Tag Archives: Art Center College of Design

Food photography power couple: Alumni Q&A with Peden + Munk

Unknown-1UnknownTaylor Peden and Jen Munkvold met as Photography and Imaging students at Art Center, fell in love and in 2006 teamed up creatively as Peden + Munk. This inspired partnership now counts among its credits photo essay-style editorial and commercial work — including covers — for Bon Appétit, Sunset Magazine, Glamour, GQ, Food and Wine, The New York Times Magazine, Langham Hotels, William Sonoma and Crate & Barrel and other major companies and magazines, chefs, restaurants and hotels.

Just in time for summer, the pair’s trademark color-saturated, sumptuous food photography can also be seen in The Grilling Book: The Definitive Guide from Bon Appétit; Sweet, by Los Angeles-based baker Valerie Gordon; and A New Napa Cuisine, Peden + Munk’s most recent collaboration with three-star Michelin chef Christopher Kostow, is forthcoming in October from Ten Speed Press. They also recently launched their motion work with this piece for Bon Appétit, profiling Martha’s Vineyard restaurateur, Chris Fisher.

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View from the Bridge: Grounded in reality and ready for professional liftoff

Students present work to Honda Research and Development executives.

In a Sponsored Project, Graphic Design student Sungmoon Chung, center, presents work to alumnus and Honda R&D Americas Division Director Dave Marek (BS 87 Industrial), far right.

Summertime is traditionally set aside for leisurely activities—poolside lounging, pleasure reading and, at least through June, watching the Stanley Cup Final.

But here at Art Center, our students are as busy as ever. Many students continue their studies through the Summer term, while others, thanks to our dedicated staff in the Office of Career + Professional Development, scatter across the globe working as interns at an impressive array of organizations. It’s amazing, really, when you stop to look at where our students have landed internships:

  • Illustration student Adriana Crespo is at design firm IDEO in San Francisco;
  • Film student Juliana Rowlands is at director Roman Coppola’s production company The Director’s Bureau in Los Angeles;
  • Transportation Design student Harrison Scott Yen is at Chrysler’s Street and Racing Technology division in Michigan;
  • Graphic Design student Siyun Oh is at the Museum of Modern Art in New York;
  • Transportation Design student Yang Fu is at vehicle manufacturer Renault in France;
  • Product Design student Benji Kurada is at Google in Switzerland; and
  • Transportation Design student Sean Peterson is at Suzuki Motor Corporation in Japan.

I could go on, but I think you get the picture. These are not your everyday assignments; our students are working with some of today’s most prestigious companies.

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Art Center alumni notes: April + May 2014

Images from Matthew Rolston: Talking Heads, on view June 7 - July 12

Images from Matthew Rolston: Talking Heads, on view June 7 – July 12

True to this blooming season, creatively fertility has flourished over the past few months among Art Center’s alumni. Below you’ll find a sampling of some of their recent undertakings and achievements. And in an effort to more comprehensively represent our creative community, we’d like to encourage the alums among us to send us a line about any noteworthy events, achievements or projects you’d like us to include in future editions of this digest.

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Warner Bros. President Greg Silverman, Directors Tarsem and Tom Kuntz offer insider tips at Dot Independent Film Festival

2014-DIFF-image-E_Williams

Film lovers and film makers from around the world will be celebrated and honored at DIFF LA, the Dot Independent Film Festival of Los Angeles, a student organized gathering on Saturday, June 7, 2014 from 9 a.m. until 10 p.m. on the Art Center College of Design Hillside Campus at 1700 Lida Street in Pasadena. The event is free and open to the public. More than 200 U.S. and international student filmmakers vying for exposure in the celluloid landscape submitted work hoping to be selected to screen and maybe even stand out as an award winner in this 2nd annual festival.

Kicking off the event is Greg Silverman, president, Creative Development and Worldwide Production, Warner Bros. Pictures and Art Center Trustee. Additional special guests making appearances during the day are film director and Art Center alumnus Tarsem (Immortals, Mirror Mirror, The Fall) and commercial director Tom Kuntz (Old Spice, Skittles, The Man Your Man Could Smell Like).

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Sweet bread, technology and democracy: behind the scenes at #techLA

Amy Shimshon-Santo (far left) moderates the #techLA panel at City Hall

Amy Shimshon-Santo (far left) moderates the #techLA panel at City Hall

“Mmm, pan dulce,” said Mayor Eric Garcetti. Around the Green Room table behind the Los Angeles City Council Chambers, diverse leaders gathered around cafecito and conchas de vainilla o chocolate. It was 8:30 a.m. on a cool Saturday morning. Our disciplines ranged from transportation and interactive design to Smart Grid technologies, and from electric vehicle infrastructure and urban planning to community economic development.

We came together at the invitation of Mayor Eric Garcetti and Peter Marx (Chief Innovation and Technology Officer) to galvanize the technology track of #techLA– the city’s inaugural Technology and Innovation Conference held in City Hall.

Tasked by Marx with facilitating a panel on the future of mobility, I seized the opportunity to spark an interdisciplinary conversation on the topic. Representing Art Center with me were two respected innovators: Geoff Wardle (Executive Director of the Graduate Transportation Design program) and Maggie Hendrie (Chair of the Interaction Design undergraduate program). Later that day, Art Center Graduate Transportation student, Retro Poblano, also presented his research on automated shuttles to the public.

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Advertising students ride their Trojan horse to an ANDY Award win

In April I traveled to New York with Art Center Film alum Armen Perian, with whom I collaborated on the above spot, TROJAN | Experiments, whose creative team also included cinematographer, Mike Reyes and producer, Greta Kahlitz. The purpose of the trip was to attend the 2014 International ANDY Awards Show and Party at TriBeCa Rooftop. For the past 50 years, ANDY’s have been the gold standard in honoring creative excellence in advertising. So we were incredibly honored to attend the prestigious event, where Chairman David Droga and the jury honored the night’s winners and celebrated the boldest names in advertising, including industry legend David Abbott, Lee Clow, Jeff Goodby, Bob Greenberg, Sir John Hegarty, Rich Silverstein, Mary Wells Lawrence and Dan Wieden.

We had a delightful time, and TROJAN | Experiments received an International ANDY Award in the student category. So how and why did we produce an award-winning spot for condoms, of all things? Read on to find out.

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Watch the thrilling conclusions to the latest Myspace student video projects

This past spring, three students working in different disciplines (Photography, Graduate Transportation Design and Interaction Design) bravely chose to accept the challenge/opportunity (those last two words may as well be permanently fused—no slash necessary— when it comes to artistic endeavors) to reveal the agony and the ecstasy, the challenges and the epic fails that go into conceiving and creating a project over the course of a term. They had enlisted in Art Center’s ongoing collaboration with Myspace to highlight Art Center’s unique approach to creativity and diligently, digitally tracked his/her progress with a trio of videos shot at the beginning, middle and end of the creative journey.

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Grand Theft Auto: RISE places Film grad in the driver’s seat of a Jaguar spot

Grand Theft Auto: RISE – Live Action Short Film from Gevorg Karensky on Vimeo.

A lifelong fan of cars and games, Gevorg Karensky has fashioned a filmmaking career that brilliantly blends both passions. Born in Russia, he emigrated to the United States in 2002 at the age of 14. For his undergrad Transportation Design thesis at Art Center, the aspiring-surgeon-turned-filmmaker collaborated with Film classmate Cathy Peng (BFA 10) on the game and live action hybrid Grand Theft Auto: RISE.

It became an immediate viral sensation, generating more than 13 million YouTube views and earning Karensky a spot in Saatchi & Saatchi’s New Directors Showcase at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival. Critics praised his raw talent. “[It] blows every other fan-made project I’ve ever laid eyes on completely out of the water” (Sam Gibbs, Gizmodo UK).

Karensky recently wrapped A New Dawn, a launch film for the Jaguar F-TYPE R luxury sports car, which bears his filmic signature that at times blurs the lines between the real and the virtual.

“Art Center opened the doors for me to start creating my very first projects and to experiment,” he says. “It was my home and I was there every single day from morning to night. [It] also gave me a great platform for entry into the real world.”

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This story originally appeared in Art Center’s Spring 2014 Dot magazine, where you can read more about alumni and faculty achievements.

Oh, modernist pioneers! Recent grad Ellen Surrey illustrates California’s trailblazing women

Ellen Surrey is a fervent flea market flâneur. “My greatest inspiration comes from American nostalgia, and a single thrift store find can hold so much history,” says the Spring 2014 Illustration graduate whose work is featured above and on the cover of the current issue of Dot magazine.

Her love of Americana is evident throughout her work, including her illustrations of folklore hero Paul Bunyan, a series that marked an artistic turning point for Surrey. “I really pushed myself stylistically and medium-wise and from that point on I started to gain a lot more confidence as an illustrator.”

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Photo alum Star Foreman goes for baroque with Golden Age glam Hollywood portraits

Los Angeles photographer Star Foreman’s vibrant, campy tableaux have defined publications such as LA Weekly and Pasadena Magazine.

Her family history proved pivotal in getting her very first gig with LA Weekly. Creative director Darrick Rainer liked Foreman’s work and interviewed her around the time he was planning the Weekly’s first annual theater issue. When he found out that she grew up going to plays and musicals almost every weekend because her grandfather was T. E. Foreman, a newspaper theater critic for 50 years, he assigned her the cover on the spot. Rainer later chose Foreman’s work for the paper’s Top Covers of 2013.

Foreman’s trademark tableaux are inspired by Golden Age Hollywood, burlesque, and a love of fashion and design. “I love shooting fashion,” she says, “because at any given moment fashion is changeable. Great fashion photography transmutes itself, becomes art that is enjoyed for its aesthetics, absent the need to sell something or someone.” Continue reading →