Category Archives: Faculty

An Interview with Ross LaManna: The value of film school for staying ahead of trends

Chair of undergraduate and graduate Film departments at ArtCenter.

Ross LaManna, Chair of undergraduate and graduate Film departments at ArtCenter.

Last summer, I taught a production workshop class at ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena and was very impressed with their film program and the students. I knew the Film department Chair Ross LaManna, having hired him as a screenwriter several times over the years. But the teaching experience got me thinking about the role of film schools in today’s entertainment industry, and I hoped Ross could help explain it to me. Continue reading →

From techno to wearable tech: Study abroad students showcase Berlin-influenced wearables

“Head to Toe, Berlin” was a study abroad upper term course involving ten students from Product Design, Interaction Design, Graphic Design and Illustration. With nine weeks in Berlin, this immersed students in the design, textile and fashion industries of Berlin. Through field trips to designer studios, museums as well as input from professional guest speakers and studio work sessions, students were empowered to develop their own collection of designs focusing on head to toe wearables: apparel, accessories, soft goods, textiles and/or wearable tech.

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Catch a sneak peek at the past, present and future of fonts and ArtCenter’s new Hoffmitz Milken Center for Typography

The centerpiece of the student-produced show was an interactive typographical timeline enabling viewers to create a customizable program. Photo by Nik Hafermaas

The centerpiece of the student-produced show was an interactive typographical timeline enabling viewers to create a customizable program. Photo by Nik Hafermaas

The passageway leading into the South Campus gallery is swimming in an alphabet soup of letters and familiar icons and signage, hawking everything from the latest blockbuster to cheap, fast cash loans. It’s an immersive experience in the nuanced codes and messages contained within the various fonts and typefaces that punctuate our modern landscape. This visceral typographic encounter acts as an introduction to the student-produced temporary show, 85_15 TYPOGRAPHY: PAST/PRESENT/FUTURE, which is the first exhibition to be presented by the new Hoffmitz Milken Center for Typography (HMCT), due to make its official debut on November 7 with the Symposium and Center opening celebration in its permanent space on the ground floor of ArtCenter’s 950 South Raymond building.

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Q&A with Grad Art faculty member and alum Gabrielle Jennings on her new book, Abstract Video: The Moving Image in Contemporary Art

Cover image courtesy of University of California Press

Cover image courtesy of University of California Press

Gabrielle Jennings (MFA 94 Grad Art) is a multi-media artist and Associate Professor teaching in ArtCenter’s Graduate Art program. Most recently, Jennings has edited a collection of essays to be published by University of California Press: Abstract Video: The Moving Image in Contemporary Art (forthcoming Fall 2015). This groundbreaking volume includes a diverse set of essays centered around the question of abstraction in the moving image arts.

Jennings has been artist in residence at Kunstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin and 200 Gertrude Street Artist Spaces, Melbourne and has been honored with support from such organizations as the Art Matters Fellowship, Philip Morris Kunstforderung, and the Samsung Faculty Enrichment Grant. Among others, writers Harold Fricke, Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe, Cay Sophie Rabinowitz, and Jan Tumlir have written about her work.

Jennings received a BFA from the University of California, San Diego.  There she had the opportunity to study with artists such as Eleanor Antin and Allan Kaprow.  She then studied with Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe, Patti Podesta, Mike Kelley, Stephen Prina, Lita Albuquerque and Sabina Ott in the Graduate Art program at ArtCenter.

With her book due to be released next month, Jennings answered a few questions about the broad spectrum of personal, professional and creative experiences informing her writing and video creative practice as well as her journey from student to faculty member in ArtCenter’s Graduate Art program.

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Writer Seeks Same: Film faculty Douglas J. Eboch and Paul Guay discuss the pitfalls and pleasures of screenwriting partnerships

Spanky and Stymie form a partnership in Paul Guay's The Little Rascals (1994).

Spanky and Stymie, classic partners, pledging “No girls allowed” in Paul Guay’s The Little Rascals (1994).

History is full of partnerships. Some, like Adam and Eve, can be very productive. Others end in ruin, such as Lancelot and King Arthur, when the former’s secret love affair undid the latter’s kingdom. The same is true in Hollywood where screenwriting partners are an integral part of the machinery—and mythology—of the business. Understanding what to look for in a writing partner, and why to work with one in the first place, is crucial to making sure the drama stays on the page.

Film faculty Douglas J. Eboch interviewed fellow Film faculty Paul Guay on his fruitful writing career in, and out of, partnerships.  Continue reading →

Student designers incorporate quantified self metrics into mind-bogglingly innovative devices for people with disabilities

Panoramic shot of students in the Exploring the Quantified Self class

Panoramic shot of students in the Envisioning the Quantified Self class

Graphic Design student Leah Demeter found herself in the unique position of acting as both designer and potential consumer in one of her recent product design classes at Art Center. That’s because her team had chosen a challenge particularly relevant to her: develop a better captioning device for the hearing impaired.

“As someone with profound hearing loss,” Demeter says, “I face communications challenges on a daily basis. Captioning is one of the tools I use to help me follow conversations I would otherwise miss, but there are problems with the current design.”

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You go, grads: Let the Summer Graduation festivities begin!

Graduating students with friends and family following Spring 2015 commencement. Photo: John Dlugolecki

Graduating students with friends and family following Spring 2015 commencement. Photo: John Dlugolecki

“Sun is shining. Weather is sweet. Make you wanna move your dancing feet.” Bob Marley

This Saturday, following a sometimes exhaustive, always intensive, memorably vigorous and astonishingly creative commitment to making and learning, 91 ArtCenter students will receive their diplomas. This will be the second graduation ceremony to be held at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium, a thankfully climate-controlled venue conveniently located between Hillside and South campuses.

As the day approaches, let’s celebrate these creative and talented individuals who are about to take on the world. Here’s the lowdown for the week:

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Making experience is make-or-break for designers, says Art Center at Night instructor Jesse Ellico

Aerospace engineer Jesse Ellico teaches industrial design modeling at Art Center at Night.

“I get to fly airplanes and blow things up,” says Jesse Ellico, an aerospace engineer for Orbital ATK, when asked to describe his job. “It’s a little boy’s dream.”

The first thing Ellico tells students enrolled in his seven-week Introduction to Industrial Design Modeling workshop at Art Center at Night (ACN) is that they’re “going to make stuff and have fun.”

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Transportation students journey to the year 2030 to see the future of cars. No time travel machine needed.

Kids who are five years old today might be happy to know that Art Center Transportation Design students are already thinking about the future of cars and what they’ll be driving in 2030.

And the designers are drawing inspiration from an unexpected source: the wonderful world of plastics.

It’s all part of a three-month long design project and competition called Design for Alpha, sponsored by plastic manufacturer SABIC. The project challenged students to come up with forward-thinking ideas for vehicles that anticipate the future driving needs of anyone born after 2010—dubbed Generation Alpha —and then find ways of using the plastics of today and tomorrow to meet those needs.

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Design polymath Michael Sans immerses Bikini Berlin in a high-intensity trans-disciplinary experience

Michael Sans with Art Center students in Berlin

Michael Sans with Art Center students in Berlin

“Inspiring and helping each other goes both ways,” says Product Design alumnus Michael Sans of his engagement with students at Art Center Bikini Berlin, the College’s satellite studio where he is managing director.

Sans’ own education began at the workbench of his woodworker grandfather in a small German town on the Rhine. He apprenticed as a cabinetmaker, briefly studied architecture in Florence, and turned to product design when he entered the program at Art Center Europe in Switzerland—emerging forever shaped by its “professional approach, intense schedule, small classes and perfect facilities.”

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