Category Archives: General Interest

Adobe Achievement Award Winners Announced

We’re pleased to announce that Art Center students were named finalists and semifinalists in the 2011 Adobe Achievement Awards. This is one of the most prestigious award programs for graphic design students worldwide. Congrats to all on these well-deserved honors!


FINALIST:
Paul Hoppe for Exploratorium – Generative Identity
(Application Development category)
Instructor: Brad Bartlett
Class: Type 4: Transmedia


SEMIFINALISTS:
Joseph Won and Lamson To for Abominable
(Motion category)
Class: Digital Motion Compositing
Instructors: Ming Tai, Charles Rose, Paul Saskas

Betsy Tsai for Xacto
(Print Communications category)

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3×3: Get Physical, New Media in Space

Don’t miss the latest 3×3 event: Get Physical, New Media in Space, Thursday, Sept. 29, at 7 p.m. in the Ahmanson Auditorium at Hillside Campus.

The event is hosted by the Graphic Design Department in collaboration with the Goethe-Institut of Los Angeles.

Get Physical, New Media in Space will explore the fusion of digital media with our built environment, providing post-virtual experiences.

The exciting panel will be made up of leading artists of the field: Joachim Sauter, Art Center alumna Rebeca Méndez and Christian Moeller. Graphic Design Chair Nik Hafermaas will moderate the panel.

3×3: Get Physical, New Media in Space
Thursday, Sept. 29, 7 p.m.
Ahmanson Auditorium
Hillside Campus

Forward Motion is Almost Here!

Forward Motion: Advancing Mobility in California & Québec is tomorrow! It’s not too late to register for this one-of-a-kind event examining the impact on vehicle and infrastructure design in California and Québec.

Jean J. Labbé, world-renowned transportation designer and Art Center alumnus, will present the keynote presentation, How Design Is Shaping Public Transportation. A leading authority in public transportation design, Labbé has a solid track record of more than 40 projects in the public transportation sector including the U.S.’s first high-speed train, the ACELA Express; New York’s high-tech subway cars; Vancouver’s Skytrain; China’s CRH1 high-speed train and Montreal‘s new generation subway cars.

Exciting panel discussions will examine new technologies and advanced materials driving North America forward, and the future of electric vehicles, urban transit systems and the infrastructure required. Panelists include:

  • Sylvain Castonguay, general director for Quebec’s Centre National du Transport Avancé (CNTA)
  • Renaud Cloutier, vice president of business development at TM4
  • Ed Kjaer , director of Southern California Edison’s Plug-In Electric Vehicle Readiness program
  • Catherine Morency, civil engineer and associate professor at the Department of Civil Engineering and Mining at Montreal’s École Polytechnique
  • Simon Pastucha, principal designer for the City of Los Angeles Urban Design Studio
  • Pierre Rondeau, director of product design for Advanced Concepts and Design Services at Bombardier Recreational Products
  • Chelsea Sexton, clean transportation and energy advocate; consulting producer, Revenge of the Electric Car

A networking reception and keynote luncheon will also be part of the event. Don’t be left out—secure your spot today.

Forward Motion: Advancing Mobility in California & Québec
Wednesday, September 21
Art Center College of Design Hillside Campus

Please, Play With Your Food

Product Design alumna Bryce Butcher, an industrial designer at Bradshaw International, is returning to Hillside Campus today to hand out Pancake Creators at the south entrance (off the student parking lot). Students can submit their own pancake designs to the Pancake Creator website for view in their gallery—and one lucky designer will win $200 to Swain’s!

This super-cool product was designed by Bryce along with Graphic Design alums Grace Karabachian and Annie Gonzalez, so this product is a real Art Center success story. Bryce tells us that the product is just beginning to hit store shelves.

“The Pancake Creator scores a perfect trifecta for me: it’s a kitchen gadget, it made me laugh, and it was designed by a former student of mine,” says Product Design faculty member and alumna Wendee Lee, who tipped us off about today’s giveaway.

Stop by, pick one up, and have some fun playing with your food! Bryce and friends will be there between noon and 2:30 p.m.

Check out the video of the Pancake Creator below:

Kicking Things Off With Kickstarter


Transportation Design alum Gabriel Wartofsky has started a Kickstarter campaign to raise money to build his lightweight, compact, folding electric bike for commuters. (Plans are to launch his Conscious Commuter at Art Center later this year.) So far, backers have pledged $17,045 of his $25,000 goal needed to bring his bike to market. (The deadline to pledge is Sept. 29.) KCET just ran a story on Wartofsky—be sure to check it out.

Another project is currently on Kickstarter, this one created by a group of Art Center students for a class project. They are looking for funding to help them film and produce a short film inspired by an epic DC Comics vignette. The six-day shoot will take place throughout Pasadena with sets built from scratch at Art Center. Students leading the project are Domenic Moen (writer/director), Stephen Reedy (editor), Chris Saul (cinematographer) and Jake Viramontez (producer).

Check them out:

Students Spend Their Summer Augmenting Reality

Still from the promotional video for Juju, a student-created augmented reality application.

This past summer term, Art Center welcomed back its first visionary-in-residence, science fiction author Bruce Sterling (Schismatrix, Islands in the Net, The Caryatids) to co-teach an augmented reality (AR) transdisciplinary design studio with Graphic Design instructor Guillaume Wolf called Augmenting Reality.

Not certain what AR is exactly? You’re not alone. For the studio, Sterling and Wolf defined AR as a software program that must: 1) mix the virtual with the real, 2) be interactive in real time and 3) register in three dimensions.

AR is an industry still on the cusp, and applications are only now starting to sneak out of the labs and into consumers’ hands. “It may even be a bit before the cusp,” Sterling says of the AR industry. “It’s an old technology, but it’s a baby industry.”

In the course—hosted by the College’s Graphic Design Department and sponsored by Amsterdam-based Layar, a company whose AR platform claims more than one million active users—teams of students designed both concepts and prototype AR apps that ranged from virtual pets to an augmented “spiritual reality” experience.

Layar's Maarten Lens-FitzGerald gets some FaceTime with Graphic Design student Shi Jie Lim and Graphic Design Department chair Nik Hafermaas. Photo: Alex Arestei, Layar.

“I was impressed by the student’s concepts, execution and their presentation,” says Maarten Lens-FitzGerald, general manager and co-founder of Layar, who watched the teams’ final presentations virtually (during the final he was “passed” around the classroom on an instructor’s smartphone). “Even with innovative media, it’s still important to be able to tell the story using mainstream media. Not all AR people know this; but the students did.”

Words, no doubt, that are music to instructor Wolf’s ears, who wanted to make sure the students were designing based on something people can actually connect with.

“Why are people interested in anything? It’s not just about design, it’s about the psychology behind it,” says Wolf of what he tries to impart to his students. “Why is a product sexy? Why do we want it? How does a designer create that desire?”

(Read more, and view videos of the work, after the jump.)

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Remembering the Summer of Punk

© Steven A. Heller/Art Center College of Design

Guest post by Art Center Archivist Robert Dirig

During the summer of 1986, Art Center students relived the era of punk through an Illustration Department workshop, Punk Is Not a Fashion Statement, organized by former Illustration Chair Phil Hays. The workshop focused on journalistic illustration, with various punk scenes acted out as students recorded them via drawings and paintings.

In addition to the workshop, students heard lectures on the history and significance of punk from a wide variety of speakers including Malcolm McLaren, the manager of the Sex Pistols.

Do you remember this Summer of Punk at Art Center? We want to hear your memories!

To visit Art Center’s Archives or to donate materials, contact Art Center Archivist Robert Dirig at 626.396.2208 or robert.dirig@artcenter.edu.

© Steven A. Heller/Art Center College of Design

Exploring Vinyl Cover Art with Graham Moore

Don’t miss Friday’s opening of Remix, featuring work by Saturday High and Art Center at Night faculty member Graham Moore.

A remix is an alternative version of a recorded song made from an original version—but the term also is used for any alterations of media. A remix in literature, for example, is an alternative version of a text. William Burroughs used the cut-up technique to remix language in the ’60s.

Using glue, scissors and collage-style techniques, Moore’s body of work embodies the love for the technique of collage and vinyl cover art. The rhythm, movement, and the vibrant use of color, shape, texture, imagery and typography serves as a tribute to graphic designers and artists from a bygone era.

A portion of all sales will support scholarships for Art Center’s Public Programs.

The exhibit, which is on display through Sept. 27, is sponsored by Archetype Press and Archetype Press Director and professor Gloria Kondrup.

For more information, email gloria.kondrup@artcenter.edu.

Remix: Work by Graham Moore
Opening Reception: Friday, Sept. 16, 7-10 p.m.
Art Center South Campus

Mariana Amatullo on Cerro Verde

The following post is from the Designmatters blog.

Art Center students talk with community members as water truck arrives

Designmatters Vice President Mariana Amatullo reflects on her time spent in Cerro Verde,  a community on the outskirts of Lima, Peru where Art Center students have been conducting field research in collaboration with the Innovation Center of Un Techo Para Mi Pais, as part of the Safe Agua Peru project.

I am just back from Lima and time in the field with the extraordinary team of students and faculty who are leading the Safe Agua Peru project.

Safe Agua Peru marks our second collaboration with the Innovation Center of Un Techo Para Mi Pais and builds upon the lessons we have learned working together in Chile in 2009. At the helm of this transdisicplinary studio are once again Dan Gottlieb and Penny Herscovitch (Environmental Design) and Liliana Becerra (Product Design). Julka Almquist from our Humanities and Design Sciences Department rounds up the faculty team.

With the support of an NCIIA Sustainable Vision Grant, the team is charged to delve deep into the very systemic issues around water poverty that affect this community of about 85 families who are served by Un Techo Para Mi Pais Peru in Cerro Verde, Pamplona Alto, in the district of San Juan de Miraflores.

We are anticipating that the rigorous and participatory research framework of the studio, coupled with privileged access to the community thanks to Techo will yield outcomes that can make a lasting impact.

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Ideas that Stick: Meet Saturday High Student Lana Vong

Saturday High student Lana Vong

Every one of us has stared in frustration at a poorly designed product and boldly declared, “I could design something better than this!”

But how many of us actually get to work on doing just that?

This past summer, San Gabriel High School junior Lana Vong took Introduction to Product Design through Saturday High—Art Center College of Design’s program that helps high school students become better artists, designers and thinkers—and created the concept for Stikitti, a cat-shaped foam sticker maker.

“Lana’s foam sticker maker project is a classic example of how product designers have the power to improve the things they love to do,” says instructor Jeffrey B. Jones. “On the first day of class, I simply asked her what she liked to do. She pulled out one of her foam stickers and said, ‘Well, I like to make these.’ I asked her how she could improve the way kids make stickers, and the rest was history.”

We caught up with Vong to learn more about the story behind Stikitti.

Dotted Line: How did you find out about Saturday High?
Lana Vong: I joined my high school’s art club, and the club’s president was going to enter Art Center’s Graphic Design program this year after graduation. I was interested in product design so I started asking her for advice and she suggested Saturday High.

Dotted Line: How long have you been interested in product design?
Vong: For about a year. Joining the art club made me more open to creative careers, and I thought product design was a good balance between creative and critical thinking.

An image from Vong's class presentation

An image from Vong's class presentation

Dotted Line: Tell us about your Introduction to Product Design course.
Vong: Our instructor, Jeffrey Jones, had us do one major project throughout the course. There were three stages to it. The first stage was the research stage, where we planned out our project based on the idea we had in mind. Next was the exploration stage, which is where we started drawing and testing out different ways to approach the project. And the last stage was the refinement stage and the making of the final product.

Dotted Line: Had you ever been involved in a similar three-step creative process?
Vong: No, it was all new to me. When I first heard of Introduction to Product Design, I thought we’d be learning about marker techniques. But we ended up focusing more on the thinking and reasoning behind our products. It was almost like solving a math problem. I really liked it.

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