Category Archives: Events

What a Great Event: The Art Center Summit

We live tweeted yesterday from the Art Center Summit —what a wonderful experience! This year’s Summit, Projects and Partnerships in Sustainable Design, highlighted our association with the Opportunity Green Business Conference, taking place September 22 through 24 at L.A. Center Studios.

Yesterday’s Summit included the workshops Beyond the Peanut: Using Life Cycle Assessment to Develop Goals and Strategies led by Art Center’s Director of Sustainability Initiatives and Associate Professor Heidrun Mumper-Drumm, and Using Cross-Pollination for Business Innovation by Associate Professor Frido Beisert. Main stage presentation Product Design in the Sustainable Era, led by Taschen editor Julius Wiedemann, featured a panel of Art Center students discussing their work that was included in the Taschen book of the same name and that were on display at the event.

A very special thank you to everyone involved in making this year’s Summit happen,including student panelists Daniel Huang, Mark Huang, Sharon Levy, Magdalena Paluch and John Phillips; student exhibit curators Jessie Kawata, Arthur Leung, Brandon Lowry, Christine Nakashiba and Magdalena Paluch; and the many Art Center students who volunteered at the exhibit.

Check out our tweets from the event, and enjoy this slideshow below. Stay tuned to The Dotted Line—we’ll bring you more photos and a recap soon.

The Summit is Here!

It’s not too late to attend the fourth Art Center Summit, Projects and Partnerships in Sustainable Design. This year’s event will highlight our association with the Opportunity Green Business Conference at L.A. Center Studios, today through Friday.

Tomorrow will feature breakout sessions Beyond the Peanut: Using Life Cycle Assessment to Develop Goals and Strategies and Creative Strategies: Sustainability by Design and the main stage presentation, Product Design in the Sustainable Era, will be held tomorrow afternoon. There will also be an exhibit of student work, featuring art and design addressing environmental, social and economic sustainability, on view throughout the conference.

Learn more at the Summit website. See you there!

Made Up Events Explore Design Fiction

Art Center’s Graduate Media Design program (MDP) announces two events that explore a resurgent interest in utopias and an emerging genre called “design fiction.” The first Made Up event—a panel discussion, AS IF: alternate realities—will be held today from 3 to 5 pm in the Wind Tunnel Gallery at South Campus.

The panel, hosted by MDP faculty member Tim Durfee, will feature researchers-in-residence Sascha Pohflepp, an artist and writer whose design fiction video installation, SUPERCALIFORNIA! was produced during his Made Up residency; Norman Klein, a cultural historian, critic, novelist and author of the database novel, The Imaginary Twentieth Century; and Julian Bleecker, a designer, technologist and researcher at the Design Strategic Projects studio at Nokia Design, as well as co-founder of the Near Future Laboratory. Works from the 2010 MDP’s summer research fellows and current students will be on display to complement and inspire the discussion.

Next Thursday, Sept. 22, at 7 pm, the MDP and Broadcast Cinema will screen Utopia in Four Movements, a live documentary performed by Sam Green with music by David Cerf.  Green is a San Francisco-based documentary filmmaker whose feature, The Weather Underground, was nominated for an Academy Award, broadcast nationally on PBS, and included in the 2004 Whitney Biennial. Cerf is a filmmaker, musician, sound artist and user interface designer at Apple who composed music for The Weather Underground. The screening, to be held at Hillside Campus in the Los Angeles Times Media Center, expands the Made Up project’s interest in utopias, dystopias and the fantastic.

Previous coverage of Made Up.

Analog Technology in the Digital Landscape: Archetype Press at 21

A Q&A with Professor Gloria Kondrup, Archetype Press Director


Gloria Kondrup

How did Art Center’s Archetype Press come about?
Archetype Press was founded in 1989 with more than 2,500 drawers of rare American and European foundry type, wood type and ornaments from the collection of Los Angeles typographer and printer Vernon Simpson.

The support from Art Center’s then-president David Brown, the financial backing of five patrons, and the hard work of the founding Archetype Press Director Vance Studley was crucial to its creation. Before coming to its current home at South Campus, Archetype was located on Mills Place in Pasadena. This was before the retail revival of Old Pasadena—most of Colorado Boulevard was boarded up, and finding parking was never a concern.

What role have you played in relation to Archetype?
I discovered Archetype Press and letterpress printing in 1992 as a graduate student at Art Center. Although my design background was in branding and packaging, I found the letterpress experience authentic and tactile. After graduation, I purchased my own presses and established a design studio that straddled both 15th and 21st century technologies.

In 2003, I was given the opportunity to become director of Archetype. In one sense, I view my responsibility as stewardship for the preservation of language and of a cultural artifact while enhancing students’ ability to understand the relationship of language and imagery.

People are often surprised that Art Center teaches students to use this “outdated technology.” What is your response to that?
Archetype continues the tradition of an older—but not outdated—technology. While letterpress is steeped in tradition, Archetype is not nostalgic.

As an experimental typographic workshop, students don’t just study the prototypes of digital letterforms, but are exposed to a sensual graphic experience that is both felt and seen as type is inked and pressed into a piece of paper. They are getting ink underneath their fingernails, not merely replacing ink cartridges in color printers. They are being challenged to expand beyond the margins of the computer screen, engaging in a design discourse that can question the uses of newer technologies.

Without question, digital technologies are the preferred way for the efficient exchange and dissemination of information. But digital technology has also allowed letterpress printing to change and explore new ways of combining image and text.

Continue reading →

Save the Date: Art Center’s 80th Anniversary Weekend

We’re celebrating 80 years of excellence in art and design education at Art Center. Following the inauguration of our fifth president in April, and a community-wide Day of Service in June, the College continues its celebration with a special 80th Anniversary Weekend.

On Saturday, October 16, Art Center will honor four prominent alumni—industrial designer Yves Béhar, car designer Frank Stephenson, contemporary artist Pae White and blockbuster filmmaker Zack Snyder—with the Creative Spirit award at a gala to raise scholarships for students in Art Center’s undergraduate, graduate and public programs. The following day, Sunday, October 17, is Art Center’s beloved Car Classic. This year’s theme, Freedom of Motion, celebrates the powerful combination of technology and passion that allows humans to move well beyond their own physical abilities.

For more information about the gala, call 626.396.2338. Tickets and details about Car Classic are available at artcenter.edu/carclassic.

Register Today for the Art Center Summit

It’s almost here: The fourth Art Center Summit, Projects and Partnerships in Sustainable Design, will be held September 22 through 24. This year’s event will highlight our association with the Opportunity Green Business Conference at L.A. Center Studios.

Even better news: Previous Art Center Summit participants and attendees, as well as Art Center alumni, students  and friends, are eligible for special discounted rates.

Don’t delay — learn more about this year’s event, and register today.

The Mini Show to Benefit Illustration Students

The Mini Lai Scholarship Fund was created out of love—love for the late Mini Lai, a talented illustrator and proud Art Center alum. The fund strives to honor her memory by granting scholarships to Art Center Illustration students, inspiring them to pursue their dreams no matter what challenges life presents.

“In Between” by Ming Ong

The fund is made possible by the generous donations of her family and friends, and is managed by the California Community Foundation and scholarships are awarded by the College’s Illustration Department.

While a student at the University of California, Irvine, Lai was diagnosed with congenital heart disease, ultimately requiring a heart transplant. With this second chance at life, she pursued her life-long passion for art, studying Illustration at Art Center.

Lai received scholarships while at Art Center, and this fund exists to continue the cycle of giving.

“Mini leaves behind a legacy of love, kindness and hope,” says Ming Lai, Mini’s brother. “Through the Mini Lai Scholarship Fund, we can cherish her memory and inspire Art Center Illustration students to take on the world.”

On October 23, The Mini Show will be held at South Campus to raise money for the Mini Lai Scholarship Fund. The show is being produced through the tireless efforts of Mini’s family and friends and will showcase the work of Art Center Illustration alumni, with all of the proceeds going to the fund. The group exhibition will feature high-quality, affordable artwork, each piece priced at no more than $300. Interested Illustration alums who would like to participate can apply here.

To learn more about the Mini Lai Scholarship Fund, and donate through the California Community Foundation, visit minilai.com and calfund.org/give/minilaischolarship.php.

Art Center Summit 2010: September 22-24

We are pleased to announce that the fourth Art Center Summit will be held in September. Projects and Partnerships in Sustainable Design will highlight our association with the Opportunity Green Business Conference, taking place September 22 through 24 at L.A. Center Studios. The conference, developed alongside Art Center’s Sustainability Summits, seeks to innovate, collaborate and inspire industry leaders and the next generation of thought leadership, helping to develop and implement sustainable business solutions.

In 2007, Art Center successfully launched and hosted a series of annual Summits, bringing international leaders and experts in topics related to sustainability and mobility to the College. Envisioned as a five-year program, the first three Summits took a critical look at environmental, social and economic issues surrounding sustainability supporting the College’s desire to integrate sustainability into its curriculum. In this fourth year, we are taking components of the Summit to Opportunity Green to share with a broader audience how we are integrating the lessons learned so far.

Learn more at the Summit website.

Week 14 in Pictures

It’s pretty quiet (and extremely hot!) here on campus today as we are in the first week of break. But what a busy past few weeks it’s been, culminating in Saturday’s Graduation and Graduation Show! Enjoy some photos documenting campus life from the last week: