Category Archives: Awards

2013 Great Teacher Award-winner, Richard Keyes, delivers graduation address. Student-drawn allegory included.

 

Illustration by Katia Grifols

Illustration by Katia Grifols

Richard Keyes didn’t stay long the first time he took the stage at Art Center’s 2013 Summer commencement ceremony to accept the Great Teacher Award. That’s likely because he knew he’d return shortly in his other capacity, as the event’s keynote speaker. Keyes, who is both an alum (Graphic Design ’87) and beloved faculty member has made a habit of multitasking throughout his career at Art Center, where he straddles five departments — Graduate Industrial Design, Entertainment Design, Photography, Integrated Studies and Art Center at Night. For insight into why he received the highest honor awarded by Art Center students, look no further than the speech itself (posted in its entirety below), which culminates in a moving fable, accompanied by a slideshow of images hand-drawn by student, Katia Grifols, who has been Keyes’ T.A. for three terms.   

You have reason to expect a celebrity sending you off into the world today, but you are getting a teacher. Conversely, when I came to Art Center 30 years ago I occasionally expected teachers and got celebrities, so I hope I can redress the balance somewhat. But not before I state how much I have learned from you, quite probably the most impressive student body in the creative world.

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From Breaking Bad to Modern Family: 2013′s Emmy noms confirm TV’s at the top of its game

Aaron Paul and Bryan Cranston in Breaking Bad

Aaron Paul and Bryan Cranston in Breaking Bad

I write this day before the Emmy nominations are announced. As a member of the TV Academy I vote for the Primetime Emmys; and for several years now it’s been hard to choose a favorite in each category.  This year in particular has had an embarrassment of riches when it comes to outstanding TV.

Rather than try to predict the nominees (to be announced tomorrow) or the winners (revealed during the live broadcast on September 22), here is a very subjective list of can’t-miss current series. I am also including some guilty-pleasure shows I’ve been known to watch, none of which run the risk of getting an Emmy nomination.

Sometimes I come late to a series that has already become a phenomenon (24). Or I’ll skip it all together (Lost.)  I mention this to explain why I am the last person on the planet not to be caught up in Game of Thrones mania.  I watched the first episode and didn’t find a good reason to come back to that world or those characters.  But everyone tells me it grows on you, so I will catch up one of these days.

Another reason I’m not actively seeking another series to watch is that there are so many great ones that I’m hooked on already.

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Art Center in the News, May/June 2013

Environmental Design student Jonathan Wook Kim with his new design “Remix” as seen in the Los Angeles Times coverage of the International Contemporary Furniture Fair and New York Design Week.

From the launch of Art Center’s The Design Accelerator to showcasing new chair designs at the top industry confab in New York, from Grand Theft Auto to anti-gun violence campaigns — here’s where you can catch up on any news you may have missed with our latest media roundup.

Bloomberg Businessweek, “Want to Build the Next Pinterest? Focus on Great Design,” June 26, 2013: Art Center partners with Caltech and teams up with Idealab to develop design-driven startups.

Huffington Post, “Entrepreneurship Driven by Design,” May 29, 2013

Bunch Magazine, June 2013: Interview with Grad Art shop instructor and alumnus Zack Stadel (GART 04).

Brand Republic, June 20, 2013: Student Gevorg Karensky’s short, Grand Theft Auto: RISE, selected for Saatchi & Saatchi’s New Director’s Showcase.

GOOD Magazine, “Reducing Gun Violence, One Middle School Class at a Time,”June 19, 2013

KCRW DnA: Design and Architecture, June 18, 2013: Designmatters’ Mariana Amatullo and Elisa Ruffino are featured in the first segment of the program about the Uncool Anti-Gun Violence initiative.

KCET Artbound, June 11, 2013: Art Center, JPL and Caltech present symposium on the emerging field of data visualization.

Los Angeles Times, “ICFF 2013 and New York Design Week: Top trends in home décor,” May 24, 2013: Environmental Design students Jonathan Wook Kim and Zara Vardayan are featured in this story about furniture companies which premiered their newest designs at the International Contemporary Furniture Fair and New York Design Week. Chairs designed by both students through the Art Center Bernhardt Design partnership are shown in a roundup of designs and trends spotted during the show.

For the latest Art Center news, follow us on Twitter at @art_center.

Bright IDEA Awards: Art Center students collect a trio of medals

IDEA Award-winning designs by Nina Viggi, Marc Dubui and Shingo Mamiya

IDEA Award-winning designs by Nina Viggi, Marc Dubui and Shingo Mamiya

Art Center continued its legacy of award-winning leading-edge design with yesterday’s announcement of the 2013 IDEA Awards, which included three medal-winning student projects and eight finalists among the honorees of the Industrial Designers Society of America’s prestigious annual awards program.

“The IDEA awards program continues to be an effective witness to the state of industrial design and design education today,” explained Katherine Bennett, faculty member in the Graduate and Undergraduate Industrial Design Departments. “The process of articulating their designs for the IDEAs’ worldwide audience gives practitioners and students a forum for important causes we want to address, and to tell the story of design’s value to our clients, our customers and society as a whole.”

Each of this year’s trifecta of winning projects illustrates Art Center’s trademark focus on innovative design with real world social impact, informed by a meticulous, research-based approach. Graduate Industrial Design student, Nina Viggi’s One Degree High Performance Dinghy Shoe, durable footwear designed for sailors, received a gold medal. Product Design student, Marc Dubui, took home a silver prize for his hard hat suspension system, titled Oblikk, designed to protect the wearer from lateral and rotational impact. Finally, Product Design undergrad, Shingo Mamiya, was awarded the bronze for A Better Working Environment for Certified Nursing Assistants, a waste disposal system for the elderly.

Art Center students have long been a formidable force at the IDEA Awards, collecting a total of 70 medals over 22 years, with a wide array of inventive designs, ranging from the UnBathroom to the U-Haul Emergency Response Conversion Kit for the American Red Cross. This year’s winners were selected from a field of 687 finalists, to be announced live on August 21 at its 2013 International Conference in Chicago.

Alumni Featured in AllSpark Platinum Winners Video

Yves Béhar displays the durability of his See Better to Learn Better glasses in the new AllSpark video.

Yves Béhar displays the durability of his See Better to Learn Better glasses in the new AllSpark video.

Earlier this year, Art Center alumni swept the first ever AllSpark Platinum Awards, which honors “the best of the best of the best” of the 2012 entrants to the Spark Awards.

Spark recently released a video in which AllSpark winners Yves Béhar PROD 91, Franz von Holzhausen TRAN 92 and Sujin Hwang PROD 11 are interviewed alongside other top designers, including Sam Lucente and alumnus Earl Gee GRPK 83.

In the video, Béhar speaks about See Better to Learn Better, a program his company fuseproject created in partnership with the Mexican government and Augen Optics. The program distributes hundreds of thousands of eyeglasses every year to schoolchildren in Mexico. Children have the opportunity to choose their glasses’ frame, size and color, giving them a chance to be involved in the design process.

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“Graphic Design USA” Names Faculty and Alumni Among Most Influential Professionals in Advertising

Art Center's Advertising Department Chair Gary Goldsmith. Photo: Chuck Spangler

Art Center’s Advertising Department Chair Gary Goldsmith. Photo: Chuck Spangler

This year, Graphic Design USA turns 50 years old. To celebrate the occasion the magazine has asked its readers to name the most influential graphic designers, art directors, corporate design departments and more of the past 50 years.

The publication plans to unveil the results of its 50th Anniversary Survey throughout the year. Not surprisingly, several Art Center faculty and alumni have made the list so far.

For this post, we’ll focus on Art Center alumni from the world of advertising in the survey, which includes Advertising Department Chair Gary Goldsmith ADVT 81 listed among the “Most Influential Art Directors of the Last 50 Years.”

“I’m honored to be included in that group,” said Goldsmith of making the list, a space he shares with fellow alumni David Peterson GRPK 88 and Tracy Wong ADVT 84. “I know most of them, and have worked with many of them during my career.”

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Illustration Students Awarded Scholarships from Society of Illustrators, Works on View in New York

Three works by Art Center Illustration students Hannah Chi, Michael Kuo and Ellen Surrey were recently selected from more than 5,000 entries as being among the “best of the best” in the Society of Illustrators annual Student Scholarship Competition. The artists were awarded monetary scholarships at an opening reception for the 2013 Student Scholarship Exhibition.

Chi’s Burdens depicts a humanoid zebra pedaling a bicycle cart overflowing with cast-off items. In Kuo’s Ramen Time, an Alice in Wonderland-like figure peers into a giant bowl of soup. And Surrey’s Normal Abnormal reveals the colorful inner workings of the brain inside the heads of two otherwise dark silhouettes.

Student Michael Kuo is one of the Society of Illustrators 2013 Student Scholarship Awards winners with his printmaking piece "Ramen Time."

Student Michael Kuo won a Society of Illustrators 2013 Student Scholarship Award for Ramen Time.

The students’ winning illustrations are now on view at the Society’s Museum of Illustration in New York, through June 5, joining those by 10 other Art Center students whose work was also recognized by the jury of professionals assembled by the Society of Illustrators that selected winning entries based on the quality of technique, concept and skill with medium used.

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Getty Foundation Awards Multicultural Internship to Art Center Library

Internships can create powerful futures. Just ask Rachel Wen-Paloutzian. In 2009, she held a summer internship at Art Center’s James Lemont Fogg Memorial Library, supported by a grant from the Getty Foundation as part of its Multicultural Undergraduate Internship program. The internship proved to be a critical step toward her current career as special collections librarian at Loyola Marymount University’s William H. Hannon Library.

Rachel-WP

A Getty Foundation grant to Art Center made it possible for Rachel Wen-Paloutzian to intern in our library.

“Art Center was where I came up with the ideas that led to my master’s thesis at UCLA and where I first learned about metadata and digital collections,” Wen-Paloutzian explains. “Today I enjoy working with historical materials and rare books, as well as encouraging academic communities to come discover the hidden treasures of the Library. The Art Center internship was an important milestone for me.”

This summer will be the 10th year that the Foundation has awarded an internship grant to Art Center. The internship program provides full-time summer work opportunities for outstanding students who are members of groups currently underrepresented in museums and arts organizations. Since the program’s founding in 1993, 150 local arts institutions and museums, as well as the Getty Center and the Getty Villa, have hosted over 2,800 internships, exposing these students to career possibilities in the arts.

For Art Center students, faculty and staff, the opportunity to work with individuals from a broad range of backgrounds and perspectives enriches the Art Center experience. Diversity and inclusion are among the College’s six governing values and principles and broadly represented throughout Art Center’s strategic plan, and the Getty Foundation grant is helping to expand the College’s efforts in this area.

For Vanessa Samaniego, a senior at the University of Notre Dame, last summer’s Multicultural Undergraduate internship was similarly transformative. “I’m grateful to have learned so much about the Library and the College,” she says, “and to have discovered a whole new field of interest — design.”

Samaniego’s library responsibilities included digitizing images, developing library materials, helping curate student work for an exhibit, cataloging children’s books, planning and promoting library events and color-editing a fashion magazine. “After being surrounded by so many entrepreneurial design students,” she continues, “I went back to school and was able to implement design concepts in an entrepreneurial course this past fall.”

The Getty Foundation fulfills the philanthropic mission of the Getty Trust by supporting individuals and institutions committed to advancing the greater understanding and preservation of the visual arts in Los Angeles and throughout the world. More information about the Foundation’s grant-making is available online at getty.edu/foundation.

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Art Center Receives NEH Grant to Preserve Industrial Design History

The Librarians Have Landed! And They’re Coming to Art Center

In Search of Textured Stories: An Illustration Student Explores Children’s Books by African-American Illustrators

Art Center Students Win Big at College Emmy Awards

Art Center students were honored with five College Emmys at the 34th Annual College Television Awards.

Lizbeth Chappell, Tim Hendrix, Ellen Houlihan, Josue Lopez, Kathleen Lorden, Filippo Nesci, Carlo Olivares Paganoni and Justin Wells all walked away with College Emmys in hand at the awards gala on April 25, 2013.

Art Center swept the Commercial Category, with wins in 1st, 2nd and 3rd Place for Lorden (Kia Soul “Funeral”), Chappell and Lopez (“Uncomfortable Situations”) and Houlihan (“Todd Glass for GLSEN”). Lorden accepted her award for First Place in the Commercial Category and thanked her professors, classmates, cast, crews, parents and husband.

In the Alternative Category, Nesci and Hendrix received 3rd Place for their “KOAN Sound – 80′s Fitness” music video. Paganoni and Wells accepted the 2nd Place award in the Children’s Program Category for their short film Cardboard Camera.

On the Thank You cam, award winners got the opportunity to express their gratitude to everyone who helped their projects become a reality, from their families and supportive donors to Art Center teachers. Chappell thanked her crew for all their hard work, as did Nesci and Hedrix, while Paganoni thanked his mom, ”who came with all her friends from Mexico to cook for the shoot.”

The College Television Awards is a national competition that recognizes excellences in college student produced video, digital and film work, with entries from hundreds of colleges and universities every year. Winners receive cash award, the opportunity to network with top television executives and recognition within the industry. Entries are judged online by members of the Television Academy who work professionally in each respective discipline, and awards are based on excellence in overall production.

You can watch all the clips from the show at the Emmys Foundation website.

Congratulations to all Art Center award-winning filmmakers!

 

Art Center Trustee Charles Floyd Johnson Honored for Creative Vision by Liberty Hill Foundation

Producer, filmmaker and Art Center Trustee Charles Floyd Johnson, who has produced television shows such as NCIS; JAG and Magnum, P.I., was honored with Liberty Hill’s 2013 Creative Vision Award at the Upton Sinclair Dinner and Awards Celebration on April 23, 2013 at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills.

Charles F. Johnson with Liberty Hill Executive Director Shane Goldsmith and board member Professor Ange-Marie Hancock, a Liberty Hill Board member.

Trustee Charles Floyd Johnson with Liberty Hill Executive Director Shane Goldsmith (left) and Professor Ange-Marie Hancock, a Liberty Hill Board member.

Throughout his career, Johnson has strived to create equal and balanced opportunities for minorities in the entertainment industry. While studying law at Howard University in the late 1960s, he was active in marches and protests during the Civil Rights Movement. In 1971, he attended the Professional Theater Workshop in Hollywood, then found work in the mail room at Universal Studios before being promoted to the Business Affairs Department.

While growing up he was fascinated by stories his father told him about the Tuskegee Airmen. Johnson worked for more than 20 years to bring the story of African-American fighter pilots to the big screen. Alongside executive producer George Lucas, he produced the 2012 movie Red Tails, which won the NAACP Image Award for Best Picture.

“These young men were not encouraged to fly for their country,” said Johnson. “But they triumphed over adversity. These were men who fought racism…they did it successfully and they were heroes, not victims.”

Liberty Hill is dedicated to advancing social change through grants, campaigns and leadership training by investing in community organizers who help bring equality and opportunity to Los Angeles.

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