Category Archives: Transportation Design

Art Center students and alumni ignite Spark!

Student Mathias Hintermann's Aiguille short track speed skater headgear won a Spark! Award.

Student Mathias Hintermann’s Aiguille short track speed skater headgear won a Spark! Award.

With designs ranging from a portable desk for low-income children in India to lighting inspired by the beauty found in Japanese metal craft, Art Center students and alumni brought home several awards last week from the 2013 Spark International Design Awards.

Students and professionals from more than 27 countries across the globe competed in the categories of Experience Design, Product Design, Spaces Design, Transport Design, Communication Design, App Design and Concept Design, with awards ranging from Bronze Awards to the highest award, the Spark! Award.

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True confessions from Art Center at Night students, captured on video

Each term, Art Center at Night holds an open house, offering current and prospective students a brief glimpse at what goes on within the walls of its open-air classrooms. It’s a fleeting, but essential, experience for career-changers and seasoned and aspiring artists preparing to make the leap into what’s arguably the city’s most high-intensity after-hours creative education. It’s also an opportunity likely missed by anyone with extended working hours or family obligations (i.e., those who need it most).

Don’t fret. We’ve got your back. At a recent open house, we asked students to get in front of the camera and share with us what Art Center’s continuing studies program has meant to them. The answers were as diverse as the individuals themselves. See for yourself in the video above.

Perhaps it’s time to contemplate what Art Center will mean to you.

Cobras, Stingrays and Mako Sharks, oh my! Auto afficionados get “Inspired by Nature” at Car Classic

This past Sunday, nearly 2,000 visitors—transportation designers, car collectors, auto enthusiasts and more—assembled at Art Center College of Design for its popular annual Car Classic event. This year, the event showcased transportation design “Inspired by Nature” and celebrated a generous recent gift from Southern California philanthropists and car collectors Peter and Merle Mullin, who attended the event.

Nearly 90 carefully curated cars, trucks, motorcycles and bicycles–many of which, in keeping with the event’s theme, were inspired by birds, fish, insects and other natural phenomena–were on display at the event. A jury of alumni, faculty and industry leaders issued Best in Class awards to 18 vehicles in eight categories; while attendees voted for five vehicles in five categories.

Local custom auto designer Gary Wales’ 1917 La Bestioni Boat Tail Speedster was named the People’s Choice award winner. The Inspired by Nature award went to the 1959 Chevrolet Corvette Racing Stingray, whose lines were originally penned by alumnus and Car Classic honorary guest Peter Brock. And a 1961 Chevrolet Corvette Mako Shark, designed by alumnus Larry Shinoda, received the first ever Kids’ Choice award.

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Taking the fast lane to the future of transportation

Sin Palace: Horizontal Section Cut by Michael Webb, published in The Car in 2035.

Sin Palace: Horizontal Section Cut by Michael Webb, published in The Car in 2035.

Spearheaded by Graduate Art alumna and former faculty member Kati Rubinyi, The Car in 2035: Mobility Planning for the Near Future seeks to engage a broad readership in the aesthetically and intellectually complex relationship between cars and the physical environment. More than a handful of Art Center folks have contributed to the book, which features essays by Graduate Transportation Design Executive Director Geoff Wardle and Graduate Art Chair Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe, among others, and illustrations by alumna Jiha Hwang GMDP 11. Published in March, the book and the issues it addresses became the driving force behind the creation of the nonprofit Civic Projects Foundation, founded and led by Rubinyi. Its mission—initiating projects for the public benefit that break down silos among professional disciplines—was inspired, in part, by Art Center. “My education and later experience at the College did nothing less than pry open my mind to new values and to other communities of practice, which was a much-needed antidote to my professional experience at that time,” says Rubinyi, whose background is in urban planning, architecture and art. Civic Projects welcomes collaboration and support from anyone who recognizes the need for more creativity in positively shaping the future of urban and suburban Southern California.

This story originally appeared in Art Center’s Dot magazine. Check out Dot online for more news of alumni and faculty exhibitions, products, books, films and social impact. For a closer look at Art Center’s role in shaping the future of car design, check out this recent Westways magazine profile of Geoff Wardle.

The brains behind the muscle (cars): Stingray designers to be honored at Car Classic

Behold the Tom Peters-designed Stingray

Behold the Tom Peters-designed Stingray

Ranked #1 on Automobile Magazine’s “100 Coolest Cars” list, the 1963-1967 Sting Ray designed by Art Center alumnus Peter Brock set the standard for all sports and muscle cars to follow. That achievement in design, performance and pure chrome and steel sex appeal has been near impossible to meet, which Chevrolet all but conceded to when they retired the Sting Ray name in 1976.

Now, 50 years after the original Sting Ray first hit the road, Chevrolet’s parent company, General Motors, is reviving the brand and launching a car worthy of the (now slightly altered) name. Meet the 2014 Chevrolet Corvette Stingray. You might say it takes a certain sensibility to capture the visceral appeal of that first Sting Ray and reinvent it for the 21st century. So it seems only natural that—just like the original—the 2014 Stingray would be designed by an Art Center alum.

Art Center will celebrate this transportation design legacy at its annual Car Classic on Sunday, October 27, where the College will present alumnus Tom Peters (TRANS ’80) with the Lifetime Achievement Award for his many design accomplishments with General Motors, including his work for Chevrolet and Corvette, and his leadership role in breathing new life into the legendary Stingray.

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Art Center in the News, July 2013

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Alumnus Jim Root, art director at Cramer-Kasselt, was featured in the Milwaukee Wisconsin Journal Sentinel.

From fuel efficiency standards changing the look of your car to top ranked film schools, from Gibson Guitartown to backyard beehive designs – here’s where you can catch up on any Art Center news you may have missed with our latest media roundup.

The Hollywood Reporter, “The Hollywood Reporter Unveils the Top 25 Film Schools of 2013” July 31, 2013: Art Center moves up from #23 to #15 in  annual film school ranking.

The New York Times, “Carlab Mixes Natural Gas and Gasoline for More Efficient Vehicle”  July 9, 2013: Transportation Design instructor Eric Noble featured throughout the Wheels blog about rethinking the size of the natural gas tank.

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Plumbing the depths of innovation: Mazda unveils student-created concept car, Deep Orange 3

It’s innovative engineering inside and out. And it’s all the work of students.

A next-generation Mazda concept vehicle, designed by Art Center College of Design student Fredrick Naaman and engineered by a team of Clemson University International Center for Automotive Research (CU-ICAR) automotive engineering students, was revealed in Traverse City, Mich., today during the Center for Automotive Research Management Briefing Seminars.

The official unveiling marks the completion of the Deep Orange 3 Mazda-sponsored vehicle, the third-generation Deep Orange vehicle prototype, which is a completely new vehicle, inside and out.

Derek Jenkins, design director for Mazda North American Operations, said that to be part of a college program of this caliber that focuses not just on one aspect of a vehicle, but the vehicle as a whole, is really an automaker’s dream come true.

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Conscious Commuter mobilizes an e-bike revolution at The Design Accelerator

Gabriel Wartofsky with his electric bike at the Environmental Media Awards

Gabriel Wartofsky with his electric bike at the Environmental Media Awards.

When entrepreneurial inspiration strikes, it’s often described as the convergence of creative and commercial instincts. An innovator perceives a void in the marketplace and conceives a product or experience to fill that space and drive demand for more. But for Gabriel Wartofsky and Bob Vander Woude, that well-worn path into the startup trenches has been less clear-cut.

The partners have spent the past two years developing Conscious Commuter, a company built around an electric bicycle with a sleek design and long-range battery. However the whole enterprise is driven by nothing short of a mission to revolutionize transportation.“We’re solution providers,” declares Vander Woude, an entrepreneur and CEO of a seed-stage investment fund, who was looking to fund an electric bike company when he happened upon a web demo of Wartofsky’s senior thesis project, now the basis for their partnership, which aims to implement e-bike sharing systems in cities around the world. “We’re multi-modal. That’s the secret sauce. Other electric bike companies are not coming from the background of solving a social problem. They’re just motivated to get to a retailer and make money.”

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Alumni and Student Find Dream Jobs at Porsche, Cadillac and Tesla

Working for a carmaker is a dream come true for many, but for Transportation Design alumni Julien Bilodeau and Christine Park and Graphic Design student Bryce Shawcross, it’s a testament to their individual goals, ambition and perseverance, as well as Art Center’s stellar design programs.

Julien Bilodeau grew up in Baie Sainte-Marie, a small French Canadian town in Nova Scotia, where he dreamed about designing cars. When he came to Art Center, he said, “I was instantly impressed by the passion of the students, teachers and Southern California as a whole,” citing instructors Stewart Reed, Bumsuk Lim and Jason Hill as major influences on him as an artist and designer.

Alumnus Julien Bilodeau drafted sketches of Multiplier, a mobile, temporary & expandable parking structure.

Alumnus Julien Bilodeau drafted sketches of Multiplier, a mobile, temporary and expandable parking structure.

“Art Center really helped me develop a wide skill set, allowing me to approach design from a number of perspectives,” said Bilodeau. “The flexibility of the curriculum and supportive guidance allowed me to really pursue my own avenues with regards to my own interests.”

During his time at Art Center, he held an internship at the Honda Advanced Design Studio before transitioning into an internship at Porsche. Once his internship ended, he was offered a chance to complete his thesis project at Porsche. Although he couldn’t complete his final term at Art Center, he decided this was the best opportunity, knowing that it would be an important factor in eventually working at Porsche.

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Alumni Featured in AllSpark Platinum Winners Video

Yves Béhar displays the durability of his See Better to Learn Better glasses in the new AllSpark video.

Yves Béhar displays the durability of his See Better to Learn Better glasses in the new AllSpark video.

Earlier this year, Art Center alumni swept the first ever AllSpark Platinum Awards, which honors “the best of the best of the best” of the 2012 entrants to the Spark Awards.

Spark recently released a video in which AllSpark winners Yves Béhar PROD 91, Franz von Holzhausen TRAN 92 and Sujin Hwang PROD 11 are interviewed alongside other top designers, including Sam Lucente and alumnus Earl Gee GRPK 83.

In the video, Béhar speaks about See Better to Learn Better, a program his company fuseproject created in partnership with the Mexican government and Augen Optics. The program distributes hundreds of thousands of eyeglasses every year to schoolchildren in Mexico. Children have the opportunity to choose their glasses’ frame, size and color, giving them a chance to be involved in the design process.

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