This past spring, three students working in different disciplines (Photography, Graduate Transportation Design and Interaction Design) bravely chose to accept the challenge/opportunity (those last two words may as well be permanently fused—no slash necessary— when it comes to artistic endeavors) to reveal the agony and the ecstasy, the challenges and the epic fails that go into conceiving and creating a project over the course of a term. They had enlisted in Art Center’s ongoing collaboration with Myspace to highlight Art Center’s unique approach to creativity and diligently, digitally tracked his/her progress with a trio of videos shot at the beginning, middle and end of the creative journey.
Category Archives: Interaction Design
Art Center in the news | April 2014
Sterling Ruby, MFA 05, Art, courtesy KCET
Art Center’s students, faculty, staff and alumni continue to make news around the world. For those who may have missed a headline or two, we’ve curated this handy highlight reel of our recent media clips.
Wearing your heart rate on your sleeve: Inside the wearable tech revolution
By now you’ve heard of Google Glass. But what about bracelets that measure sun exposure? Headphones that double as heartbeat monitors? Or jewelry that unlocks your front door? Are you ready for the dawn of smart watches, smart earrings, smart contact lenses and smart wigs? And no, that last one isn’t a joke.
The “wearables” field is in an early yet promising stage of its evolution. But Art Center, always striving to stay ahead of industry and cultural trends, has had wearables squarely in its sights for years. Today, our students, instructors and alumni are busy imagining where this technology might head next, creating the devices that are paving the way for the future, and questioning how a wearables-saturated world will change our behavior as human beings.
Art Center in the News: February-March 2014
Maggie Hendrie on the set of TakePart Live
Art Center students, faculty, staff and alumni have been making news while making their mark at on the art and design worlds. For those who may have missed a headline or two, we curated this handy highlight reel of our recent media clips:
Don’t miss two lengthy, live interview segments we arranged for Interaction Design Chair, Maggie Hendrie and ACCD student Alex Cabunoc on the new cable program TakePart Live—a show tailored to Millennials (age 18-34) that reaches 40 million-plus households through Participant Media’s Pivot TV network. (Participant Media is the award-winning, socially and politically progressive production company responsible for An Inconvenient Truth, The Cove, Lincoln, among other enlightening and edifying films and TV shows).
Check out these new student videos from our stellar Myspace occupiers
Roman Vargas, Photography and Imaging – second round from Art Center College of Design on Myspace.
Shortly after the Spring 2014 term passed its halfway point, our participating students (Myspacers?) produced a new set of videos tracking their progress on the path toward creative completion.
Starting a project is never easy. And finishing it is, arguably, even harder. But let’s not underestimate the challenges involved in persisting through the obstacle course of roadblocks artists often face once they’re deep enough into a project that starting over isn’t an option, and the finish line isn’t yet in sight.
SXSW Interactive 2014 wrap-up: Chelsea Clinton, Neil Young and Toms.com
Chelsea Clinton at SXSW Interactive 2014
The final day of SXSW Interactive has now taken on a different cast; in light of the tragic car crash that claimed two festival-goers’ lives and injured many more. Our deepest condolences go out to the families of those victims.
Even though the festival was technically winding down; passion, engagement and insight revved high throughout the day’s panels and presentations. The conference had successfully lived up to its interactive title. Many themes in the 2014 program were plucked from a virtual suggestion box, including this year’s focus on tech’s role in social change, culminating with Chelsea Clinton’s galvanizing closing keynote address (more on that later). In fact, all of the events we attended on that final day—from presentations by TOMS founder Blake Mycoskie—were informed, either directly or indirectly, by a socially conscious approach to technological innovation.
Art Center @ SXSW 2014: Choice program and party picks for artists, designers and innovators
Lady Gaga announced, earlier this week, that she’d make her SXSW debut, headlining the music festival on March 13. But the biggest surprise was not that the mother of all little monsters would join the hordes of outliers, outcasts, oddballs and out there futurists making the pilgrimage to the annual Austin cultural convergence. It’s that she waited this long to get there. “[I'll be performing] as part of the Born This Way Foundation night on the Doritos stage,” she said via video. “I believe being an individual and speaking your mind is one of the boldest things you can do. I will be celebrating that Thursday night. We are for the bold. This is a very special show…only people who prove their boldness are able to get in.”
Check out the latest videos from Art Center’s Myspace occupants
Update: Shortly after the Spring 2014 term passed its half-way point, our participating students (Myspacers?) produced a new set of videos tracking their progress on the path toward creative completion.
Starting a project is never easy. And finishing it is, arguably, even harder. But let’s not underestimate the challenges involved in persisting through the obstacle course of road-blocks artists often face once they’re deep enough into a project that starting over isn’t an option and the finish line isn’t yet in sight.
This extraordinary set of videos (featured on our Myspace page) offers a snapshot of the breathtaking range of creative activity happening at Art Center on any given day.
Photography student Roman Alexander Vargas takes us deeper into his sources of inspiration (Nan Goldin, primarily) for the very personal photo essay he’s creating as he chronicles his initiation into drag queen culture.
Interaction Design student, Inae Song, delivers a dynamic illustration of the iterative process involved in redesigning an interactive digital destination for AIGA, the American professional association for design professionals. For a young designer proving her mettle, it’s hard to think of tougher crowd to please than the members of AIGA. But Song remained undaunted and produced some incredibly compelling work that plays like a tutorial in website design.
Graduate Transportation Design Student, Nish Kamath, bowed out of this step in the process and will rejoin us with a final video revealing the finished product he creates based on his research into traffic patterns in the developing world.
Each of these students defies and exceeds any and all expectations they set forth in their initial videos, leaving us rapt in anticipation of their final installations. Stay tuned.
Last October, Art Center formed an alliance with the newly relaunched Myspace platform, which had reinvented itself as a social network for creative types. Myspace’s elegant interface seemed custom designed for the Art Center community, with each user profile centered around a portfolio of images and videos that comprise the user’s identity by showcasing the evolution of imagination and innovation. In other words, if Mark Zuckerberg had been a student at Art Center, not Harvard, Facebook might have looked a lot like the current iteration of Myspace.
Because Art Center is known for its students’ enterprise and productivity, that creative rigor became the focal point for this partnership. To illustrate this dedication, we recruited four students from four different disciplines (Product Design, Graphic Design, Illustration and Film) and asked them to document their creative process over the course of the term as they complete a project. The results were as inspiring as they were fascinating, providing a panoramic view of the geyser of creativity that is Art Center.
Chatting with the creator and recipient of the Hoffmitz|Kondrup Excellence in Typography Award
Like most dedicated Art Center instructors, Professor Gloria Kondrup (MFA ’93 Graphics/Packaging) is always looking for creative ways to encourage, inspire and support her students. In 2013, she and legendary Graphic Design instructor Professor Leah Hoffmitz Milken established the Hoffmitz|Kondrup Excellence in Typography Award. Created as part of their Legacy Circle membership with a gift from the Lowell Milken Family Foundation, the Award is given once each year to an upper-term Graphic Design student who demonstrates excellence in typography across all media.
We brought Kondrup and first-ever Award recipient Quinton Larson together to chat about the award and their love of typography.
Art Center: Gloria, what was the motivation behind creating the Hoffmitz|Kondrup Excellence in Typography Award?
Gloria Kondrup: Leah and I share a love of type and language. As instructors we regularly saw students struggle financially to stay in school. The Award is a way to celebrate typography while providing meaningful financial support to a top Graphic Design student.
Fall 2013 Grad Show: A master class in next-level design thinking and doing
Top companies leading the innovation economy swarmed the Hillside campus scouting new talent during Fall 2013 Grad Show. Facebook, BMW, Snapchat and Square, creator of the revolutionary cube device that instantly transforms cell phones in to credit card machines, were all seeking the next wave of their creative workforce.