Category Archives: Environmental Design

Filling in the Blank: Students Bringing TEDx to Campus

Class shot of the TEDx Art Center College of Design Studio. Photo: June Korea.

Orange will mix with red this summer when the student-driven TEDx Art Center College of Design conference takes over the Hillside Campus on Saturday, June 9 to explore the event’s theme: “Design a ________ for Social Impact.” The “blank” in that title is a call-to-action designed to inspire conference attendees to come up with their own idea for how to effect positive change in the world.

Also on hand to inspire attendees will be an impressive lineup of speakers, including Doug Powell, national president of AIGA and the individual spearheading that association’s Design for Good initiative; and Cameron Tonkinwise, chair of Design Thinking and Sustainability at Parsons The New School School for Design, whose current research is exploring design-enabled sharing of resources. And for something completely different, Art Center Product Design alumnus and KILLSPENCER founder Spencer Nikosey has been tapped to provide the day’s musical entertainment.

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Art Center’s Graduate Programs Top U.S. News & World Report’s Latest Graduate School Rankings

Graduate student work will be on display at 4 Hours Solid on April 18. Photo: Four Eyes Photography.

U.S. News & World Report has released its annual Best Grad Schools rankings, and we’re proud to report that Art Center made quite a splash in its Fine Arts Schools list.

The College’s Graduate Industrial Design program ranked number two in the “Industrial Design” category; Graduate Media Design ranked number seven in “Graphic Design;” and Graduate Art ranked number 18 in “Fine Arts.”

According to U.S. News, these rankings were based on the result of a peer assesment survey—art school deans and other top art school academics were asked to nominate up to 10 programs noted for their excellence in each specialty, with the schools receiving the most nominations being listed.

Curious to learn more about Art Center’s graduate programs?

On April 18, the College will host 4 Hours Solid, its annual event at South Campus that showcases the work produced by its Broadcast Cinema, Graduate Art and Graduate Media Design departments. This year’s event will also include a preview of Art Center’s new graduate programs in Environmental Design and Transportation Design.

4 Hours Solid
Wednesday, April 18, 2012, 6–10 p.m.
Art Center College of Design, South Campus
950 South Raymond Ave., Pasadena, CA 91105

Art Center for Kids Students Imagine Life on Mars

Art Center for Kids students get up close and personal with a Mars Rover model.

This August, NASA’s Mars Rover Curiosity will land on the surface of the Red Planet. Armed with a geology lab, cameras galore and a rock-vaporizing laser, Curiosity’s mission will be to find conditions favorable for life.

This Spring, all students enrolled in Art Center for Kids—Art Center College of Design’s program for students in grades 4–8—will have a special opportunity to work with Curiosity engineers from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory to imagine what a future community on Mars might look like.

It’s all part of the Imagine Mars Project, an interdisciplinary program sponsored by NASA and the National Endowment for the Arts—and of which Art Center is a proud partner— that takes kids on a virtual mission to Mars and brings them back with a new outlook on community, science and the arts.

Art Center for Kids students in "Architecture from the Inside Out" design buildings suitable for the environment on Mars.

Every Spring term for the past six years, all Art Center for Kids classes focus on one common theme: imagining a future life on Mars. In these classes, young artists and designers, in cooperation with scientists and engineers from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, translate this theme through a variety of disciplines.

“Here on Earth we take certain things for granted, like gravity,” says David J. Delgado, Art Center alumnus and Lead on the Imagine Mars Project for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, who says the main skill Imagine Mars students develop is creative problem solving, “We ask the students to dig into their imagination and come up with things that have never been seen before.”

Delgado says the wide array of disciplines taught at Art Center for Kids means those ‘things that never seen before’ take on infinite variations—whether they’re group projects built in Architecture from the Inside Out (“How do you design buildings to fit into the environment on Mars?”), constructing narratives in Cartooning Technique (“What kind of people will live there? What will they do?”) imagining how pets would survive on Mars in Animal Sculpture (“The students have come up with some really fun spacesuits for their animals.”) or capturing images of life on Earth in Photography to remind residents on Mars of their roots.

Delgado also points out that the lessons learned in class go far beyond simply learning about Mars, “The instructors at Art Center for Kids use Imagine Mars as a jumping-off point to get really creative. Not only are the students learning about Mars, but they’re also learning skills for their specific medium, say photography. And they’re not just learning how to take a photograph, but they’re also learning about how tell stories through pictures. All the classes do a really good of that.”

Art Center for Kids Spring classes begin February 19; register today!

David J. Delgado, lead of the Imagine Mars Project at The Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Looking Back on a Year of Change

Art Center President Lorne M. Buchman.

Earlier this year, Art Center College of Design launched Create Change, our strategic plan for becoming the preeminent college of art and design in the 21st century.

With Fall graduation events set for tomorrow and the winter break nearly upon us, we felt it was the perfect time to sit down with Art Center College of Design President Lorne M. Buchman to hear his thoughts on the past year, get an update on the strategic plan and find out what’s in store for the coming year.

Dotted Line: Looking back at the past year, what are your first thoughts?

Lorne M. Buchman: I’d like to begin by expressing how deeply gratified I am by all that we’ve accomplished. This has been a banner year for Art Center. We’ve seen record enrollment of talented and gifted students, we launched our strategic plan and we are set to begin new degree programs in Fall 2012. We’re closing in on the purchase of the post office property adjacent to South Campus, a facility for which we’ve raised significant funds to purchase. We’ve built the Board and we’ve recruited some dynamic new faculty. We are connecting with alumni the world over. We’ve offered some fabulous new courses and we’ve made significant strides in acquiring new technology and equipment for our students. I could go on and on. It’s been remarkable. And all of this doesn’t happen by accident. The driving force of our success is the focused and diligent work of our trustees, faculty and staff. We should recognize with much gratitude the quality of this extraordinary community.

More questions with President Lorne M. Buchman after the jump.

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Gloria Fowler’s AMMO-nition

The cover of the new Edward Weston monograph, published by AMMO Books.

On campus, Gloria Fowler ‘87 may be best known as a beloved Environmental Design instructor who has taught at the College for the last 20 years, helping students explore their creative potential. But equally impressive is her work off-campus, where she runs the thriving boutique art-house publishing company AMMO Books with her photographer-turned-publisher husband, Steve Crist, and business partner Paul Norton.

Launching a specialty book business is a risky venture, even more so in today’s age of declining book sales. But AMMO, which is based in Pasadena and Santa Barbara, Calif., has succeeded where others haven’t, publishing a number of coveted titles including the limited edition monographs Gonzo and Charley Harper, mid-priced options like Locals Only and Spike Lee: Do the Right Thing and a children’s line of board books, puzzles and more. Enviable press coverage and robust sales have followed.

The Dotted Line recently sat down with Fowler to discuss several new AMMO releases just in time for the holidays, as well as her experience running AMMO and working with emerging talent straight from the studios of Art Center.

Is there a story behind the name, AMMO?

When Steve and I decided to break out on our own and launch a new publishing house [he previously worked as a photo editor at Taschen], we realized that there weren’t that many visual-arts publishers based in the U.S. We also wanted to celebrate American artists and designers. So we came up with AMMO, which is short for American Modern Books. But we do publish international artists/designers as well.

What’s new at AMMO this holiday season?

We recently published a limited edition, coffee-table size monograph on the photographer Edward Weston in celebration of his 125th birthday. Weston is a hero of Steve’s and one of the most important photographers of the 20th century. Steve worked with the Center for Creative Photography in Arizona, which manages Weston’s archive, to choose 125 of Weston’s most iconic photographs. The book was beautifully printed in Italy and comes in an exquisite European gold cloth slipcase. Then we have Alexander Girard, edited by Todd Oldham. Girard was a seminal and prolific midcentury designer who produced work in so many disciplines—textiles, typography, graphics, illustration, furniture and architecture. He was a contemporary of Eames who, for whatever reason, hasn’t received the same recognition. We hope this book will change that. It’s massive—672 pages and 15 lbs(!)—and it’s at the level of Charley Harper in that the book is a very comprehensive overview of Girard.  And in conjunction, we’ve released some children’s products featuring Girard’s designs—a memory game, giant floor puzzles, a board book and more on the way.

Catch a glimpse of the new Girard book here:


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Don’t Miss Design Runway This Friday

Environmental Design student Belle Shang will present her BeWild winter accessories at Design Runway.

This Friday, Art Center College of Design will hold its annual Design Runway show at the College’s Hillside Campus. The show, which is free and open to the public, focuses on how industrial design and visual art students are expressing themselves through apparel design.

“This is a runway show unlike any other,” said Design Runway instructor Justine Parish of the event which marks the culmination of the course of the same name. “Apparel design at Art Center is less about fashion than it is an outlet for students from all departments to explore a new medium for their creativity. As a result, we have Product Design students creating performance sportswear for space travel, Illustration students creating jewelry, Transportation Design students creating high fashion shoes and everything in between.”

Continued after the jump.

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For Alumnus and Instructor Cory Grosser, “Sometimes Furniture is Too Small a Word”

Cory Grosser holding his latest project, a design object for kids called Turtle Turtle.

In the latest issue of Dot, Art Center’s newly reimagined flagship publication, we take a look at the College’s Environmental Design Department and get a sneak peek into the department’s upcoming graduate program. Among the many individuals we interviewed for that story was alumnus and Environmental Design instructor Cory Grosser ENVL PROD ’01, a product designer and brand strategist whose clients include Bentley Motors, MDF Italia, SpHaus, Ford Motor Company and Walt Disney Signature.

Grosser uses narratives to design compelling experiences, as perfectly illustrated in his latest project Turtle Turtle, a sculptural toy he created both for his daughter and for Humanscale’s Faces in the Wild art auction in London earlier this month. At this charity event, artists and designers donated works based on endangered animals with all proceeds benefiting the World Wildlife Fund. Encouraged by the initial response, Grosser recently launched an official Kickstarter campaign to bring the toy into production.

We’re pleased to bring you this extended interview with Grosser and encourage you to get the larger story of Art Center’s Environmental Design program by reading Designing from the Inside Out in the latest issue of Dot.

Dotted Line: What’s your educational background?

Cory Grosser: I have a degree in Architecture from the University of Buffalo and I was an Environmental Design major here at Art Center. I earned a B.S. in “Environmental Product Design,” which was a track they offered for a very short time within the Environmental Design Department. It was a track geared towards students who wanted to learn more about objects within a space. I think there’s only three of us that graduated from that track.

Dotted Line: Speaking of objects within a space, in addition to leading DesignStorms and corporate-sponsored projects, you teach several furniture studios for the Environmental Design Department . How do environmental designers go about designing a piece of furniture?

Grosser: Environmental designers know that the furniture inside of a space has tremendous implications for the way a space feels. If you walk into a totally empty room, it feels a certain way. Now fill the room with furniture. Depending on the type of furniture you place inside, the way the room looks, works and feels will be completely different. Sometimes “furniture” is too small a word. In our department we teach our students to think narratively. We like the objects our students design to tell stories and to engage people through those stories. Furniture is a good way for students to understand how their projects should tell stories, even if it’s a single object. So even if a student isn’t interested in designing furniture for a career, taking a furniture class once could still be beneficial for them.

The theme of Grosser's Piazza America at the 2010 Milan Furniture Faire was "Tell Me Your Dreams."

Dotted Line: Because of that narrative-based approach to tackling projects?

Grosser: That, but also in the furniture class we ask students to think a lot about who they are as a designer. What are they bringing to the table? The reality is that there’s a lot of furniture in the world, and every year there’s more and more. So we ask them to think about the thought processes behind making their furniture and how their work fits into the larger context of other work. All those lessons apply to projects beyond furniture.

Dotted Line: David Mocarski, the Chair of Environmental Design, says that environmental designers focus on the “total spatial experience.” Can you tell me what that means to you?

Grosser: That’s probably the best definition of “Environmental Design” that I’ve heard. The idea behind total spatial experience is that space is about scale. If architecture is the building, and interior architecture is what’s inside, then the total spatial experience can mean everything from the smallest object in the room to the building and even beyond the building. And since it’s experience-based, it’s all about how people feel in the space. Everything can affect the way you feel: lighting, graphics, signage, the materials or even the way the windows work. It’s a very holistic idea and it’s a very large umbrella for our students to explore, so the career options are quite vast.

Grosser's Bucket upholstered seating collection for SpHaus was inspired by seats of classic sports cars.

Dotted Line: What kind of changes to the field have you seen since you graduated?

Grosser: Beyond the obvious changes in technology, one of the biggest changes is that designers today have to be more strategic and savvy about what they’re designing. The expectations of the people using their products–whether you call them “consumers,” “clients” or “users”–are growing, and rightly so. So as teachers, we have to teach the students new strategies. Back when I was studying architecture, they referred to this field as “themed space design” or “themed architecture.” Nobody uses that terminology anymore because the field has turned into so much more. The ecosystem of narrative, brand and experience has become much more sophisticated.

Dotted Line: In a sense does the space become just one element of the overall brand?

Grosser: It goes back to that concept of total spatial experience. That can encompass everything from the packaging of the items within the space to what you’re seeing outside as you approach the building to your experience with the product or the website once you get home. Think of when you go to a restaurant. Of course the experience is about the food, but it’s also about the space, the menus, the silverware, how the waitstaff is dressed and what they say when they greet you. It’s a bit like conducting a symphony. We want to teach our students to become conductors, not just players of one instrument.

Beyond Luxury Concept by Cory Grosser for Bentley Motors.

For more about Art Center’s Environmental Design program, see the latest issue of Dot.

Art Center Ranked Among the Best of the Best by DesignIntelligence’s Annual Survey

An Art Center student hard at work at a recent DesignStorm.

Cited as a “heavyweight player,” Art Center College of Design was once again ranked first for its undergraduate industrial design programs by the Design Futures Council in its annual DesignIntelligence survey of America’s Best Architecture and Design Schools, which recognizes the schools that are best preparing students for success in their professions. This year, the College’s Graduate Industrial Design program ranked second, one spot away from first where it has placed five times out of the last seven years.

The sum total of Art Center’s undergraduate industrial design programs—Entertainment Design, Environmental Design, Product Design and Transportation Design—were most admired for their “resources, reputation and quality of education.”

In their assessment of industrial design skills, in which hiring firms deem the collegiate programs most strongly educating students in specific skill areas, Art Center ranked first place in the categories of “Communication,” “Computer Applications” and “Design.” The College also ranked in the top five in the areas of “Cross-Disciplinary Teamwork” and “Research and Theory,” which makes Art Center one of only two schools to place in all categories.

“These programs are graduating students who are able to tackle complex and difficult work, create and share knowledge, and invent new design solutions in their fields,” the survey said of the institutions which ranked in its annual survey. “Students learn not just technologies and craft but also leadership, judgment, and insight into changing contexts and upcoming challenges. These will be our future leaders.”

The Design Futures Council is an independent and interdisciplinary network of design, product, construction leaders exploring global trends, challenges and opportunities to advance innovation and shape the future of our industry and environment.

Say Hello to The New Dot Magazine

Screenshot of the redesigned website for the newly reimagined Dot magazine.

The wait is over! Art Center’s flagship publication, Dot magazine, has been reimagined and redesigned from the ground up. The hardcopy will begin landing in mailboxes shortly, but the online version is available for you to peruse right now.

What’s new in Dot? As always, the magazine will continue to cover noted alumni, programs and trends in the larger art and design fields. But now we’ll be bringing you this coverage twice a year! Stories in the new issue include: a profile of alumnus Ian Sands, a pioneer in the field of interaction design; a peek into the future of Art Center’s Environmental Design program; and a remembrance and appreciation of Art Center’s second president, Don Kubly.

Additionally, Dot has been expanded to include several new sections, including: Around the World, highlighting the work of Art Center alumni and faculty; In the Studio, a behind-the-scenes look at recent studio classes (this issue we look at the recent Purina Remix trandisciplinary studio sponsored by the Nestlé Purina); Spotted, social pages covering Art Center events around the world; and Dot News, a new home for campus news.

We hope you enjoy the new Dot and we look forward to hearing what you think of the changes. Let us know in the comments below or send an email to editor@artcenter.edu.

Art Center Revs Up For Car Classic ’11

Art Center's annual Car Classic. Photo: © Steven A. Heller/Art Center College of Design

This Sunday Art Center presents Car Classic, the College’s 11th annual celebration of the best in automotive design. The event will feature an incredible array of more than 100 rare automobiles and innovative vehicles on display in Art Center’s panoramic Sculpture Garden.

The theme for this year’s event is “California Design: Influencing Change,” meaning that in addition to enjoying all the classic cars on display—including a 1968 Peter Brock Triumph TR 250 K; a 1942 Alfa Romeo 6C 2500 SS Berlinetta Aero Dynamica; and a 1932 Doane Spencer Hot Rod—visitors to Car Classic will learn about the continuing global influence that Southern California has on transportation design.

Why Southern California? As home to more than 20 advanced automotive design studios, as well as forward-thinking companies that are leading the way in new mobility and alternative energy, the region continues to shape the how, what and where of transportation on a large scale.

Also leading the way is Art Center’s curriculum, which is expanding to further impact the evolution of the automotive industry and the broader field of transportation with a new Graduate Transportation Design program launching in Fall 2012. To coincide with this evolutionary growth, attendees to this year’s Car Classic will be treated to innovative designs for cars, bikes, planes, boats, materials and design tools influenced by Southern California culture.

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