Category Archives: General Interest

Silent Auction Benefits Gulf Wildlife

Just because the Deepwater Horizon oil spill isn’t dominating the headlines these days doesn’t mean that it’s not still wreaking havoc on wildlife along the Gulf Coast. Luckily, someone is doing something about it.

This Saturday, October 23, the American Society of Picture Professionals (ASPP) West Coast Chapter will hold a silent auction fundraiser to benefit the National Wildlife Federation’s Gulf Oil Spill Restoration Fund. The event will be held from 6:30 to 10 pm at Wildfire Studios in Los Angeles.

“The NWF’s Gulf Oil Spill Restoration Fund has declared this a wildlife emergency,” explains ASPP West Coast Chapter co-president and silent auction committee member Ellen Herbert. “The money we raise directly helps the Gulf’s wildlife and breeding grounds.”

The fundraiser and evening program aim to encourage others to see the importance of rebuilding and sustaining the fragile Gulf ecology.

More than 40 printed original photographs are being donated for the silent auction, including works by Ralph Clevenger, Norbert Wu and Frans Lanting. A preview of the photographs to be auctioned can be seen online at both Facebook and at the ASPP West Coast Silent Auction blog.

Tickets for the event can be purchased here. Those not able to attend in person are encouraged to donate or bid through a proxy, as all proceeds go to the NWF’s Gulf Oil Spill Restoration Fund.

Art Center’s 80th Anniversary Weekend is Here

Art Center continues our 80th anniversary celebration with a special anniversary weekend Saturday and Sunday.

Tomorrow, 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.

Also on Sunday, we’ll be participating in the Art & Design Open Market at One Colorado in Pasadena.

We hope you’ll join us!

Students Discuss Future of Design at Summit

Johanna Björk of Goodlifer has written a very nice recap of Art Center’s involvement in the Opportunity Green Business Conference and the Art Center Summit, Projects and Partnerships in Sustainable Design, held September 22 through 24 at L.A. Center Studios in downtown Los Angeles.

Björk says that the most popular panel at the conference appeared to be Sustainability by Design, featuring a panel of five Art Center students who described their work featured in the Taschen book Product Design in the Sustainable Era. The work, also on display as part of an exhibit at the event, was produced in the Design for Sustainability 2 studio led by instructors Heidrun Mumper-Drumm and Fridolin Beisert.

Writes Björk: “The future, seen through the eyes of these students, is certainly bright and filled with innovation. The thing that strikes me about their designs is that they are simply well-done. The sustainability of the products is inherent, not something that was forced into the picture later. Could it be that all truly good ideas are inherently sustainable?”

Enjoy this new set of photos from the event, and read the rest of the article: Green Can, Should and Has to Be Profitable

Better City, Better Life

The following post was written by Vice President and Director of Designmatters Mariana Amatullo for the Designmatters blog.

Art Center’s fall term started for us on the heels of an extraordinary week in Shanghai. Highlights included the opportunity to experience first hand the pageantry and wondrous scale of the 2010 World Expo; a spectacular day at TEDx Shanghai at the invitation of local curator extraordinaire Richard Hsu in which the theme that characterizes this city—fusion—was explored in myriad stimulating ways, meetings at the offices of Continuum and Frog, a window into a bygone China with a visit to the ancient city of Xitang, dinner with local alumni Marcus Lui and Clement Yip, and the presentation of the Safe Agua project at the Expo’s UN Pavilion and at Tongji University in the context of the educational Cumulus Conference Young Creators for Better City, Better Life.

Seeing through educational collaborations that go from the classroom into the world falls squarely within the Designmatters mandate, but even by our exacting standards of “tangible” outcomes, Safe Agua stands in a league of its own given the accelerated curve of implementation of some the solutions proposed by our students, and the depth of ongoing engagement we have with our partners at the Innovation Center of Un Techo Para mi Pais in Santiago and with the communities we are working with.

Shanghai was a global stage that allowed us to showcase the depth of all of the projects components with the Safe Agua exhibition and be there together with the exhibition’s lead team (David Mocarski, Penny Herscovitich, Daniel Gottlieb, K C Cho, Stephanie Stalker, Snow Dong and Ramon Coronado) and two of our partners from Un Techo, Andres Iriondo and Ignacio Gonzalez, to partake in the kudos from peer institutions worldwide.

We are now preparing to share the exhibition with our community at Art Center next spring. Around the same time, the project’s publication Safe Agua, will be hitting bookstores throughout the country, courtesy of DAP. Much to look forward to indeed!

The Stories Behind the Logos

Here’s a fun story for a rainy afternoon: the incredibly true stories behind automotive logos.

We know that the galloping horse logo was created by Art Center alum Phil Clark, but why do Chevys wear bowties, and does the blue-and-white BMW roundel really symbolize a propeller and sky?

Road & Track gets to the bottom of things: “From Ferrari’s Prancing Horse to Cadillac’s crest, automobile logos appear on everything from steering wheel hubs to giant billboards, and even the lapel pins on the suits of company executives. This kind of flexibility is one of the design elements needed for an effective and strong logo, says Jack Gernsheimer, Creative Director of Partners Design Inc. and author of Designing Logos: The Process of Creating Symbols that Endure.”

Acclaimed Production Designer to Speak Today

Art Center is honored to welcome to campus production designer Scott Chambliss to discuss his craft and more as part of the Art Center Film Department Distinguished Filmmakers Series. Film Department student Matthew Epstein will host a Q&A discussion with Chambliss, who has done production design on hit films including Salt; Mission Impossible III; the TV series Alias, Gideon’s Crossing, Felicity and the upcoming feature Cowboys and Aliens, directed by Jon Favreau and produced by Steven Spielberg.

The event starts at 10 a.m. at the L.A. Times Media Center and is open to Art Center students, faculty, alumni and staff.

Scott Chambliss
Wednesday, October 6, 10 am
Hillside Campus, L.A. Times Media Center

Design Education and Designing for Change

Vice President and Director of Designmatters Mariana Amatullo has a wonderful piece up at Core 77 about design education and designing for positive social change.

Amatullo writes: “Historically, designers have always strived to create positive social change, and many celebrated efforts—think back to the Bauhaus—started in schools.

Design intervention by Gavin Alaoen as part of a Graphic Design studio, Graduate Media Design

Both of those things remain true today. In fact, design education has a larger role than ever to play in challenging the status quo around the wicked problems of a crowded planet. Despite, and perhaps because of, the world being in such turmoil, this is a very exciting time for design and designers. I firmly believe that with an expanded tool kit, designers can be instrumental contributors to a conversation about the future that it is getting increasingly layered and multidisciplinary. If we are ever to reduce or curtail dire societal ills and achieve sustainable development—by definition, prosperity that is globally shared and environmentally sustainable—responsible design needs to be front and center as part of the equation.”

Check out the article, and view some student-made PSAs, at Core 77: Deserve Your Dream: Design Education and Advocacy

Big Picture Lecture Series: Hershel Parker

Don’t miss Monday’s Big Picture Lecture Series featuring Hershel Parker.

Parker is the author of Herman Melville, A Biography; Flawed Texts and Verbal Icons and Reading Billy Budd, among others.

Professor emeritus of English at the University of Delaware, Parker co-edited the Norton Critical Edition of Moby Dick and served as editor of the Norton Critical Edition of The Confidence Man. He is associate general editor of the Northwestern-Newberry edition of The Writings of Herman Melville.

And don’t forget—podcasts of the lectures are up at Art Center’s iTunes U site.

Big Picture Lecture Series: Hershel Parker
Monday, October 4, 1 pm
Ahmanson Auditorium

Alumnus Fridolin Beisert Talks Art Center

Product Design alum and Associate Professor Fridolin Beisert is a practicing design professional who also conducts workshops and lectures for global corporations and executive education institutions. His classes at Art Center focus on creative problem solving, design thinking methodologies, cross-disciplinary team projects and sustainable design strategies. Previously, he developed games in Tokyo for Sony, formed an international concept design consultancy, played worldwide as an underground DJ, authored a book on learning design using 3D software and studied traditional papermaking in Japan. Suffice it to say that Beisert is a pretty interesting (and busy!) guy.

In the video below, Beisert discusses his time at Art Center and some of the lessons he learned here:

ArtCenter News

ArtCenter College of Design