ArtCenter at Night’s creative entrepreneurs deliver the ultimate roadmap to success

JR Curley (left) and Jonas Kulikauskas co-teach Creative Intelligence at ArtCenter at Night.

“Let’s say you’re a designer and you want to make the new logo for a company a blue flower,” says artist, designer and ArtCenter at Night instructor Jonas Kulikauskas, throwing out a hypothetical scenario to explain what students enrolled in this Fall term’s upcoming Creative Intelligence course will be learning. “Okay, but why blue? And why a flower? Those decisions need to have a business rationale.”

Kulikauskas co-teaches Creative Intelligence with JR Curley, the creative director and founder of brand and strategy firm Panagram. The two worked together at multinational professional services firm PricewaterhouseCoopers, where Curley was the overall leader of a national creative team of more than 100 employees and Kulikauskas was a leader on said team.

Together, the two have a bevy of experience explaining the business rationale behind their decisions. “We worked in a company with 40,000 corporate types,” says Kulikauskas about their internal clients. “They didn’t know how to speak our language. We had to speak their language.”

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Doing well by doing good: ArtCenter students’ social impact innovations win big at 2015 IDEA awards

Though the hum of activity in the halls and classrooms of Hillside and South campuses has temporarily lulled as we await the start of the Fall term, Summer 2015 has ended on a high note with this week’s news that ArtCenter students’ innovative prototypes and projects were honored by the prestigious Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA) at the organization’s International Design Excellence Awards (IDEA) in Seattle on August 22.

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Going bold and going home: ArtCenter’s graphic identity, past and present

ArtCenter’s original 7th Street campus, 1947

At the beginning of 2013 the Design Office began evaluating the ArtCenter identity and considering possible adjustments that could enable a stronger, more flexible presence, particularly with online communications in mind. Our intent wasn’t to rebrand ArtCenter, but rather to make stronger use of the existing graphic identity elements that have always been associated with the College. This process led to a fascinating deep dive into the history of ArtCenter’s identity. We looked into the origins of the orange dot and studied 85 years of ArtCenter promotional materials to identify the things that represent the essence of who we are. Here’s what we found:

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Q&A with Grad Art faculty member and alum Gabrielle Jennings on her new book, Abstract Video: The Moving Image in Contemporary Art

Cover image courtesy of University of California Press

Gabrielle Jennings (MFA 94 Grad Art) is a multi-media artist and Associate Professor teaching in ArtCenter’s Graduate Art program. Most recently, Jennings has edited a collection of essays to be published by University of California Press: Abstract Video: The Moving Image in Contemporary Art (forthcoming Fall 2015). This groundbreaking volume includes a diverse set of essays centered around the question of abstraction in the moving image arts.

Jennings has been artist in residence at Kunstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin and 200 Gertrude Street Artist Spaces, Melbourne and has been honored with support from such organizations as the Art Matters Fellowship, Philip Morris Kunstforderung, and the Samsung Faculty Enrichment Grant. Among others, writers Harold Fricke, Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe, Cay Sophie Rabinowitz, and Jan Tumlir have written about her work.

Jennings received a BFA from the University of California, San Diego. There she had the opportunity to study with artists such as Eleanor Antin and Allan Kaprow. She then studied with Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe, Patti Podesta, Mike Kelley, Stephen Prina, Lita Albuquerque and Sabina Ott in the Graduate Art program at ArtCenter.

With her book due to be released next month, Jennings answered a few questions about the broad spectrum of personal, professional and creative experiences informing her writing and video creative practice as well as her journey from student to faculty member in ArtCenter’s Graduate Art program.

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m-a-u-s-e-r installation explores how nature became the digital world’s aesthetic obsession

Asli Serbest (left) and Mona Mahall selecting images of artificial palm trees for the Natural Wifi installation in Media Design Practices’ Wind Tunnel Gallery at ArtCenter’s South Campus. Photo: m-a-u-s-e-r

You know those artificial rocks people use to hide pipes, pumps and other domestic structural elements deemed too aesthetically displeasing for a proper residential landscape? Turns out they’re not the most comfortable objects to sit on for an extended period of time.

Nevertheless, that’s how I spent 45 minutes last week—sitting atop wheel-mounted fake rocks and talking with their creators, Asli Serbest and Mona Mahall, the Stuttgart- and Istanbul-based art, design and architecture duo who go by the nom de guerre micro architecture unit star energy ray, or m-a-u-s-e-r for short.

I met with them to discuss Natural Wi-Fi, their research project that culminated in an installation in Wind Tunnel Gallery, part of ArtCenter’s Graduate Center for Critical Practice, that explored the material byproducts of the Internet as well as how Nature has become the online world’s aesthetic obsession.

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Writer Seeks Same: Film faculty Douglas J. Eboch and Paul Guay discuss the pitfalls and pleasures of screenwriting partnerships

Spanky and Stymie form a partnership in Paul Guay's The Little Rascals (1994).

Spanky and Stymie, classic partners, pledging “No girls allowed” in Paul Guay’s The Little Rascals (1994).

History is full of partnerships. Some, like Adam and Eve, can be very productive. Others end in ruin, such as Lancelot and King Arthur, when the former’s secret love affair undid the latter’s kingdom. The same is true in Hollywood where screenwriting partners are an integral part of the machinery—and mythology—of the business. Understanding what to look for in a writing partner, and why to work with one in the first place, is crucial to making sure the drama stays on the page.

Film faculty Douglas J. Eboch interviewed fellow Film faculty Paul Guay on his fruitful writing career in, and out of, partnerships. Continue reading →

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Student designers incorporate quantified self metrics into mind-bogglingly innovative devices for people with disabilities

Panoramic shot of students in the Exploring the Quantified Self class

Panoramic shot of students in the Envisioning the Quantified Self class

Graphic Design student Leah Demeter found herself in the unique position of acting as both designer and potential consumer in one of her recent product design classes at Art Center. That’s because her team had chosen a challenge particularly relevant to her: develop a better captioning device for the hearing impaired.

“As someone with profound hearing loss,” Demeter says, “I face communications challenges on a daily basis. Captioning is one of the tools I use to help me follow conversations I would otherwise miss, but there are problems with the current design.”

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You go, grads: Let the Summer Graduation festivities begin!

Graduating students with friends and family following Spring 2015 commencement. Photo: John Dlugolecki

“Sun is shining. Weather is sweet. Make you wanna move your dancing feet.” Bob Marley

This Saturday, following a sometimes exhaustive, always intensive, memorably vigorous and astonishingly creative commitment to making and learning, 91 ArtCenter students will receive their diplomas. This will be the second graduation ceremony to be held at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium, a thankfully climate-controlled venue conveniently located between Hillside and South campuses.

As the day approaches, let’s celebrate these creative and talented individuals who are about to take on the world. Here’s the lowdown for the week:

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View from the Bridge: Reflecting on #ADA25, inclusive design and Ed Roberts’ pivotal role as a pioneer for independent living

Ed Roberts being sworn in by California Governor Jerry Brown as the State Director of Rehabilitation in 1975. Photo courtesy of the Metropolitan Transportation Committee

Ed Roberts in 1976 being sworn in by California Governor Jerry Brown as the State Director of Rehabilitation. Photo courtesy of the Metropolitan Transportation Committee

Last month marked the 25th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, a groundbreaking piece of civil rights legislation that prohibits discrimination against people with disabilities and guarantees that those individuals are afforded the same opportunities as everyone else. Or, as the Justice Department puts it, the Act guarantees that people with disabilities can “participate in the mainstream of American life.”

This anniversary means a great deal to me. Prior to coming to ArtCenter, I spent five years deeply involved in the development and building of the Ed Roberts Campus. This stunning and groundbreaking facility, situated atop the Ashby BART Station in Berkeley, was created by a number of disability organizations to serve as the global resource for the disability community.

The man whose name graces the campus, Ed Roberts, inspired the independent living movement and is widely considered the father of the Americans with Disabilities Act. His story is both thought provoking and exhilarating.

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Influencing the influencers: Your essential guide to succeeding as an intrapreneur

Errol Gerson courtesy of Laurel Johnson Photography

Not a day that goes by without an article on some great entrepreneurial success story. These pieces point to thriving digital giants like Airbnb, Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, GoPro, DropBox, Uber. But in point of fact there are literally hundreds and hundreds of entrepreneurial successes who might not have gone public for $X Billion, but are nonetheless responsible for creating jobs, revenue and spin-off opportunities and look-a-likes. But seldom do we hear of these. And they are virtually never interviewed on CNBC or anywhere else for that matter. Are these bright, energetic, hard-working companies any less successful than their mega counterparts? My answer to that rhetorical question is a resounding no.

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ArtCenter News

ArtCenter College of Design

ArtCenter at Night’s creative entrepreneurs deliver the ultimate roadmap to success

Going bold and going home: ArtCenter’s graphic identity, past and present

Q&A with Grad Art faculty member and alum Gabrielle Jennings on her new book, Abstract Video: The Moving Image in Contemporary Art

m-a-u-s-e-r installation explores how nature became the digital world’s aesthetic obsession

Writer Seeks Same: Film faculty Douglas J. Eboch and Paul Guay discuss the pitfalls and pleasures of screenwriting partnerships

Student designers incorporate quantified self metrics into mind-bogglingly innovative devices for people with disabilities

You go, grads: Let the Summer Graduation festivities begin!

Influencing the influencers: Your essential guide to succeeding as an intrapreneur