Tag Archives: Berlin

From techno to wearable tech: Study abroad students showcase Berlin-influenced wearables

“Head to Toe, Berlin” was a study abroad upper term course involving ten students from Product Design, Interaction Design, Graphic Design and Illustration. With nine weeks in Berlin, this immersed students in the design, textile and fashion industries of Berlin. Through field trips to designer studios, museums as well as input from professional guest speakers and studio work sessions, students were empowered to develop their own collection of designs focusing on head to toe wearables: apparel, accessories, soft goods, textiles and/or wearable tech.

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How Design touts TestLab Berlin’s life-changing impact on its participants and design itself

groupshot_testlab_berlin

A new environment can stimulate inventive thinking that leads to brilliant design work—but according to the TestLab Berlin participants, it might just stir you to change your way of life, too.

TestLab Berlin is a study abroad program offered by Art Center College of Design that is structured as a series of immersive 14-week trans-disciplinary projects under the direction of Nik Hafermaas, graphic design department chair and executive director of Berlin Programs. Students from a range of studio majors offered by the college—including illustration, photography, environmental, interaction, product and graphic design—can apply to participate. Twelve students are selected to travel from Pasadena, CA to Berlin to work for a semester at Art Center’s pop-up design studio in the recently renovated Bikini Berlin, an historic 1950s urban marketplace and recreation center located across from the city’s famed Zoological Garden.

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From Teen Midol to Macklemore: Storytelling by Graduate Film students takes many forms

Still from Matthew Ward's Damned.

Still from Matthew Ward’s Damned, the story of a woman who escapes a research facility and discovers the city around her devastated by a virus.

Art Center’s graduate Film program offers developing filmmakers an immersive opportunity to refine and expand their visual storytelling abilities. For the new 2015-16 Graduate Studies Viewbook, we profiled three members of that community: Lizbeth Chappell, Mego Lin and Matthew Ward. Here are their stories.

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Rhapsody in goop: Graduate Art alumnus Michael Zahn’s Madita pays tribute to his muse

Video projection still from Graduate Art alumnus Michael Zahn's (MFA 14) thesis show Madita.

Video projection still from Graduate Art alumnus Michael Zahn’s (MFA 14) thesis show Madita.

Every artist has a muse: F. Scott Fitzgerald had Zelda; Coco Chanel had Etienne Balsan; and John Waters had…Divine.

For a more contemporary example, look no further than the cover of Art Center’s recently published Graduate Studies Viewbook. It’s there, underneath the diecut lettering, where you’ll find an image of a bright green alginate cast of a human hand.

That hand belongs to, and was one element of, Graduate Art alumnus Michael Zahn’s (MFA 14) thesis show Madita, which was inspired by someone he met as a foreign exchange student at Kunsthochschule Weissensee in Berlin.

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Art Center pop-up studio opens doors at BIKINI BERLIN in the heart of City West

Art Center’s pop-up studio in BIKINI BERLIN

Over the past 12 years Art Center has built a rich track record of studio abroad projects in the German capital. What started out as an anarchistic design intervention squatting an abandoned drugstore back in 2003, has evolved into a robust educational program in the thriving urban environment of Berlin, sought after by students, faculty and alumni. The ensuing suite of semester-long transdisciplinary projects was co-created by Nik Hafermaas and David Mocarski, the department chairs of Graphic Design and Environmental Design respectively. Under the labels “Fresh Eyes Berlin” and later “Testlab Berlin,” the two majors plus the Illustration department have hosted more than ten projects combined.

Testlab Berlin projects use art and design strategies to envision how we will live in the future and are often sponsored by brands that are seeking genuinely fresh creative insights derived from first-hand cultural immersion in the multi-cultural laboratory that is Berlin.

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