“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.
Tag Archives: BIKINI BERLIN
Design polymath Michael Sans immerses Bikini Berlin in a high-intensity trans-disciplinary experience
Michael Sans with Art Center students in Berlin
“Inspiring and helping each other goes both ways,” says Product Design alumnus Michael Sans of his engagement with students at Art Center Bikini Berlin, the College’s satellite studio where he is managing director.
Sans’ own education began at the workbench of his woodworker grandfather in a small German town on the Rhine. He apprenticed as a cabinetmaker, briefly studied architecture in Florence, and turned to product design when he entered the program at Art Center Europe in Switzerland—emerging forever shaped by its “professional approach, intense schedule, small classes and perfect facilities.”
Art Center’s Berlin program highlighted in Superior Magazine Q&A with Graphic Design’s Simon Johnston
Simon Johnston
The following interview with Graphic Design faculty member Simon Johnston originally appeared in Superior Magazine. We’re republishing it here because it’s incredibly illuminating about Art Center’s BIKINI Berlin program as well as the depth of Art Center’s iterative process. And it’s not every day that a faculty member makes the pages of a men’s fashion magazine!
We live in a world that is controlled and dominated by technology. But students from Art Center College of Design, who are currently guests in BIKINI Berlin, have carried out an experiment. Banned from any technology, they focused their creativity on the actual process of design, and worked with analog methods and tools in their creative process. The results are remarkable, and will be shown in the form of an exhibition on November 20th. This project is directed by the designer and typographer Simon Johnston.
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.