Category Archives: Product Design

Art Center Students Rack Up Core77 Design Awards

Core77 Award RibbonFollowing a week of rolling announcements, Art Center is happy to congratulate the teams behind six noteworthy projects selected as Student Winners in the 2012 Core77 Design Awards, which celebrate the richness of the design profession and the brilliance of its practitioners. Among the award winners, our Product Design students’ solutions for medical devices and uniforms are valued in the Equipment and Soft Goods categories, Designmatters’ Safe Agua projects were recognized for their Social Impact, and a collaboration between Grad ID and the Drucker School is noted in the area of Strategy & Research.

CATEGORY: Equipment
DESIGNER/TEAM NAME: Andrew Kim
PROJECT: Pal IV Pump System
JURY COMMENTS: Not only does this design pay attention to people’s physical need, but also their psychological needs in their most painful period.

CATEGORY: Equipment
DESIGNER/TEAM NAME: James Cha
PROJECT: Syncro – Post-surgical knee rehabilitation device
JURY COMMENTS: Unlike many professional medical devices with a cold, mechanical form, this design is very user friendly with its organic form and inviting user interface, which encourage patients to use it with joy.

Syncro

Core77 award winner "Syncro," a post-surgical knee rehabilitation device, was designed by Art Center student James Cha.

CATEGORY: Social Impact
DESIGNER/TEAM NAME: Kimberly Chow and Carlos Vides
PROJECT: Safe Agua: Balde a Balde
CLIENT: Innovation Center, Un Techo Para Mi Pais
JURY COMMENTS: This product shows that even relatively humble designs can make a big difference to people’s lives.

CATEGORY: Social Impact
DESIGNER/TEAM NAME: Alex Cabunoc and Ji A You
PROJECT: Safe Agua: GiraDora
CLIENT: Innovation Center, Un Techo Para Mi Pais
JURY COMMENTS: So much going for it – a great concept that works on all the required levels to be a success.

CATEGORY: Soft Goods
DESIGNER/TEAM NAME: Leonardo Ochoa
PROJECT: Allayant – A shirt with built-in back support for paramedics
JURY COMMENTS: We really loved how [far] the Allayant reached. This was a big undertaking. It is rare to see such an innovative solution that is so well aesthetically resolved in a student project.

CATEGORY: Strategy & Research
DESIGNER/TEAM NAME: Art Center College of Design Grad ID and the Drucker Graduate School of Management
PROJECT: KPCC+
CLIENT: Southern California Public Radio
JURY COMMENTS: The KPCC+ strategy is notable because of the breadth of analysis that was done to increase listenership. They did a good job of targeting, understanding and designing for a complex and changing market and technology. Excellent process and project!

In addition to winning an award for KPCC+, the video testimonial submitted to Core77 as part of the entry process was showcased on the award site for being particularly informative.

The winners of each category will receive the C77DA trophy, and all honorees will be published in the Awards Gallery, on Core77 and in the awards publication. The recognition will culminate with a special event in New York City this fall.

Launched in 1995, Core77 publishes articles, discussion forums, resources, book reviews and event calendars in service to a global audience of design professionals, corporations, students, enthusiasts and fans. They host hundreds of thousands of online portfolios, provide job listings through a distinguished network of leading design site partners and maintain a database of thousands of design firms, schools, vendors and services. And offline, Core77 produces myriad design competitions, lecture series, parties, portfolio reviews and exhibitions.

Art Center Top Winner of Awards from Industrial Designers Society of America

Art Center College of Design won the most awards of any college in the prestigious 2012 International Design Excellence Awards (IDEA®). Design teams are celebrating across campus today as the Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA) unveiled the winners of the program—a celebration of design excellence in products, sustainability, interaction design, packaging, strategy, research and concepts.

Balde e Balde

IDSA will reveal the Best in Show, Curator’s Choice, People’s Choice and the Sustainability Award at the IDEA ceremony on Aug. 18 at its 2012 International Conference in Boston.

GiraDora

Students won three Gold, two Silver, and three Bronze awards in the annual competition. Congratulations to all the students, faculty, staff, and administrators who were involved in these projects.

DIGIFI

Gold Winners

  • Mike Kim, Product, DIGIFI: Audionauts project
  • Kim Chow, Designmatters, Product, Environmental Design, Balde a Balde: Safe Agua project
  • Alex Cabunoc & Ji A You, Designmatters, Product, Environmental Design, GiraDora: Safe Agua Washer and Spin Dryer

Silver Winners

  • Geoff Ledford, Product, Traverse Ski Patrol Rescue Toboggan
  • Leonardo Ochoa, Product, ALLAYANT – A shirt with built-in back support for paramedics

Bronze Winners

  • Derrick Tan, Product, Link Collapsible Recurve Archery Bow and Prosthetic
  • Siddharth Vanchinathan, Hugo Giralt Echevarria, Philip Keller, Jan Lienhard, John Badalamenti, Nicholas Fusso and Heather Hoopes, Grad ID, KPCC Growth Strategy
  • Andrew Kim, Product, Pal IV Pump System

Finalists

  • James Cha, Product, Syncro – Post-surgical knee rehabilitation device
  • Lindsay Nevard, Product, Nutriflex Flexible Infant Nutrition System
  • Chelsea Ji Hong Park, Product, Blind Spot laundry kit for the visually impaired
  • Joel McDavitt, Product, Airia Rescue Backboard
  • Jonas Crister Kristiansson, Grad ID, A Place For My Stuff
  • Seth Weissman & Viirj Kan, Designmatters, Product, Environmental Design, Caja Del Tesoro: Safe Agua
  • Kim Chow & Carlos Vides, Designmatters, Product, Environmental Design, Soap Buddy: Safe Agua
  • Mariana Prieto & Alexandra Yee, Designmatters, Product, Environmental Design, Clean & Smart.

Art Center on Scene at Dwell on Design

Art Center was an official partner of the West Coast’s largest design event, Dwell on Design, which boasted three days of the best and brightest products, services and thought leaders in modern design. Dwell on Design was held last weekend at the L.A. Convention Center.

As the only educational institution named a Silver Sponsor, Art Center made a significant impact during the event. The College occupied 1,000 square feet of exhibition space showing representative student and alumni work in Product and Environmental Design; led a series of creative design activities on the show floor; and showcased student, faculty and alumni presentations on three separate stages at the event.

Here are some images from the show.

David Mocarski, Jenn Kuca, Cora Neil and Mariana Amatullo talking about Designing for Social Impact

Art Center's booth at Dwell

Learning about Designmatters' Safe Agua Project

David Mocarski discussing Art Center's Environmental Design programs

The Product Design display

Art Center's activity space on the showroom floor

Environmental Design and Product Design Students Showcase at New York Design Week

A short nap in Melissa Lee's "Lulla" provides an experience akin to being rocked in your parents arms.

Art Center was in full force at New York City’s 24th annual New York Design Week.

Students and alumni from the College were featured at both the International Contemporary Furniture Fair (ICFF) and the WantedDesignNYC Design Challenge.

Seven Environmental Design students—Sue Chung, Steve Oh, Melissa Lee, Minh Nguyen, Evan Liao, Brandon Kim and Me Young Kim—had their furniture and lighting projects on exhibition at this year’s ICFF.

Brandon Kim's "Harbor" outdoor poolside chaise is fabricated from polyepoxide powder-coated 5052 aluminum.

The exhibit of student work illustrated the “total spatial experience” philosophy of environmental design at Art Center—a philosophy in which the designer takes into consideration every detail from the first moment of encounter to the last moment of interaction. Each piece was designed based on the power of the story content and context that it defines, the interaction it creates and the emotional interface that it accomplishes.

Sunlight filtering through Me Young Kim's "Aureole" creates shadows of endless patterns and shapes.

Making a seamless transition from the classroom into the marketplace, these pieces immediately translate into the type of professional, marketable furniture that Art Center students are well-known for creating. By studying with working professionals, Art Center designers learn to create dynamic pieces as well as how to showcase their designs.

Art Center was also represented at ICFF by six alumni who were selected for ICFF Studio.

Both pieces of Sue Chung's "Ease" are made of wood. The top piece is spray painted; the bottom is left as raw finish.

Also, as part of New York Design Week, four students representing both Environmental Design—Jonathan Kim and Ji A You and Product Design—Ryan Oenning and Jacques Perrault—participated in the WantedDesignNYC Design Challenge.

Students were asked to use one material, one conceptual tool (e.g. computer software) and one fabrication tool (e.g. a laser cutting machine) to design and construct a lighting design of their own invention.

The Dotted Line tweetted live from ICFF using Art Center’s @art_center Twitter account and the #ICFF hashtag.

Additional information on Art Center students and alumni participating in New York Design Week events can be found here.

And if you know of any other New York Design Week events that the Art Center community should know about, please leave us a note in the comments below.

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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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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Just call him Stan: Art Center at Night’s Stan Kong

Instructor Stan Kong reviews his students' work. Photo: Four Eyes Photography

“I hate being called ‘Mr. Kong’ because that puts a barrier between you and me,” says Art Center at Night (ACN) instructor Stan Kong, who’s teaching Sketching for Designers, among other courses, for the upcoming Spring 2012 term. “And I don’t think there should be any barriers.”

For Stan, who graduated from Art Center in 1983 and created ACN’s very first Introduction to Product and Transportation Design course shortly thereafter, removing barriers isn’t about becoming best friends with his students; it’s about facilitating honest communication in order to meet their needs. “A lot of what I do in the classroom is getting the students to talk about themselves,” says Stan. “If somebody were to ask a student of mine what they learned from me, I’d be totally disappointed if they answered ‘how to design a product’ or ‘how to draw.’ The best answer would be, ‘I learned to care about myself and about the world. I learned that I could go out there and achieve and make this world a better place.’”

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Meet Art Center at Night Student Roberto Galicia

ACN student Roberto Galicia. Photo: Mike Winder

Nobody walks in L.A.?

Don’t tell that to Roberto Galicia.

After taking Introduction to Product and Transportation Design at Art Center at Night (ACN), Galicia decided to pursue design as a career.

The only problem? He lived in Ontario, the courses he needed were in Pasadena and he had no car.

We sat down recently with Galicia to get his full story; here’s what he told us:

“Where I went to high school in Rancho Cucamonga, everybody seemed to get a brand new car as soon as they turned 16. But not me. Ever since I was a little boy I loved cars and dreamed of one day designing cars. But I never had the means to own a car, so I took the bus everywhere.

“After high school and some community college classes, I signed up for Art Center at Night’s Introduction to Product and Transportation Design with Rimon Ghobrial. Rimon was a great instructor, and when he learned what I wanted to do with my life, he suggested I also enroll at Pasadena City College (PCC) to take classes with Stan Kong and Albert Yu, both Art Center alumni. I knew I had to take those classes, but I was worried about transportation. I didn’t have a car, so how was I going to get there? I enrolled at PCC and eventually figured it out, but the solution was ridiculous.

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Don’t Miss Design Runway This Friday

Environmental Design student Belle Shang will present her BeWild winter accessories at Design Runway.

This Friday, Art Center College of Design will hold its annual Design Runway show at the College’s Hillside Campus. The show, which is free and open to the public, focuses on how industrial design and visual art students are expressing themselves through apparel design.

“This is a runway show unlike any other,” said Design Runway instructor Justine Parish of the event which marks the culmination of the course of the same name. “Apparel design at Art Center is less about fashion than it is an outlet for students from all departments to explore a new medium for their creativity. As a result, we have Product Design students creating performance sportswear for space travel, Illustration students creating jewelry, Transportation Design students creating high fashion shoes and everything in between.”

Continued after the jump.

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Art Center Ranked Among the Best of the Best by DesignIntelligence’s Annual Survey

An Art Center student hard at work at a recent DesignStorm.

Cited as a “heavyweight player,” Art Center College of Design was once again ranked first for its undergraduate industrial design programs by the Design Futures Council in its annual DesignIntelligence survey of America’s Best Architecture and Design Schools, which recognizes the schools that are best preparing students for success in their professions. This year, the College’s Graduate Industrial Design program ranked second, one spot away from first where it has placed five times out of the last seven years.

The sum total of Art Center’s undergraduate industrial design programs—Entertainment Design, Environmental Design, Product Design and Transportation Design—were most admired for their “resources, reputation and quality of education.”

In their assessment of industrial design skills, in which hiring firms deem the collegiate programs most strongly educating students in specific skill areas, Art Center ranked first place in the categories of “Communication,” “Computer Applications” and “Design.” The College also ranked in the top five in the areas of “Cross-Disciplinary Teamwork” and “Research and Theory,” which makes Art Center one of only two schools to place in all categories.

“These programs are graduating students who are able to tackle complex and difficult work, create and share knowledge, and invent new design solutions in their fields,” the survey said of the institutions which ranked in its annual survey. “Students learn not just technologies and craft but also leadership, judgment, and insight into changing contexts and upcoming challenges. These will be our future leaders.”

The Design Futures Council is an independent and interdisciplinary network of design, product, construction leaders exploring global trends, challenges and opportunities to advance innovation and shape the future of our industry and environment.