company and society. Bellali, who maintains close ties with the College through his participation in critiques and hiring student interns, will explore how new manufacturing technologies will allow Vans to work toward bringing production back to the United States. In Fall 2014, Vans will sponsor a Designmatters/Product Design studio at Art Center.

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View from the Bridge: Grounded in reality and ready for professional liftoff

Students present work to Honda Research and Development executives.

In a Sponsored Project, Graphic Design student Sungmoon Chung, center, presents work to alumnus and Honda R&D Americas Division Director Dave Marek (BS 87 Industrial), far right.

Summertime is traditionally set aside for leisurely activities—poolside lounging, pleasure reading and, at least through June, watching the Stanley Cup Final.

But here at Art Center, our students are as busy as ever. Many students continue their studies through the Summer term, while others, thanks to our dedicated staff in the Office of Career + Professional Development, scatter across the globe working as interns at an impressive array of organizations. It’s amazing, really, when you stop to look at where our students have landed internships:

  • Illustration student Adriana Crespo is at design firm IDEO in San Francisco;
  • Film student Juliana Rowlands is at director Roman Coppola’s production company The Director’s Bureau in Los Angeles;
  • Transportation Design student Harrison Scott Yen is at Chrysler’s Street and Racing Technology division in Michigan;
  • Graphic Design student Siyun Oh is at the Museum of Modern Art in New York;
  • Transportation Design student Yang Fu is at vehicle manufacturer Renault in France;
  • Product Design student Benji Kurada is at Google in Switzerland; and
  • Transportation Design student Sean Peterson is at Suzuki Motor Corporation in Japan.

I could go on, but I think you get the picture. These are not your everyday assignments; our students are working with some of today’s most prestigious companies.

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Art Center alumni notes: April + May 2014

Images from Matthew Rolston: Talking Heads, on view June 7 - July 12

Images from Matthew Rolston: Talking Heads, on view June 7 – July 12

True to this blooming season, creatively fertility has flourished over the past few months among Art Center’s alumni. Below you’ll find a sampling of some of their recent undertakings and achievements. And in an effort to more comprehensively represent our creative community, we’d like to encourage the alums among us to send us a line about any noteworthy events, achievements or projects you’d like us to include in future editions of this digest.

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Warner Bros. President Greg Silverman, Directors Tarsem and Tom Kuntz offer insider tips at Dot Independent Film Festival

2014-DIFF-image-E_Williams

Film lovers and film makers from around the world will be celebrated and honored at DIFF LA, the Dot Independent Film Festival of Los Angeles, a student organized gathering on Saturday, June 7, 2014 from 9 a.m. until 10 p.m. on the Art Center College of Design Hillside Campus at 1700 Lida Street in Pasadena. The event is free and open to the public. More than 200 U.S. and international student filmmakers vying for exposure in the celluloid landscape submitted work hoping to be selected to screen and maybe even stand out as an award winner in this 2nd annual festival.

Kicking off the event is Greg Silverman, president, Creative Development and Worldwide Production, Warner Bros. Pictures and Art Center Trustee. Additional special guests making appearances during the day are film director and Art Center alumnus Tarsem (Immortals, Mirror Mirror, The Fall) and commercial director Tom Kuntz (Old Spice, Skittles, The Man Your Man Could Smell Like).

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Advertising students ride their Trojan horse to an ANDY Award win

In April I traveled to New York with Art Center Film alum Armen Perian, with whom I collaborated on the above spot, TROJAN | Experiments, whose creative team also included cinematographer, Mike Reyes and producer, Greta Kahlitz. The purpose of the trip was to attend the 2014 International ANDY Awards Show and Party at TriBeCa Rooftop. For the past 50 years, ANDY’s have been the gold standard in honoring creative excellence in advertising. So we were incredibly honored to attend the prestigious event, where Chairman David Droga and the jury honored the night’s winners and celebrated the boldest names in advertising, including industry legend David Abbott, Lee Clow, Jeff Goodby, Bob Greenberg, Sir John Hegarty, Rich Silverstein, Mary Wells Lawrence and Dan Wieden.

We had a delightful time, and TROJAN | Experiments received an International ANDY Award in the student category. So how and why did we produce an award-winning spot for condoms, of all things? Read on to find out.

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Grand Theft Auto: RISE places Film grad in the driver’s seat of a Jaguar spot

Grand Theft Auto: RISE – Live Action Short Film from Gevorg Karensky on Vimeo.

A lifelong fan of cars and games, Gevorg Karensky has fashioned a filmmaking career that brilliantly blends both passions. Born in Russia, he emigrated to the United States in 2002 at the age of 14. For his undergrad Transportation Design thesis at Art Center, the aspiring-surgeon-turned-filmmaker collaborated with Film classmate Cathy Peng (BFA 10) on the game and live action hybrid Grand Theft Auto: RISE.

It became an immediate viral sensation, generating more than 13 million YouTube views and earning Karensky a spot in Saatchi & Saatchi’s New Directors Showcase at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival. Critics praised his raw talent. “[It] blows every other fan-made project I’ve ever laid eyes on completely out of the water” (Sam Gibbs, Gizmodo UK).

Karensky recently wrapped A New Dawn, a launch film for the Jaguar F-TYPE R luxury sports car, which bears his filmic signature that at times blurs the lines between the real and the virtual.

“Art Center opened the doors for me to start creating my very first projects and to experiment,” he says. “It was my home and I was there every single day from morning to night. [It] also gave me a great platform for entry into the real world.”

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This story originally appeared in Art Center’s Spring 2014 Dot magazine, where you can read more about alumni and faculty achievements.

‘Stand With Us’: Students find kinship with Homeboy’s gang intervention program

This spring term I had the privilege of directing a short film as part of a Designmatters studio hosted by the Graphic Design Department, which was structured in partnership with Homeboy Industries, the country’s most successful gang intervention program.

Addressing Homeboy’s real and ongoing need for fundraising, we put together a video called Stand With Us. It brings together the insights of longtime donors to the organization with the stories of two former gang members, whose lives were transformed for the better at Homeboy.

Homeboy decided to screen Stand With Us on May 3 as an opener for the Lo Maximo Awards, the organization’s annual fundraiser. It was a fabulous night with food and drink, glamorous people (some of whom were tattooed) and lots of hugs, laughs and even some tears. It was a special moment for me as I got to see an eclectic and undoubtedly grateful crowd cherish my work—and the fruits of a successful collaboration between my school and one of LA’s finest institutions.

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ICFF 2014 spotlights alum Hines Fischer’s people-centric furniture design

Hines Fisher drafts his people-centric designs

Hines Fischer drafts his “people-centric” designs

One of the first students to enroll in the Furniture and Fixtures track of Art Center’s Graduate Environmental Design program when it launched, Hines Fischer specializes in “people-centric” furniture design for office spaces. He is among a select group of students to represent the College at both the 2013 and 2014 International Contemporary Furniture Fair (ICFF) during New York Design Week.

Last year, he says, “it was really nice to get the chance to go to a show like this before I had jobs on the line, so that I could kind of take in the landscape. I took a lot of notes and met a lot of famous designers, which was an incredible experience.” Fischer also reconnected there with people he had met while interning at a furniture company prior to coming to Art Center. “I reminded them that I would be graduating soon.”

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Scholarship seeds a new generation of sustainability designers

From Sam Julius' 'Sustainable Urban Housing' entry

From Sam Julius’ ‘Sustainable Urban Housing’ entry

Our homes, cell phones and laptop screens are filled with thoughtful and functional design. But what about art that creates social impact? Can design influence change on global issues like sustainable housing, access to clean water and empowering disadvantaged women?

Projects featuring practical solutions to these concerns designed by Product, Illustration and Environmental Design students were selected as the winners of the 2013-2014 Denhart Family Sustainability Scholarship competition. Created by a generous gift from Gun Denhart, and son, Christian Denhart (BS 10 Product), the prizes are annually awarded to students addressing environmental and social causes in their work. The scholarships are devised to increase awareness of art and design’s unique capacity to advance sustainability.

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