Category Archives: Graphic Design

Pasadena City Buses To Get the Ultimate Detailing

Bus riders soon will notice a new look, a new name, and find a fresh mobile phone app for travel around the City of Pasadena. Art Center students are creating a new identity for the Pasadena ARTS transit system that will guide riders throughout the region.

City officials are now choosing which proposed design to implement. Contrary to what you might guess, the ARTS bus is not merely a way to hit the city’s multiple arts and cultural venues. ARTS stands for the Area Rapid Transit System, which transports locals and visitors alike to various spots around town. To address the confusion around the moniker, the design brief also encouraged students to come up with a new name for the transit agency.

In the spirit of local engagement, Art Center’s Dean of Special Programs and Chair of the Graphic Design Department, Nik Hafermaas, suggested that the college’s Educational Partnerships team coordinate the project through an Identity Systems course taught by Gloria Kondrup.

“Our goal is to demonstrate that well conceived design can significantly improve our communities, said Hafermaas. “This is a wonderful chance for our students to make a positive contribution to our own neighborhood.”

In the class, each student developed a new brand name and a design standards manual to guide the implementation of the new identity through its various applications. The manual addressed the use of color, typography and image across many touch points. This includes new bus graphics, signage, bus shelters, the agency’s website and its forthcoming smartphone app.

In April, Mayor Bill Bogaard joined a team of city executives to review final presentations. Once a choice is made, the new brand will be implemented across all city marketing materials.

Filling in the Blank: Students Bringing TEDx to Campus

Class shot of the TEDx Art Center College of Design Studio. Photo: June Korea.

Orange will mix with red this summer when the student-driven TEDx Art Center College of Design conference takes over the Hillside Campus on Saturday, June 9 to explore the event’s theme: “Design a ________ for Social Impact.” The “blank” in that title is a call-to-action designed to inspire conference attendees to come up with their own idea for how to effect positive change in the world.

Also on hand to inspire attendees will be an impressive lineup of speakers, including Doug Powell, national president of AIGA and the individual spearheading that association’s Design for Good initiative; and Cameron Tonkinwise, chair of Design Thinking and Sustainability at Parsons The New School School for Design, whose current research is exploring design-enabled sharing of resources. And for something completely different, Art Center Product Design alumnus and KILLSPENCER founder Spencer Nikosey has been tapped to provide the day’s musical entertainment.

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Spring 2012 Graduation Events

Students completing final projects in the Technical Skills Center.

The creative energy around campus is reaching a fever pitch as the College prepares for its series of Spring graduation events.

Wednesday, April 18
Join us from 6:00 to 10:00 p.m. for 4 HOURS SOLID, an annual event at South Campus featuring the work and ideas of Grad Art, Broadcast Cinema and Grad Media Design. This year’s event also includes a preview of our new graduate programs in Environmental Design and Transportation Design. Enjoy four jam-packed hours of performances, demos, thesis work, screenings, discussions, Admissions Q&A, food trucks and music. Free and open to the public. More info.

Thursday, April 19
If you’re lucky enough to be on the invite list for Graduation Show Preview, you’ll get a sneak peak at the work of the next generation of artists and designers. Held from 6:00 to 9:30 p.m. at Hillside Campus, the preview gives potential employers, alumni, donors and industry professionals an opportunity to preview the Graduation Show and meet our graduating students.

Immediately following the preview, all guests are invited to a reception hosted by Alumni Relations to welcome our graduating students into the alumni family.

Saturday, April 21
Join us at Hillside Campus from 4:00 to 6:00 p.m. as we celebrate the accomplishments of our newest graduating class, present the Art Center Student Leadership Award to Product Design student Kenji Huang, and award an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters to designer and artist April Greiman.

Can’t join us for the graduation ceremony? Watch our live online webcast.

After the ceremony, Graduation Show opens to the public from 7:00 to 10:00 p.m. so everyone can enjoy the work of our newest Art Center graduates.

Let the celebration of our creative community begin!

Below: Scream at the Dot by graduating Graphic Design student and Spring 2012 Valedictorian Aldis Ozoliņŝ.

Designing Experiences, Systems and Solutions: Art Center’s New Interaction Design Program

Nikolai Cornell MDP 04 with his Infiniti Interactive Mirrors. Faculty member Phil van Allen consulted on this project.

With recent forecasts predicting that Apple will sell as many as 66 million units of their latest iteration of the iPad this year, its safe to say that what the Cupertino company dubbed as the “post-PC era” is quickly becoming a reality. But the shift from personal computers to tablets is just one aspect of a digital interactive future still being written.

This coming Fall Term, as part of the College’s Create Change initiative, Art Center will launch a new undergraduate Interaction Design degree program, in which students—whether designing a mobile app or a gestural interface for an exhibition—will learn to think deeply about the user’s experience, apply technology creatively and invent new approaches to interaction and design.

We recently sat down with Interaction Design founding faculty members Brian Boyl (Graphic Design, Integrated Studies, Product Design), Philip van Allen (Graduate Media Design) and Jeffrey Higashi (Product Design), who have been busy establishing the framework for the Department’s curriculum in anticipation of the arrival of the new department’s chair. An international search is now underway and an announcement is expected in June.

Dotted Line: Can you describe the academic interaction design landscape and how Art Center’s new program will stand out?

Art Center faculty Brian Boyl. Photo: Steven A. Heller/Art Center College of Design.

Brian Boyl: There are several graduate programs in interaction design in the United States—Illinois Institute of Technology, New York Univeristy and Carnegie Mellon to name a few—but there aren’t a lot of accredited undergraduate programs. We’d be one of the first undergraduate programs to be launched and absolutely the first to be launched in Southern California. That’s exciting. What we’re doing is looking at the core strengths of Art Center. We think the best move in creating this program is to make sure it strongly integrates with our other departments and channels their strengths.

Phil van Allen: Interaction design is by its very nature collaborative, so the idea is to build a strong program that stands on its own but that also has a kind of permeability. For example, we’ve discussed that students in Interaction Design will take Graphic Design and Product Design courses, because those two disciplines are very central to interaction design. Our students will need to have an exceptional foundation of disciplines to be exceptional interaction designers. And then there’s the core of interaction design itself, which they will have to become experts in.

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Lynda Weinman, Shepard Fairey and Spencer Nikosey on Campus for this Thursday’s 3×3 Presentation

Each term, Art Center’s Graphic Design Department hosts a 3×3 presentation in which three creative professionals are invited to speak on a particular topic.

This Thursday, the Art Center Community is invited to hear stories from three pioneers who have created reality from their dreams and gone on to influence design, culture, art, technology and fashion worldwide.

The speakers are:

Shepard Fairey, Artist, Activist and Founder, OBEY GIANT ART and Studio Number One

Lynda Weinman, Co-Founder and Executive Chair, lynda.com

Spencer Nikosey, Founder, KILLSPENCER

Moderated by Petrula Vrontikis

3×3: Creative Entrepreneurs
Thursday, March 22nd, 2012
7:30 p.m. – 9:30 p.m.
Ahmanson Auditorium
Art Center College of Design
Hillside Campus
1700 Lida Street
Pasadena, CA 91505

FREE; no reservations required.

Lynda Weinman, co-founder and executive chair of lynda.com, is a self-taught computer expert, author, educator, and entrepreneur. Before launching lynda.com, she was a faculty member at Art Center College of Design and worked as an animator and motion graphics director in the film special effects industry. Lynda has also been a consultant for Adobe, Macromedia, and Microsoft, and has conducted workshops at those organizations in addition to Disney. She, along with her husband and co-founder Bruce Heavin, evolved lynda.com from its original concept as a free web resource for her students, to the site for her books on Web design, to the registration hub for physical classrooms and conferences, to a highly successful online training library. lynda.com

Shepard Fairey was born in Charleston, SC in 1970. He received his B.F.A. at the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence. While at R.I.S.D. he created the Andre the Giant as a Posse sticker that transformed into the OBEY GIANT art campaign with imagery that has changed the way people see art and the urban landscape. His work has evolved into an acclaimed body of art which includes the 2008 “Hope” portrait of Barack Obama which can be found in the Smithsonian’s National Portrait gallery. Since the beginning of his career in 1989 he has exhibited in galleries and museums around the around the world, indoor and outdoor. His works are in the permanent collections of the MOMA, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Boston ICA and many others. For more information, visit obeygiant.com

Spencer Nikosey launched his premium bag and luggage brand KILLSPENCER at his Art Center grad-show in 2008. Handcrafting functional Weekender Bags, Backpacks, and Messenger Bags out of used-in-combat military truck tarps and vintage Korean War Era fabrics caught the attention of bloggers and instantly kickstarted an online following and customer base. Soon, demand increased and local production became problematic. Frustrated with the lack of quality and attention to detail in local factories, Spencer decided to assemble a team of master craftsmen and build his own Workshop in the Downtown Los Angeles Arts District. Today, Spencer and his team of passionate creatives designs, develops, manufactures and ships their products globally, proudly made in U.S.A. killspencer.com

Gloria Fowler’s AMMO-nition

The cover of the new Edward Weston monograph, published by AMMO Books.

On campus, Gloria Fowler ‘87 may be best known as a beloved Environmental Design instructor who has taught at the College for the last 20 years, helping students explore their creative potential. But equally impressive is her work off-campus, where she runs the thriving boutique art-house publishing company AMMO Books with her photographer-turned-publisher husband, Steve Crist, and business partner Paul Norton.

Launching a specialty book business is a risky venture, even more so in today’s age of declining book sales. But AMMO, which is based in Pasadena and Santa Barbara, Calif., has succeeded where others haven’t, publishing a number of coveted titles including the limited edition monographs Gonzo and Charley Harper, mid-priced options like Locals Only and Spike Lee: Do the Right Thing and a children’s line of board books, puzzles and more. Enviable press coverage and robust sales have followed.

The Dotted Line recently sat down with Fowler to discuss several new AMMO releases just in time for the holidays, as well as her experience running AMMO and working with emerging talent straight from the studios of Art Center.

Is there a story behind the name, AMMO?

When Steve and I decided to break out on our own and launch a new publishing house [he previously worked as a photo editor at Taschen], we realized that there weren’t that many visual-arts publishers based in the U.S. We also wanted to celebrate American artists and designers. So we came up with AMMO, which is short for American Modern Books. But we do publish international artists/designers as well.

What’s new at AMMO this holiday season?

We recently published a limited edition, coffee-table size monograph on the photographer Edward Weston in celebration of his 125th birthday. Weston is a hero of Steve’s and one of the most important photographers of the 20th century. Steve worked with the Center for Creative Photography in Arizona, which manages Weston’s archive, to choose 125 of Weston’s most iconic photographs. The book was beautifully printed in Italy and comes in an exquisite European gold cloth slipcase. Then we have Alexander Girard, edited by Todd Oldham. Girard was a seminal and prolific midcentury designer who produced work in so many disciplines—textiles, typography, graphics, illustration, furniture and architecture. He was a contemporary of Eames who, for whatever reason, hasn’t received the same recognition. We hope this book will change that. It’s massive—672 pages and 15 lbs(!)—and it’s at the level of Charley Harper in that the book is a very comprehensive overview of Girard.  And in conjunction, we’ve released some children’s products featuring Girard’s designs—a memory game, giant floor puzzles, a board book and more on the way.

Catch a glimpse of the new Girard book here:


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“Get Physical” Lecture Now Available on AlwaysOn

Still from Rebeca Méndez' "Recurrence Relation 2" (2011)

Are you still kicking yourself for missing the Graphic Design Department’s 3×3 lecture Get Physical: New Media in Space this past September?

Then stop whatever you’re doing and visit Art Center’s AlwaysOn website, where the entire lecture–comprised of three presentations by media artist and designer Joachim Sauter, Art Center alumna and interdisciplinary artist Rebeca Méndez and contemporary media artist Christian Moeller–has just been been uploaded.

At Get Physical, Sauter, Moeller and Méndez (whose latest work, Quagmire, can currently be seen in Art Center’s WORLDS exhibition) explored ”post-virtual experiences,” those new interactions arising from the fusion of digital media within our built environment.

As might be expected, “post-virtual experiences” mean very different things to each of these three artists. For example, Méndez’ current work-in-progress Circumpolar has her following the Arctic Tern, a small seabird, as it migrates from the Arctic to the Antarctic. Mendez said that with this work she’s aiming not only to capture the bird’s behavior and habitat but to also document the invisible forces–the Sun, the Earth’s magnetism, the oceanic currents–that guide the Tern in its migration.

And the process of capturing nature is also an opportunity for her to reflect on the sublime fragility of life. ”I like spending time in the middle of the tundra, where I’m confronted with the realization that nothing out there wants me to live,” said Méndez of some of her recent works, including Recurrence Relation 2. “They told us going from the sailboat to the zodiac that if we fall in the ice, it’d be better to leave us in the water because we’d last longer than if they pulled us out. We’d last six minutes in the water, three minutes out.”

See all three presentations at Art Center’s AlwaysOn website.

More on Art Center’s Reality Augmented course (video)

Art Center instructor Ryan D'Orazi demonstrates his Enlitenar AR app during the class' final presentation.

Last month we told you about an augmented reality (AR) course that took place this past summer at Art Center called Reality Augmented. The course was co-taught by Graphic Design instructor Guillaume Wolf and science fiction author Bruce Sterling; hosted by the Graphic Design Department; and sponsored by Amsterdam-based Layar, whose AR platform claims more than one million active users.

Layar documented the class and recently posted a short three-minute video that does an excellent job of capturing the energy and ambition of this experimental course. ”Our class here  at Art Center is a ‘doing’ class,” says Sterling in the video. “People were working with LAYAR to really do apps. I wanted them to be able to leave the class saying that they can augment reality.”

Sterling goes on to say, “Augmented reality is in the artistic phase where a lot of the most effective players are designers. The best AR efforts are coming out of smaller groups of three, four or 12 people.”

Watch the entire video after the break.

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When Apple Talks iPhone, the World Listens

Recent Graphic Design graduate Megan Potter presents her iPad magazine "Abyss."

Whether they’re augmenting reality, designing interactive magazines and newspapers, or creating apps that blur the distinction between games and art, many of Art Center’s students and alumni will be paying close attention to Apple’s iPhone announcement this morning.

What changes are in store for the ubiquitous smartphone? Rumors swirling around the Internet suggest Apple’s new CEO Tim Cook will unveil everything from a larger screen size to voice control software to compatibility with the latest LTE networks.

Regardless of what surprises emerge from Cupertino during today’s event, one things for certain: people will notice.

What are you hoping to see from Apple today?

And for those of you who can’t wait for today’s announcement, there’s a video after the break to keep you busy until 10 a.m. rolls around.

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Pancake Creator Contest Deadline Extended

Product Design alumna Bryce Butcher, an industrial designer at Bradshaw International, visited Hillside Campus last week with Graphic Design alumna Grace Karabachian to hand out Pancake Creators.

Wendee Lee's Pooh Pancake

Did you pick one up? Well, you’re in luck—the deadline to submit your pancake designs to the Pancake Creator contest has been extended to Oct. 7.

Get to work on whipping up some original designs, and you could win a $200 gift card to Swain’s.

Just email your designs to pancakecreator@goodcook.com or visit pancakecreator.com for more information.

This super-cool product was designed by Bryce along with Graphic Design alums 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 last week’s giveaway.

Check out the video of the Pancake Creator below: