Category Archives: Designmatters

Fine Art faculty Kerry Tribe wins Herb Alpert Award

Kerry_Tribe_headshotresizedFine Art faculty member Kerry Tribe was one of five winners of the 2017 Herb Alpert Award. The award is given to “risk-taking mid-career artists working in the fields of dance, film/video, music, theater, and the visual arts,” and includes an unrestricted award of $75,000.

Tribe, who lives and works in Los Angeles, frequently examines the themes of memory, time, and the ethics of representation through a variety of media including multichannel videos, 16-mm films, installations, sculpture, performance, and photography. Her subjects have ranged from an urban river, aphasia, and a butterfly’s wing to a man with a twenty-second memory, the night sky, and her senile grandfather.

“I started out thinking I should try to ‘change the world.’ I don’t know how often art can do that, and I think there are more practical ways to channel one’s energies into social change if that’s the goal. But I do think that the ethics of representation count, and I hope that the representations I make provide opportunities to think critically about topics that matter, free from the demands of more traditional, instrumentalized or commercialized media,” explains Tribe, in conversation with Diana Nawi, associate curator at Pérez Art Museum Miami.

Read the entire interview here.

Product Design faculty member Krystina Castella on the serious business of designing for play

KONICA MINOLTA DIGITAL CAMERAIf there is a fountain of youth, full-time faculty member Krystina Castella may have discovered it. Castella, whose youthful appearance and intense enthusiasm for everything she does belies her years of experience, has been teaching at ArtCenter 25 years, the last 12 of them full time.

A Product Design faculty member, she also leads sponsored projects and Designmatters Transdisciplinary Studios (TDS). Additionally, she teaches business classes in the Humanities and Sciences department, materials classes in the Integrated Studies department, classes about the manufacturing and licensing process for ArtCenter at Night and a t-shirt start-up class for the ArtCenter for Teens program.

A graduate of RISD’s Industrial Design program, Castella also studied cognitive developmental psychology and cultural anthropology with a focus on children’s culture at UCLA. Which leads us to the one thread that has been constant in her lengthy professional career—her work’s focus is often centered on creating and designing for kids.

Continue reading

Graphic Design Jesus Jacobo’s Yo Soy ArtCenter connects Latino/a students across disciplines

Yo Soy ArtCenter, the first latino graphic design show at HMCT.

Jesus Jacobo at Yo Soy ArtCenter’s Graphic Design Group Exhibition. Photo: Juan Posada

Student leader. Graphic Designer. Latino.

Jesus Jacobo, graduating this term with honors and a degree in Graphic Design, is all of these things

As a student worker in the Alumni Relations and Career and Professional Development (CPD) office, Jacobo gained exposure to students, alumni and other professionals outside his major of study. He came to recognize the usefulness of making connections beyond his major at the College

And he noticed a lack of community for Latino/a students

Last year he co-founded Yo Soy ArtCenter, a network of Latino/a students across diverse disciplines who share a cultural heritage. The student group recently hosted and curated Yo Soy: Graphic Design Group Exhibition, the first Latino/a graphic design group exhibition at ArtCenter, organized and curated by Michael Rosales, with support from the Hoffmitz Milken Center for Typography.

We caught up with Jacobo during his final term at the College to find out more about Yo Soy, his favorite ArtCenter projects, and what he’d like to do after graduating.

Continue reading

ArtCenter Launches Minor in Social Innovation

DesignmattersMinorBeginning this summer, students will be able to enroll in a new minor in Social Innovation, through the popular Designmatters department. The move is in response to an increased demand for the specialization among undergraduate students for mastery in skills and competencies to work in public and private sector organizations where the strategic role of design is increasingly being valued.

“It is very meaningful to satisfy the demand for this dynamic curriculum and meet the needs of our impressive students who are passionate about social innovation and dedicated to making a positive difference on society locally and globally,” said Mariana Amatullo, Ph.D., co-founder and vice president, Designmatters Department.

“Design for social innovation represents a vivid domain of human knowledge that ignites a boundless sense of possibility about a brighter future,” Amatullo continued. “By implementing a minor in the field, we provide students with a specialized toolkit of skills based on experiential learning gained by tackling real-world, real-time issues that highlight the role of art and design in catalyzing social-innovation outcomes.”

Candidates for the minor are students who crave the mastery of multidisciplinary skills and the collaborative mindset needed to propel innovation at such prestigious companies and organizations as UNICEF, IBM, Samsung and many more.

Examples of award-winning work conceived by students excelling in design for social innovation include:

· Environmental Design student Alvin Oei travels this month to Santiago, Chile to implement his concept for a children’s burn clinic to guide patients and their families through an improved treatment and healing experience. Oei’s The Healing Tree, is a result of his participation in ArtCenter’s Designmatters Safe Niños transdisciplinary studio with COANIQUEM, a world leader in the rehabilitation of pediatric burn victims.

· Safe Agua is a multi-year design and research initiative that has yielded a number of innovative products and services created by ArtCenter students to help families overcome water poverty in Chile, Peru and Colombia.

· Es Tiempo is a multi-faceted communications campaign, in partnership with the USC Keck School of Medicine and the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, to raise awareness and support for the prevention and treatment of cervical cancer among Latinas living in Los Angeles.

· Flo developed for young girls in third world countries dealing with the challenges of menstruation without proper sanitary products, is the result of the ArtCenter Designmatters’ Girl Effect studio. The collaboration with Yale School of Management was based on field research from Fuseproject and Nike Foundation.

· Where’s Daryl is a violence and gun prevention teacher-toolkit created in collaboration the Los Angeles Unified School District and designed to serve a diverse population of at-risk youth.

Initially, the minor will be offered in six departments that have a significant population of students with interest in the specialization. Those departments are Graphic Design, Interaction Design, Product Design, Environmental Design, Illustration and Fine Art. Students from other majors will be able to apply on a case-by-case basis.

The minor formalizes and expands upon an existing Designmatters concentration launched in 2010. The new specialization offers students a curriculum comprised of 21 units designed to be completed within the time typically required to obtain a degree.

Students seeking the minor will enroll in a mix of studio courses, transdisciplinary studio requirements and courses in the Humanities and Sciences.

Designmatters recently published the collective wisdom of 84 game changers in the field of social innovation in a new book. LEAP Dialogues: Career Pathways for Designers in Social Innovation is the first publication of its kind to present a comprehensive overview of new professional pathways to successful and meaningful careers as experienced first-hand by a who’s who of respected thought leaders (practitioners, researchers and educators) who are making seminal contributions to the field.

ArtCenter Alumni Notes: November 2015 through January 2016

Diana Thater, A Cast of Falcons, 2008. Four video projectors, display computer, and two spotlights. Installation Photograph, Diana Thater: The Sympathetic Imagination, Los Angeles County Museum of Art. ©Diana Thater, photo ©Fredrik Nilsen

Diana Thater, A Cast of Falcons, 2008. Four video projectors, display computer, and two spotlights. Installation Photograph, Diana Thater: The Sympathetic Imagination, Los Angeles County Museum of Art. ©Diana Thater, photo ©Fredrik Nilsen

With the holidays behind us and election season upon us for the foreseeable future, this is the perfect time to divert our attention to the edifying pursuit of creative fulfillment. And what better way to do that than with this extra bulky edition of ArtCenter Alumni Notes.

NEWS

Guy Bove (BS 96 Product Design) was recently featured in a Tatler Magazine Hong Kong article about watch design. Hong Kong Tatler

Edward Eyth (BS 85 Product Design) was on a panel discussion for his concept designer work on Back to the Future Part II as part of the Toyota Mirai premier event. Toyota Newsroom

Continue reading

Designmatters 15 buzzwords for 15 years: Co-creation

15yearsDM.CoCreation

Earlier this month, in association with ArtCenter’s 85th anniversary, Designmatters Co-Founder and Vice President, Mariana Amatullo, PhD, kicked off the 15 Years of Designmatters (#DM15Yrs) storytelling campaign. Designed to celebrate and commemorate the groundbreaking program’s achievements in social impact design, this multi-platform series will feature posts of various shapes and sizes by Designmatters faculty, alumni, students and partners. The following reflection on Safe Ninos field work in Chile by faculty members Penny Herskovitch and Dan Gottlieb offers empirical proof of the value of co-creation. 

Continue reading

Spring 2016 orientation: Back-to-school pro tips for surviving and thriving at ArtCenter

 

Student orientation

Student orientation

Ah, the first day of school. It’s an initiation fraught with the anxiety of the unknown and flashbacks to the horrors of middle school cafeteria mishaps. Fortunately, ArtCenter has built in a full schedule of activities to provide a soft landing to incoming students and their families.

Orientation Week’s busy agenda features social mixers and in-depth information sessions on everything from campus sustainability to the infamous ArtCenter critique. Students are also matched with Orientation Leaders, who act as guides, companions and resources for the latest insider information on navigating the academic, social and geographic peculiarities of life at ArtCenter

In the spirit of optimizing the orientation week experience for the incoming class of 2016, we’ve compiled the following authoritative collection of pro tips from our Facebook community of current and former students to help ArtCenter newbies avoid rookie mistakes.

Continue reading

Every day is Veterans Day for students in Designmatters’ The Healing Trauma Project

Army medics treat a victim of a bombing in Tikrit, Iraq in 2006. Photo: Christopher Stoltz

In this photo by veteran and current ArtCenter student Christopher Stoltz, Army medics treat a victim of a bombing in Tikrit, Iraq in 2006.

“When guest speakers come into the class, they can spot me in the crowd and instantly tell I’m a veteran,” says ArtCenter student and former mass communication specialist for the U.S. Navy Christopher Stoltz of meeting with experts during this term’s Designmatters course The Healing Trauma Project.  “I think they can tell by my cargo shorts,” he adds laughing. “The non-uniform uniform.”

All jokes about conformity aside, one of the main reasons Stoltz signed up for the Graphic Design-hosted transdisciplinary studio is that it dealt with a serious issue—helping veterans learn about a method for treating Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)—and he wanted to represent an actual veteran’s viewpoint.

“I think a lot of people assume the military experience is what you see in movies like American Sniper, very extreme war stories” says Stoltz, who grew up in  Mount Airy, NC and served in the Navy for 14 years in a number of photography-related roles, including being an aerial photographer aboard the U.S.S. Harry Truman, and covering stories in Iraq from a soldier’s point of view for the Navy’s Stars and Stripes news agency. “Not every military job involves carrying a rifle. Some veterans worked desk jobs. I carried cameras the whole time I served. I also carried a rifle, but telling stories and capturing moments was my first priority.”

Continue reading

Where urban and digital realms merge, the post-geographic city emerges

Everything, On Time (2015) by Tim Durfee and Ben Hooker (with Jenny Rodenhouse), "a testing ground for what the city is, and perhaps will be."

Everything, On Time (2015) by Tim Durfee and Ben Hooker is “a testing ground for what the city is, and perhaps will be.” Image courtesy Tim Dufee and Ben Hooker

This Friday is ArtNight, a twice-a-year event in which Pasadena’s most prominent arts and cultural institutions—including ArtCenter College of Design—swing open their doors for a free evening of art, music and entertainment.

In addition to attending a celebration for the opening night of the College’s street art exhibition OUTSIDEIN, visitors to ArtCenter’s South Campus will have a unique opportunity to see in the Wind Tunnel Gallery a preview of Now, There: Scenes from the Post-Geographic City, an exhibition from ArtCenter’s Media Design Practices (MDP) program which will be installed at the Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism/Architecture this December in Shenzhen and Hong Kong.

Curated by MDP’s Professor Tim Durfee and faculty Mimi ZeigerNow, There explores “what is now and where is there” in today’s reality in which “urban and digital realms are inextricably linked” by presenting a selection of screen-based works, objects and texts that “develop, explore and visualize a city not tied to any physical locality.”

Continue reading

Designmatters at Sustainable Summer School – Part 1

photo1

In the first of Designmatters‘ three part Sustainable Summer School blog series, Product Design student and head of the ArtCenter EcoCouncil, Arotin Hartounian reflects on his time spent at the 7th annual summer school program in Western Germany.

authorphotoAt a 17th century monastery situated in a rural area of Western Germany, 28 students gathered for the 7th annual Sustainable Summer School. The summer school program is organized by a collaboration of the Ecosign Academy, Folkwang University of the Arts, and The Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment, and Energy. The Designmatters Department at ArtCenter in partnership with the Provost’s office generously sponsored three students to attend this program. Most of the students were from Germany with one student each from Italy, Spain, and Austria. Janya, Daniel and I were the only students from the USA. Over the course of 7 days we lived and studied at the monastery with all the students and teachers. The students were divided into three workshops, each focusing on different ways design can initiate and support sustainable behavior in our daily life. Continue reading