Category Archives: Awards

Alums invade CES. Their Trojan horse? An electric scooter.

Alumnus and instructor Grant Delgatty with Jordan Crook of TechCrunch at CES

UPDATE: Surprising many in the crowdfunding space, the Art Center alum/instructor team behind the URB-E personal mobility device today launched a campaign on Indiegogo. Since making a splash at CES, the team has secured an impressive wave of exposure about the compact e-scooter. The invention was selected as the official mobility device of the American Pavilion at the upcoming Cannes International Film Festival and will assist the crew of an ocean research vessel in a Discovery Channel doc.

The group of Art Center alums behind the URB-E electric scooter didn’t make anyone’s list of newfangled gadgets most likely to ignite a media brushfire at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. Team URB-E entered the preeminent tech convention unannounced and exited the event basking in the glow of a media love fest any celebrity would envy. The upshot? Chutzpah + a great idea + a well-executed product = a perfect set-up for URB-E’s Feb. 1 Indiegogo campaign launch.

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Illustrating an argument for a Disneyland Down Under

The mighty kauri tree

If you’ve always thought Imagineers—the creative elite who design immersive entertainment experiences for Disney theme parks and resorts—needed engineering or movie industry backgrounds, think again. In 2013, the annual ImagiNations Design Competition, established in 1992, was swept by a team of four Art Center Illustration majors: upper-term students Jennifer Cho and Sunmin Inn, and recent graduates Angela Li ILLU 12 and Sophie McNally ILLU 12. All on the Entertainment Arts track and already good friends, they collaborated on the project that won First Place and Best in Show in this prestigious competition designed to promote diversity and inspire curiosity about cities around the world.

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Fall 2013 Grad Show: A master class in next-level design thinking and doing

Top companies leading the innovation economy swarmed the Hillside campus scouting new talent during Fall 2013 Grad Show. Facebook, BMW, Snapchat and Square, creator of the revolutionary cube device that instantly transforms cell phones in to credit card machines, were all seeking the next wave of their creative workforce.

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View from the Bridge: Saluting graduating students and Art Center’s social impact on healthy drinking water and food

A Balde Movil prototype is put to the test in Altos del Pino, Bogota, Colombia.

The Fall 2013 term culminated last weekend with our Grad Show—an unqualified success attracting hundreds of industry representatives—and the arrival of our students’ families on campus for graduation. It was my great pleasure to meet many of them and share in their excitement and pride.

I began this weekend’s ceremonies by reading Everything is Waiting for You by David Whyte. An ode to the creative power of community, this poem was born surprisingly out of a moment of deep grief for the author, which makes its vibrant call to action all the more remarkable. The work begins with a warning of isolation—“Your great mistake is to act the drama as if you were alone”—moves to an acknowledged tension of individual identity in the crowd—“Surely, even you, at times, have felt … the swelling presence, and the chorus, crowding out your solo voice”—and concludes with an exultant celebration of discovery and the power of entering the “conversation”—“The kettle is singing even as it pours you a drink” and, ultimately, “Everything is waiting for you.”

I shared this poem because I want our graduating students to find the strength to face what is calling them and recognize that they are surrounded by an astonishing depth and plethora of life. I want them to celebrate where the new edges meet and, as the poem suggests, believe they can change the world by their attentive presence.

Our students’ work offers ample evidence that this is all very much underway.

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Realism and abstraction, domestic bliss and ambivalence coexist in student’s award-winning paintings

Art Center faculty recently selected Vanya Horwath to be the first recipient of the Franklyn Liegel Award. Named for a beloved Art Center faculty member, this honor includes $1,000 cash and the use of one of two private studios in the new 870 building to which the Fine Art department will be moving in January. Horwath’s exuberant paintings of women in domestic interiors use abstraction, patterning and gradient brushstrokes to break down the surface and the image in a language that glances back to painters such as Vuillard and Leger, while using the brushstroke as a discrete element in a way similar to that used by programs such as Photoshop. Read on as Horwath shares her response to the award and the ideas informing the work that earned her the honor.

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Art Center students and alumni ignite Spark!

Student Mathias Hintermann’s Aiguille short track speed skater headgear won a Spark! Award.

With designs ranging from a portable desk for low-income children in India to lighting inspired by the beauty found in Japanese metal craft, Art Center students and alumni brought home several awards last week from the 2013 Spark International Design Awards.

Students and professionals from more than 27 countries across the globe competed in the categories of Experience Design, Product Design, Spaces Design, Transport Design, Communication Design, App Design and Concept Design, with awards ranging from Bronze Awards to the highest award, the Spark! Award.

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Cobras, Stingrays and Mako Sharks, oh my! Auto afficionados get “Inspired by Nature” at Car Classic

This past Sunday, nearly 2,000 visitors—transportation designers, car collectors, auto enthusiasts and more—assembled at Art Center College of Design for its popular annual Car Classic event. This year, the event showcased transportation design “Inspired by Nature” and celebrated a generous recent gift from Southern California philanthropists and car collectors Peter and Merle Mullin, who attended the event.

Nearly 90 carefully curated cars, trucks, motorcycles and bicycles–many of which, in keeping with the event’s theme, were inspired by birds, fish, insects and other natural phenomena–were on display at the event. A jury of alumni, faculty and industry leaders issued Best in Class awards to 18 vehicles in eight categories; while attendees voted for five vehicles in five categories.

Local custom auto designer Gary Wales’ 1917 La Bestioni Boat Tail Speedster was named the People’s Choice award winner. The Inspired by Nature award went to the 1959 Chevrolet Corvette Racing Stingray, whose lines were originally penned by alumnus and Car Classic honorary guest Peter Brock. And a 1961 Chevrolet Corvette Mako Shark, designed by alumnus Larry Shinoda, received the first ever Kids’ Choice award.

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View from the Bridge: Art Center’s incoming class, the LEAP Symposium and bringing the Bard to Lida Street

President Lorne M. Buchman

Being surrounded each and every day by thought-provoking ideas and inspiring individuals is perhaps the greatest benefit of working at Art Center. As President, I’m in a unique position to see so much of the remarkable work created here.

A clear side effect—and thankfully, it’s a good one—is that at the end of the day I have a lot on my mind. Which is why I’d like to start sharing with you here, on occasion, my thoughts on what I’m seeing, hearing and experiencing around campus and in the larger community.

First things first: The Fall 2013 term is well underway. Before we reach that busy midterm crunch, I’d like to tell you a few things about our latest incoming class. After receiving the highest number of applicants across all disciplines in our 83-year history, Art Center this fall welcomed 361 undergraduates and 68 graduate students, our largest incoming class ever. The increase reflects the strength and growth of our academic programs, as well as the planned expansion envisioned in Create Change, Art Center’s 2011–2016 strategic plan.

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Storytelling across mediums: Award nominations and class video showcase recent transmedia projects

Graphic Design student Lois Kim tests her transmedia installation piece.

Pick up the current issue of Dot and you’ll find a feature–Transform, Transcend, Transmedia: The Changing Face of Graphic Design–that takes a look at the transmedia area of emphasis within Art Center College of Design’s Graphic Design Department.

One of the students whom we highlighted in that story, recent graduate Paul Hoppe, has just been named a finalist for the 2013 Adobe Design Achievement Awards (ADAA)–an impressive feat considering that only 30 students out of a total pool of 3,752 submissions from around the world made it that far. Hoppe is a finalist in the category of Installation Design for his project ECHO: The Fragility of Moments Suspended in Time, which explores the rise and fall of a popular turn of the century tourist attraction in Pasadena.

Immediately after graduating this past spring, Hoppe became a teaching assistant for instructor Brad Bartlett’s Typography 5: Transmedia and Advanced Graphic Studio: Transmedia courses. He spent the Summer 2013 term at South Campus, helping two dozen Graphic Design students with their projects in which they dived deep into their personal interests to rebrand cultural institutions and create complementary interactive installations.

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Photography and Imaging graduate wins Student Leadership Award

Photography and Imaging graduate Katie Buntsma. Photo: Chuck Spangler

“I came to Art Center from a tiny town in Iowa and I thought I was going to be a big deal,” said Photography and Imaging graduate Katie Buntsma last week as she received Art Center’s Student Leadership Award for the Summer 2013 term. “I was certain of it.”

That certainty, Buntsma shared with the audience, didn’t last long.

“I broke my arm the first day of school,” she said with a laugh, recalling the most dramatic example of how reality put her ego in check. “I ran my scooter into a cement pylon and spent my first class in the Huntington Hospital emergency room.”

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