Category Archives: Events

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!

 

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

ARLIS-logo

Pasadena plays host to the Art Libraries Society of North America (ARLIS/NA) 41st annual meeting April 25–29, 2013, with speakers and attendees from the United States, Canada, Mexico, Latin America, Europe and beyond. The conference takes place at the Pasadena Convention Center, with additional programs and activities scheduled at Art Center College of Design.

Art Center’s Betsy Galloway hosts a meeting of fellow library directors from Association of Independent Colleges of Art and Design (AICAD) schools. Archetype Press’s Gloria Kondrup conducts a hands-on workshop in letterpress broadside printing. And Art Center Product and Entertainment Design instructor Justine Limpus Parish leads a tour of the Los Angeles Fashion District.

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Dieter Rams Urges Graduates Toward a Responsible Design Ethos

Dieter Rams at Art Center

Dieter Rams receives an honorary doctorate of arts from Art Center President Lorne M. Buchman. He concluded his speech by invoking Gandhi’s admonition, “We must be the change we want to see in the world.”

“Tomorrow’s world will be designed by the design students of today — by you — and while this is a great opportunity, this is also a great challenge and a great responsibility,” Dieter Rams told graduating Art Center students during the 2013 Spring Graduation Ceremony on Sat., April 20.

Accepting an honorary doctorate of arts from Art Center, the legendary designer was introduced by Product Design Chair Karen Hofmann and delivered his speech in German, translated live by an English-language interpreter. Rams thoughtfully reflected on his past, sharing lessons gleaned over a long and influential career as a product designer and university professor, while voicing concerns about the future and stressing designers’ changing responsibility in a changing world.

“Today’s main challenges are the protection of the natural environment and overcoming mindless consumption,” he said, urging students toward “a design ethos that goes way beyond complacency and arbitrariness.”

He presented five essential dimensions of design, along with his “formula for sustainable production”: Less but better! Much, much less, and much, much better. He asserted that “Design is primarily an intellectual process. It’s a procedure and an approach to create innovation and new meaning.”

Following are highlights of Rams’ speech:

 

 

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Spring 2013 Graduation Events

Campus is buzzing as it kicks off its Spring Term 2013 graduation week! Here’s what’s in store as the College prepares to launch the next wave of creative talent in to the professional world.

Graduation at Art Center

Thursday, April 18

Industry leaders and professionals, employers, corporate partners, donors and alumni will get the first look at the Spring Term’s graduating artists and designers at this year’s invitation-only Graduation Show Preview. The show will feature student accomplishments from major fields of study at Art Center, including Advertising, Entertainment Design, Environmental Design, Film, Graphic Design, Illustration, Photography and Imaging, Product Design, Transportation Design, Graduate Industrial Design and Graduate Media Design Practices.

Graduation Show Preview at Hillside Campus is held from 6:00 to 9:30 p.m. and transitions into a private reception hosted by Alumni Relations immediately following. Simultaneously, from 6:00 to 9:30 p.m., Graduate Media Design Practices hosts the MDP/Lab Thesis Exhibition at South Campus where the world famous Kogi BBQ Truck will be parked to feed attendees.

Saturday, April 20

Join us in the Sculpture Garden at Hillside Campus from 4:00 to 6:00 p.m. as we celebrate the newest graduating class during our graduation ceremony. Legendary designer Dieter Rams will receive an honorary doctorate degree and deliver the commencement address. We will also hear from valedictorian and Illustration student Agnes Hyun-Jeong Lee and present the Art Center Student Leadership Award to Product Design student Vladimir Almonnord.

After the ceremony, Graduation Show opens to the public from 6:00 to 9:00 p.m. so everyone can enjoy the work of the newest Art Center graduates. In addition to Hillside Campus activities, Graduate Art and Graduate Media Design Practices hosts Graduation Show at South Campus from 6:00 to 11:00 p.m.

The parking lot at Hillside Campus will fill up, so anyone attending Graduation Show on Saturday will be able to take complimentary shuttles to and from the Rose Bowl, Lot K beginning at 6:00 p.m. Self-parking will be available at South Campus throughout the evening.

Congratulations to our Spring Term 2013 graduates!

Red Hen Press Event Features Art Center Faculty Member Lita Albuquerque

Stars will align on Art Center’s South Campus rooftop on Tuesday, April 23, when poets and artists come together for a special event focused on separate projects exploring Antarctica created by Katharine Coles and Lita Albuquerque. Coles, Utah Poet Laureate Emeritus, and Albuquerque, Art Center Graduate Art faculty member, will be joined by Poetry Foundation President and Red Hen poet John Barr. Hosted by Red Hen Press, an organization committed to publishing works of literary excellence, supporting diversity and promoting literacy in our local schools, the event will also feature a poetry reading by Barr.

Lita Albuquerque in Antarctica

Lita Alburquerque installing STELLAR AXIS in 2006.

The Earth Is Not Flat (Red Hen Press, 2013) by Coles was inspired by her trip to Antarctica funded by the National Science Foundation. Filled with poetry that enters the infinite space/time continuum that is the southern bowl of the planet, The Earth Is Not Flat both observes and engages the idea of what the environment of the South Pole means as humans encounter it.

Albuquerque created the artwork, Stellar Axis, on the Ross Ice Shelf at the South Pole from Dec. 14-27, 2006, and she provided Red Hen Press with one of the photos of the installation for the cover of Coles’ poetry collection. Stellar Axis is an ephemeral installation of a star map on ice. Albuquerque and her team placed ninety-nine blue spheres on the ice to correspond with the stars above them, stars not visible at that time of year when it was light all the time.

As Albuquerque said, “I am interested in change of scale: how the observer affects the object of observation; space as a void; non-space existing in time… Some brittle stars exist in the Antarctic and Arctic, and some are found even in the deepest parts of the ocean where there is no sunlight. Others have exquisitely developed crystalline lenses, formed from the bone in their skeletons, which focus light inside their bodies and enable them to see. But this is not blackness, it is full of something from long ago with the potential of something yet to be.” [ed. note: Stellar Axis was also featured on the cover of Art Center’s Dot magazine (Spring 2012), which included a feature story on another of Albuquerque’s seminal projects, Spine of the Earth.]

Archetype Press, Art Center’s experimental letterpress workshop overseen by Professor Gloria Kondrup, will be creating limited edition broadsides to commemorate the occasion.

For more information and to purchase tickets, visit the Red Hen Press website.

Dieter Rams to Receive Art Center Honorary Doctorate Degree

Art Center will award legendary designer Dieter Rams an Honorary Doctorate Degree on Sat., April 20 at 4pm at its Spring Term 2013 Graduation. The event is free and open to the public. As chief of design at Braun from 1961 until retiring in 1997, Rams was responsible for innovative design in radios, watches, record players, coffee makers, shavers and other objects that continue to influence functionality and aesthetic in today’s products.

Dieter Rams

Legendary designer Dieter Rams, Braun Chief of Design.

Generations of designers have been inspired by Rams’ work. Apple design chief Jonathan Ive said Apple products could be seen as homage to Rams, who created “surfaces that were without apology, bold, pure, perfectly proportioned, coherent and effortless.”

Art Center student Andrew Kim, who is graduating this year and has been hired to work at Microsoft, said in an article about Art Center and Rams in the March/April issue of Pasadena Magazine that “every child needs a superhero to look up to, and he has been mine.”

In 1980 Rams asked himself: “Is my design good design?” His famous list of “10 principles for good design” values design that is simple, harmonious and timeless. On his tenth principle, Rams said, “Good design is as little design as possible: less, but better, because it concentrates on the essential aspects, and the products are not burdened with non-essentials.”

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Entertainment Design Presents The Intern Show

Join Entertainment Design students and Chair of Entertainment Design Tim Flattery at the Intern Show on Sun., April 7, 12–5 p.m. on the Hillside Campus.

Entertainment Design

Entertainment Design concept art

The event, open to employers in the film, animation, theme park and gaming industries, showcases second- through seventh-term students looking for summer internships. Students will display environment, character, hardware and story concepts, plus portfolios and sculptures.

Internships are an integral part of the educational experience, and those offered to students in Entertainment Design can lead to lucrative work. Production designers, art directors and other recruiters consistently come to scope out the talent. In the past, students have earned internships at Disney, Pixar, DreamWorks, Sony, Blizzard, Mirada, 343, Riot Games, Thinkwell and more.

Entertainment Design student Brandon Liao was in his fourth term during last year’s Intern Show when he had the opportunity to talk with an art producer from Riot Games. She was so impressed by his character designs that it led to an internship where he created new champions and costumes, or “skins,” for the multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) game “League of Legends.” He’s now working at Riot part time. “It’s actually really fun, because every assignment you’re doing something completely different,” said Liao.

RSVP by emailing maritza.herrera@artcenter.edu, or calling 626.396.2464.

20 Art Center Students Win 2013 ADDY® Awards

Congratulations to the 20 Art Center students and recent alumni who won ADDY® Awards in the 2013 competition! Students received their awards at the ADDY® Gala on March 14 at the Fonda Theatre in Hollywood.

Art Center student winners from the 2013 ADDY Awards

Many of the Gold and Silver ADDY winners produced their projects in Film/Sell, a 14-week class where Film and Advertising majors collaborate on spec ads for their reels. During the class, students go through tons of ideas before landing a concept they can take into production.

“We help them point out what works and what doesn’t, and how their concept plays into the overall brand identity of the product they’re promoting,” said Chris Gehl, who teaches Film/Sell alongside Clio award-winner Nir Bashan. “Our intention with Film/Sell is to create a class that we would have liked when we were students,” said Gehl. “It’s my favorite class to teach, and it is the first time in 20 years that a class like this has existed.”

Sponsored by the American Advertising Federation, the ADDY® Awards recognize excellence in the art of advertising, graphic design, web design, illustration and photography. The AAF Student ADDY® Awards Competition is designed specifically for college students.

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TEDxYouth at Caltech: Brain Food

TEDxYouth served up generous helpings of Brain Food at California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Among the cooks in the kitchen: Art Center Trustee Bill Gross; Professor and Director of Sustainability Initiatives Heidrun Mumper-Drumm; and Product Design alumna Mariana Prieto, who completed the Designmatters Concentration in Art and Design for Social Impact.

The day-long event took place January 19, 2013, and 8-minute videos of the talks were recently made available online. If you have an appetite for fresh ideas, watch!

A Perfect Storm of Opportunity: Bill Gross at TEDxYouth@Caltech

Bill Gross is a lifelong entrepreneur who has been starting companies since he was 12 years old. He has personally started more than 100 companies in the last 42 years, of which more than 40 have gone public or been acquired. Gross is the Founder and CEO of Idealab, a “company factory” based in Pasadena, which he started in 1996. Gross is credited with starting the first online business directory company with CitySearch, the first online car retailed with CarsDirect, the first paid search engine with Goto.com/Overture, and the longest-running technology incubator where he has been the creator of all these companies. A graduate of the California Institute of Technology, Gross currently serves on its Board of Trustees. He also serves on the Board of the Art Center College of Design, and more than 20 technology companies in California.

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Roger Martin to visit Art Center to share “How Strategy Really Works”


On Wednesday, March 20, Roger Martin, dean of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto and author of The Design of Business: Why Design Thinking is the Next Competitive Advantage, will stop by Art Center’s Ahmanson Auditorium for a free presentation and signing of Playing to Win: How Strategy Really Works, which he co-wrote with A.G. Lafley, the former chairman & CEO of Procter & Gamble.

Working together, Martin and Lafley doubled Procter & Gamble’s sales, quadrupled its profits and increased its market value by more than $100 billion in just ten years. With Playing to Win, they show how leaders in organizations of all sizes can guide everyday actions with larger strategic goals built around clear, essential elements that determine business success. The book recounts stories of how Procter & Gamble successfully applied this method to iconic brands such as Gillette, Swiffer and Febreze.

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