“Design for UNICEF” Showcase in New York

Media Design Practices Grad Students present Uganda projects March 28

Art Center Media Design Practices graduate students, in collaboration with the College’s Designmatters social impact department, are in New York this week, showcasing groundbreaking projects that feature insights from design research and prototypes created at the UNICEF Innovation Lab in Kampala, Uganda. The event is part of “Design for UNICEF” on Thurs., March 28, 2013 from 10 to 11:30 a.m. at the UNICEF House, located in the Danny Kaye Visitors Centre at the United Nations.

The seven students’ projects, aimed at addressing issues of sustainability, access and equity, grew out of a partnership between Art Center’s MDP/Field track graduate program and the UNICEF Innovation Lab. Faculty members Chris Csikszentmihalyi, Sean Donahue and anthropologist Elizabeth Chin head up the team. The student cohort — Jeff Hall, Maria Lamadrid, Judy Toretti, Betsy Kalven, Elizabeth Gin, Jacob Brancsi and An Mina — made multiple visits to Uganda and immersed itself in a broad range of issues challenging the country’s youth.

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Dot Film Fest Makes Impressive Debut

Zack Snyder Inspires and Credits Art Center for Lasting Friendships, Filmmaking Foundation

Faculty-Produced Movies are Hot Sellers at SXSW, Encourage Next Gen

Director Zack Snyder speaks at DIFF | LA

On March 16, 2013, the Dot Independent Film Festival (DIFF | LA) made a smashing box office debut at Art Center’s Hillside Campus. The daylong event featured award-winning student films from around the world, several prestigious entertainment industry speakers and many inspirational moments shared by the next gen filmmakers in attendance.

Man of Steel director and alumnus Zack Snyder FILM 89 kicked off the creative confab with entertaining comments about his days on campus. He called the experience “art boot camp” and said the attrition rate “was like Vietnam.”

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$1 Million Parsons Foundation Grant Supports Art Center’s South Campus Expansion

“Helping to create the best possible Los Angeles”

People gather at South Campus for an evening exhibition.

The planned expansion of Art Center College of Design’s South Campus recently received a significant endorsement when the College was awarded a grant of $1 million from The Ralph M. Parsons Foundation.

The grant, which will be used to defray the cost of the 2012 purchase of a former U.S. Postal Service property at 950 South Raymond in Pasadena, will enable the College to extend its educational reach and resources while invigorating art and design education. The expanded South Campus is expected to be ready for use by students and faculty by September, in time for the beginning of the 2013–2014 academic year.

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Alum Nicholas Alan Cope’s book launch March 28 in New York highlights seven-year project documenting Los Angeles architecture

From ‘Whitewash’ by Nicholas Alan Cope, published by powerHouse Books.

Nicholas Alan Cope sees Los Angeles as a city of contrasts, with “dueling public narratives of glamour and cynicism” legible in its stark, modern architecture. In his new book of black and white photographs, Whitewash, he dramatizes that contrast by making elegant use of the extremes of light and shadow produced by the intensity of the Southern California sun.

Published by New York’s powerHouse Books, with a foreword by California-born, Paris-based fashion designer Rick Owens, and distributed by Random House, the book’s April release will be celebrated with a launch party at Mondo Cane in Tribeca on Thurs., March 28, on the opening night of a gallery exhibition of Cope’s large-format photographs from the book. The exhibition continues through April 13.

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Alum Jason Hill wins MIT Accelerate Grand Prize for next-gen prosthetic design

Art Center alum Jason Hill, a human factors researcher and industrial designer, is part of a four-person, interdisciplinary team that won the $10,000 Grand Prize in the MIT Accelerate Contest, for a prosthetic socket designed to change its shape throughout a patient’s lifetime.

Hill and his team have formed The BETH Project (Benevolent Technologies for Health), dedicated to developing high-impact, low-cost healthcare solutions for underserved populations. Their February 19 win over seven other teams qualifies The BETH Project for a spot in the series’ final round, the MIT Launch Contest, whose top prize is $100,000. The results of the Launch Contest will be announced May 15, 2013.

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TEDxYouth at Caltech: Brain Food

TEDxYouth served up generous helpings of Brain Food at California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Among the cooks in the kitchen: Art Center Trustee Bill Gross; Professor and Director of Sustainability Initiatives Heidrun Mumper-Drumm; and Product Design alumna Mariana Prieto, who completed the Designmatters Concentration in Art and Design for Social Impact.

The day-long event took place January 19, 2013, and 8-minute videos of the talks were recently made available online. If you have an appetite for fresh ideas, watch!

A Perfect Storm of Opportunity: Bill Gross at TEDxYouth@Caltech

Bill Gross is a lifelong entrepreneur who has been starting companies since he was 12 years old. He has personally started more than 100 companies in the last 42 years, of which more than 40 have gone public or been acquired. Gross is the Founder and CEO of Idealab, a “company factory” based in Pasadena, which he started in 1996. Gross is credited with starting the first online business directory company with CitySearch, the first online car retailed with CarsDirect, the first paid search engine with Goto.com/Overture, and the longest-running technology incubator where he has been the creator of all these companies. A graduate of the California Institute of Technology, Gross currently serves on its Board of Trustees. He also serves on the Board of the Art Center College of Design, and more than 20 technology companies in California.

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Henrik Fisker  to address Beverly Hills business forum April 9

Notable Art Center alumnus and leading electric car designer Henrik Fisker will be speaking at Beverly Hills Tomorrow, a forum sponsored by the Beverly Hills Chamber of Commerce, on Tuesday, April 9, 2013. The founder and former executive chairman of Fisker Automotive, whose tenacity and passion to pursue a childhood dream of becoming a car designer became a reality after completing Art Center’s renowned Transportation Design program in 1989.

In addition to Fisker, the forum will feature: Emcee Frank Mottek, veteran broadcaster and host of the top-rated Business Hour and anchor of Money News, on KNX 1070 News Radio; Michael Burns (Vice Chairman of Lionsgate Films), who helped engineer the acquisition of Summit Entertainment; Dr. Eduardo Marbán (Director, Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute); and Lynda Resnick (Vice Chairman, Roll Global, a holding company whose business divisions include Teleflora, POM Wonderful and Fiji Water).

The Chamber, a membership organization founded in 1923, works with city officials, local businesses and the community at large to promote the local economy. The audience will include business people ranging from small business owners to chief executives and entrepreneurs.

To attend, register by April 5. For more information, visit beverlyhillschamber.com/tomorrow.

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Alum Bruce Osborn photographs tsunami survivors for National Geographic Japan

The March 2013 issue of National Geographic magazine’s Japan edition features Art Center alum Bruce Osborn’s photographs of parents and children in Tohoku, two years after the 2011 earthquake and tsunami that devastated the region, resulting in a nuclear disaster and the deaths and displacement of thousands of residents. The vivid, colorful portraits, taken against the backdrop of affected areas, capture the resilient spirit of those who live there.

Born and raised in Los Angeles, Osborn has lived in Japan since 1980. After studying Photography at Art Center College of Design, he worked as the photographer for Phonograph Record Magazine before moving to Japan where he continues to work as a photographer and filmmaker. His Oyako project, which takes its name from the Japanese word for “parent and child,” grew out of a series of photographs he began in 1982 and continues as a popular annual tradition throughout Japan on the fourth Sunday of July.

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A Decade That Matters: Leading the Way in Social Innovation

Ten years after its founding, Designmatters is making a difference within and beyond Art Center.

By ALEX CARSWELL

“This University is not maintained…merely to help its graduates have an economic advantage in the life struggle. There is certainly a greater purpose, and I’m sure you recognize it.”

—John F. Kennedy, October 14, 1960, speaking to students at the University of Michigan

Faculty member La Mer Walker consults with students and UN Population Fund partner Christian Delsol.

As he campaigned for the White House, John F. Kennedy challenged America’s younger generation to use their talent not just to better themselves, but also to somehow make a difference in the world. Shortly after taking office in 1961, President Kennedy formed the Peace Corps, a transformational government agency that celebrated America’s core values, galvanized our national will and has facilitated service in support of that “greater purpose” for more than half a century.

Forty years later, Art Center students were surveyed on their desire to have some sort of curricular “Peace Corps-type” opportunity. The overwhelmingly positive response set the wheels in motion for what would soon become Designmatters at Art Center, the College’s innovative social-impact initiative. In addition to the Peace Corps model, the brain trust that conceived and developed Designmatters also had other influences. Erica Clark—then Art Center’s senior vice president of International Initiatives—had investigated a number of socially engaged design programs at European institutions. And here at Art Center, “Community Workshop” was already a popular graphic design class that engaged students in projects with local social-impact objectives.

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Roger Martin to visit Art Center to share “How Strategy Really Works”

On Wednesday, March 20, Roger Martin, dean of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto and author of The Design of Business: Why Design Thinking is the Next Competitive Advantage, will stop by Art Center’s Ahmanson Auditorium for a free presentation and signing of Playing to Win: How Strategy Really Works, which he co-wrote with A.G. Lafley, the former chairman & CEO of Procter & Gamble.

Working together, Martin and Lafley doubled Procter & Gamble’s sales, quadrupled its profits and increased its market value by more than $100 billion in just ten years. With Playing to Win, they show how leaders in organizations of all sizes can guide everyday actions with larger strategic goals built around clear, essential elements that determine business success. The book recounts stories of how Procter & Gamble successfully applied this method to iconic brands such as Gillette, Swiffer and Febreze.

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ArtCenter News

ArtCenter College of Design

“Design for UNICEF” Showcase in New York

Dot Film Fest Makes Impressive Debut

$1 Million Parsons Foundation Grant Supports Art Center’s South Campus Expansion

Alum Nicholas Alan Cope’s book launch March 28 in New York highlights seven-year project documenting Los Angeles architecture

Alum Jason Hill wins MIT Accelerate Grand Prize for next-gen prosthetic design

TEDxYouth at Caltech: Brain Food

Henrik Fisker  to address Beverly Hills business forum April 9

Alum Bruce Osborn photographs tsunami survivors for National Geographic Japan

A Decade That Matters: Leading the Way in Social Innovation

Ten years after its founding, Designmatters is making a difference within and beyond Art Center.

Roger Martin to visit Art Center to share “How Strategy Really Works”