Category Archives: Transportation Design

San Diego, Here We Come!

Art Center’s Office of Alumni Relations hits the road today for a trip to San Diego, where they’re hosting an alumni event tonight at Nissan Design America.

San Diego alumni chapter co-chairs Chuck Pelly PROD ’58 and June Rubin ILLU ’84 will welcome Art Center President Lorne Buchman and Transportation Design Chair Stewart Reed TRAN ’69 to America’s Finest City to meet with alums and share the latest about the College’s strategic plan and Transportation Design program.

San Diego alums, see you there!

Alum’s Folding E-Bike: Will It Change Your Commute?

Many of us have been in the situation—you want to commute to work, but your local transit solutions don’t quite connect you from your home to office. There are a couple of miles between the stop and your destination. Who has time for a two-mile hike when you’re in a hurry?

Gabriel Wartofsky's Folding E-Bike

You give up and just get in your car and drive there.

Transportation Design alum Gabriel Wartofsky has a solution to this common problem: the folding electric bicycle. This sustainable personal mobility solution—which has the potential to help shape the future of commuting—is part of a system Wartofsky designed while a student at Art Center.

This lightweight folding e-bike, manufactured from recycled aluminum by smelters using hydro power in the U.S., is only a part of an integrated system that requires integration with futuristic thinking bus, rail and auto transportation manufacturers—many of whom are lead by Art Center alumni.

Director of Advanced Mobility Research at Art Center Geoff Wardle—the first advisory board member for Wartofsky’s newly formed Conscious Commuter Corporation—says that his product is the secret to solving the first- and last-mile commute problem.

Wartofsky’s folding e-bike is currently in prototype development, and a prototype is planned for display at an upcoming Transportation Design event at Art Center in September. He’s currently looking for strategic, go-to-market relationships with auto, rail and bus manufacturers—any businesses or individuals interested in assisting with the project can connect with him at gabriel.wartofsky@consciouscommuter.com.

More from Syd Mead on Sentury II

Legendary visual futurist and Art Center alumnus Syd Mead stopped by Art Center last month as part of the Design Studio Press Spring Lecture Series.

Mead and his "Blade Runner" Spinner vehicle.

His lecture traversed the history of automobile design, the future of transportation, his early work for Ford and U.S. Steel, his work on Blade Runner and his latest book Sentury II.

We followed up with the designer via email to ask him about Sentury II.

Dotted Line: You mentioned in your lecture that the cover of Sentury II is intended to look like a metallic artifact that might be found in the future. What’s happening in the scene depicted in the artifact?
Mead: On the left of the spine of the book is a series of manifolds, circuitry and panels that simulate the energy feed to the image coherent side at the right (the actual cover of the book). I show a stylized, ceremonial figure just to the right of the book spine (the center of the overall artwork) and a horizontal split that reveals an energy source (heat? photon glow?) from behind the front surface of the plate combination.

At far right, just above the glowing energy source horizontal is a tableaux of figures and fixtures. One figure is entering a vehicle of some sort while behind him are a series of figures depicting a montage of social interaction, stylized foliage and geometric alignments that eventually go parallel to the outer edge of the ‘artifact.’

I imagined that this entire piece might have been dug up, cleaned off and somehow energized to bring the overall surface detail into view. The overall look of the cover art is a deliberate homage to the cover of Sentury II, which I painted first.

The cover of Sentury II

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Syd Mead: “The Future Starts Right Now”

Legendary visual futurist and Art Center alumnus Syd Mead stopped by Art Center’s Ahmanson Auditorium last week as part of the Design Studio Press Spring Lecture Series.


Syd Mead signing "Sentury II."

The always entertaining Mead delivered a presentation to a packed house whose attendees included The Lord of the Rings visual effects director Paul Lasaine, Megamind concept artist Samuel Michlap and Tron: Legacy vehicle designer Daniel Simon.

Mead’s lecture traversed the history of the automobile (“My total contribution to Americana automobilia is the taillight of the Ford Falcoln Futura.”), the future of transportation (“Antigravity is the answer for designers who don’t like to draw wheels.”) and his favorite color (“Cherenkov radiation blue, a fascinating optical phenomenon.”).

He also touched on Blade Runner, his early work for Ford and U.S. Steel, his latest book Sentury II and why the future is so difficult to predict.

Here are some highlights from his presentation.

On creative control:

The idea of controlling your creative idea right to the final format? That will never happen. Or rarely. Your ideas will go through a series of committees, compromises and pummels every single time.

On doing things by hand:

I learned how to hand-letter at Art Center, and that was very good training for drawing perfect ellipses. I still use gouache, which is putting paint on cardboard with animal hairs at the end of a stick. I know that’s not very romantic, but it works. All of today’s rendering software and code is made deliberately to mimic the hand-drawn technique.

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Meet Meliné Khatchatourian

Meliné Khatchatourian didn’t always know she was going to enter the arena of transportation design.

Khatchatourian

In fact, she never even took a fine art course until her senior year as a communications major at the University of California, San Diego.

“I was surprised to discover that I not only enjoyed those [art] classes, but I excelled in them,” Khatchatourian says. “I knew that I had discovered a path I had to pursue.”

She soon enrolled in Introduction to Product and Transportation Design at Art Center at Night (ACN). Khatchatourian vividly recalls the first day her class focused on transportation studies when her instructor used her car as a teaching tool. “My car was dissected and explained as a work of functional art,” she says. “I remember thinking, ‘I need to learn as much about this discipline as I can.’”

So Khatchatourian met with ACN Director Dana Walker, who suggested courses to prepare her portfolio for the College’s Transportation Design program. And the rest is ACN history.

Read her full story.

Ready to make history yourself? Then come to Experience Art Center at Night, April 18 through 20, 7to 9 p.m., a three-evening event where you can explore ACN’s broad range of courses.

Registration for ACN’s Summer Term is now open; courses begin May 16.

AutoPacific Enhances Transportation Design Education at Art Center

The most successful transportation designers are not simply adept at creating exciting new vehicle concepts, they are able to participate in and understand market research, brand development and user scenarios.

© Steven A. Heller/Art Center College of Design

But how do Art Center’s Transportation Design students gain these skills?

For a decade, AutoPacific has partnered with the College to enhance the educational experience of transportation design students through its annual donation of consumer and market research and forecasting data for the transportation industry. This highly valuable data is the same information used by major automotive manufacturers, suppliers and agencies around the world to understand market and consumer trends and sales projections for a range of vehicles.

Faculty member Robert Blum forged the relationship with AutoPacific in 2001 and the data the company makes available is central to his class, Introduction to Product Planning for Transportation Design. “The students are able to dig into this massive amount of information and learn how to interpret it for the purposes of product planning and development,” he says. “It helps them understand how to make choices about what to develop for whom, and why.”

Adds Stewart Reed, Art Center Transportation Design Chair, “It’s exciting for us to see students learn the broader language of product strategy and business and be able to talk about how their concepts address real market opportunities.”

The licenses that AutoPacific donates provide access to Competitive Battleground data for North America, Asia and Europe with consumer insights for every segment, make and model the company tracks; five-year Sales Forecasting information that is updated quarterly; and the company’s exclusive Research Suite database which is made accessible through PAI survey analysis software. “PAI’s mTABTM software allows for the easy statistical analysis of large amounts of data from AutoPacific’s database,” says Blum.

“Art Center’s partnership with AutoPacific has been incredibly valuable in elevating the educational experience for our students. The data they provide is also used by many of our eighth term students on their thesis projects. It increases the sophistication of our graduates, without a doubt.”

Syd Mead on Campus Tuesday

We’re excited to have the legendary visual futurist Syd Mead on campus tomorrow as part of the Design Studio Press Spring Lecture Series.

He’ll be discussing informed imagination and his new book, Sentury II. A book signing will follow the lecture.

Mead, a 1959 Transportation Design alumnus, is best known for his work on Tron, Bladerunner and Aliens, as well as for the creation of the V’Ger for Star Trek: The Motion Picture. He’s a favorite of ours; we’ve interviewed him here before about Tron and discussed transportation design with him in Outer Circle.

The event is free and open to the public. However, space is limited, so RSVP at facebook.com/designstudiopress.

Design Studio Press
Spring Lecture Series presents:
Syd Mead
Tuesday, April 12, 1 p.m.
Ahmanson Auditorium

In the meantime, check out the video below made by the Tribeca Film Institute:

2019: A Future Imagined from Flat-12 on Vimeo.

How I Made It: Trans Alum Frank Saucedo

The L.A. Times has a nice profile on 1984 Transportation Design alumnus Frank Saucedo, who is director of General Motors Co.’s Advanced Design Studio in North Hollywood.

As director of the studio, 5350 Industrial Concepts, Saucedo oversees a staff of 30 designers, sculptors, analysts and engineers. Since opening, the studio has created several noteworthy projects, most notably the 2001 Chevrolet Borrego and the Pontiac Solstice. (We spoke with Saucedo about his work for a past issue of Outer Circle.)

From the L.A. Times article: “Saucedo didn’t realize auto design was a career option until he visited Art Center College of Design in Pasadena at the urging of his teacher at San Gabriel High School. ‘I walked into the big presentation room in Art Center and these guys were doing full-size drawings of cars, and I said, I want to do that.’

“After high school he took as many classes as he could, day and night, at Pasadena City College, East Los Angeles College and Art Center, while also working at auto parts stores.”

Read more: How I Made It: Frank Saucedo, GM car-design studio chief

Catching Up With Syd Mead

As the buzz around Tron: Legacy reaches a fever pitch leading up to its opening this weekend, our thoughts naturally turn to the original Tron and our beloved alumnus Syd Mead, whose designs are synonymous with the groundbreaking film.

A 1959 Transportation Design graduate, Mead is best known for his work on Tron, Bladerunner and Aliens, as well as for the creation of the V’Ger for Star Trek: The Motion Picture.

Mead

We caught up with Mead this week to find out what he’s been up to, and his thoughts on the new Tron.

Dotted Line: You’ve been busy. Tell us about your latest projects.
Syd Mead: My latest complete project was two food service designs and installations in New York City. FoodParc at ground level off Sixth Avenue and Bar Basque, the second level lounge and restaurant. My designs started, literally, on 8.5” x 11” sketch paper on the way back from New York after the first meeting with the architects, Philip Koether, Architects. The designs were faithfully reproduced by Koether’s expert team. Concept moves to completion through a complex symphony of cooperative expertise.

In the movie field, I’ve just completed pre-production contract designs for a young, recognized director for a movie title that is in progress. It is not my position to tell what it is.

Dotted Line: What have been the most enjoyable aspects of these projects?
Mead: They’ve all been enjoyable because you learn from each cooperative venture. The surprises come as the project moves from concept to idea to design. Adaptation to end format protocols, unwelcome shifts in focus by either capital sources for the project or intrusion into the process by those unfamiliar with the project intent yet given authority to “change.”

Dotted Line: Tell us about your current work in your new book, Sentury II. Has your focus changed over the years?
Mead: As a follow-up to Sentury, Sentury II covers the last 10 years of professional enterprise. My focus? It’s not changed for more than 50 years. The tools that accomplish the various desired results change; the methodology does not. The mistake I see in current rush to the computer is that the tool becomes more important than either the idea or the technique. This is disastrous.

Dotted Line: What interests you these days?
Mead: I have been interested in the development of a tool. We now have semi-intuitive “helper” software that anticipates habitual use of various software features. The hazard is that you come to depend on those “conveniences” to the detriment of genuine creative use of the exotic software being used. And, with many software applications, you aren’t given specific “turn off” directions. Another fascinating drift is the increasing insistence that since work is being done on a computer, the professional fee structure should be downgraded to a time/result formula rather than a realization that the computer implementation is a tool function, not a creative front-end function. Financial vectors in most professional account sources simply don’t recognize the difference between the two.

1982 poster for Tron

Dotted Line: With the buzz surrounding Tron: Legacy, our thoughts naturally return to the 1982 Tron that you worked on. Can you share with us what that job was like?
Mead: For the original Tron I designed the tank, the aircraft carrier (Sark’s command ship), the interior control set for the recognizer, the light cycles, of course, the release graphics of the movie title, the rotating CPU, the CPU approach field, the game arenas, the holding cells for the players, Sark’s command camp pit, Sark’s command pedestal and backup and several set drawings used to create the story environment including Yori’s apartment and the scenery design for the tank chase.

I was invited for lunch on the Disney lot by producers Steven Lisberger and Don Kushner and received a book of stuff that Steven already had with him. I started after about two or three weeks after contract matters had been agreed to by Disney.

I worked on Tron from my home studio, as I have with all the movies I’ve worked on. I always have several projects going through the corporation and being sequestered in an “on lot” cubicle doesn’t work. My function is meta-staff working one-to-one with the director and his immediate authority, the production designer.

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