Tag Archives: Dieter Rams

Art Center in the News: February-March 2014

Maggie Hendrie on the set of TakePart Live

Maggie Hendrie on the set of TakePart Live

Art Center students, faculty, staff and alumni have been making news while making their mark at on the art and design worlds. For those who may have missed a headline or two, we curated this handy highlight reel of our recent media clips:

Don’t miss two lengthy, live interview segments we arranged for Interaction Design Chair, Maggie Hendrie and ACCD student Alex Cabunoc on the new cable program TakePart Live—a show tailored to Millennials (age 18-34) that reaches 40 million-plus households through Participant Media’s Pivot TV network. (Participant Media is the award-winning, socially and politically progressive production company responsible for An Inconvenient Truth, The Cove, Lincoln, among other enlightening and edifying films and TV shows).

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Art Center in the News, April 2013

In case you missed it, Dotted Line brings you a monthly roundup of media coverage.

From legendary designer Dieter Rams speaking at the 2013 Spring Term graduation ceremony to collaborations with Clemson University, Wieden + Kennedy and The Getty Museum, catch up on any news you may have missed with our April media roundup.

Alumnus Yves Béhar

Alumnus Yves Béhar was on the cover of San Franciso Magazine’s Innovation Issue.

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Dieter Rams Urges Graduates Toward a Responsible Design Ethos

Dieter Rams at Art Center

Dieter Rams receives an honorary doctorate of arts from Art Center President Lorne M. Buchman. He concluded his speech by invoking Gandhi’s admonition, “We must be the change we want to see in the world.”

“Tomorrow’s world will be designed by the design students of today — by you — and while this is a great opportunity, this is also a great challenge and a great responsibility,” Dieter Rams told graduating Art Center students during the 2013 Spring Graduation Ceremony on Sat., April 20.

Accepting an honorary doctorate of arts from Art Center, the legendary designer was introduced by Product Design Chair Karen Hofmann and delivered his speech in German, translated live by an English-language interpreter. Rams thoughtfully reflected on his past, sharing lessons gleaned over a long and influential career as a product designer and university professor, while voicing concerns about the future and stressing designers’ changing responsibility in a changing world.

“Today’s main challenges are the protection of the natural environment and overcoming mindless consumption,” he said, urging students toward “a design ethos that goes way beyond complacency and arbitrariness.”

He presented five essential dimensions of design, along with his “formula for sustainable production”: Less but better! Much, much less, and much, much better. He asserted that “Design is primarily an intellectual process. It’s a procedure and an approach to create innovation and new meaning.”

Following are highlights of Rams’ speech:

 

 

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Spring 2013 Graduation Events

Campus is buzzing as it kicks off its Spring Term 2013 graduation week! Here’s what’s in store as the College prepares to launch the next wave of creative talent in to the professional world.

Graduation at Art Center

Thursday, April 18

Industry leaders and professionals, employers, corporate partners, donors and alumni will get the first look at the Spring Term’s graduating artists and designers at this year’s invitation-only Graduation Show Preview. The show will feature student accomplishments from major fields of study at Art Center, including Advertising, Entertainment Design, Environmental Design, Film, Graphic Design, Illustration, Photography and Imaging, Product Design, Transportation Design, Graduate Industrial Design and Graduate Media Design Practices.

Graduation Show Preview at Hillside Campus is held from 6:00 to 9:30 p.m. and transitions into a private reception hosted by Alumni Relations immediately following. Simultaneously, from 6:00 to 9:30 p.m., Graduate Media Design Practices hosts the MDP/Lab Thesis Exhibition at South Campus where the world famous Kogi BBQ Truck will be parked to feed attendees.

Saturday, April 20

Join us in the Sculpture Garden at Hillside Campus from 4:00 to 6:00 p.m. as we celebrate the newest graduating class during our graduation ceremony. Legendary designer Dieter Rams will receive an honorary doctorate degree and deliver the commencement address. We will also hear from valedictorian and Illustration student Agnes Hyun-Jeong Lee and present the Art Center Student Leadership Award to Product Design student Vladimir Almonnord.

After the ceremony, Graduation Show opens to the public from 6:00 to 9:00 p.m. so everyone can enjoy the work of the newest Art Center graduates. In addition to Hillside Campus activities, Graduate Art and Graduate Media Design Practices hosts Graduation Show at South Campus from 6:00 to 11:00 p.m.

The parking lot at Hillside Campus will fill up, so anyone attending Graduation Show on Saturday will be able to take complimentary shuttles to and from the Rose Bowl, Lot K beginning at 6:00 p.m. Self-parking will be available at South Campus throughout the evening.

Congratulations to our Spring Term 2013 graduates!

Dieter Rams to Receive Art Center Honorary Doctorate Degree

Art Center will award legendary designer Dieter Rams an Honorary Doctorate Degree on Sat., April 20 at 4pm at its Spring Term 2013 Graduation. The event is free and open to the public. As chief of design at Braun from 1961 until retiring in 1997, Rams was responsible for innovative design in radios, watches, record players, coffee makers, shavers and other objects that continue to influence functionality and aesthetic in today’s products.

Dieter Rams

Legendary designer Dieter Rams, Braun Chief of Design.

Generations of designers have been inspired by Rams’ work. Apple design chief Jonathan Ive said Apple products could be seen as homage to Rams, who created “surfaces that were without apology, bold, pure, perfectly proportioned, coherent and effortless.”

Art Center student Andrew Kim, who is graduating this year and has been hired to work at Microsoft, said in an article about Art Center and Rams in the March/April issue of Pasadena Magazine that “every child needs a superhero to look up to, and he has been mine.”

In 1980 Rams asked himself: “Is my design good design?” His famous list of “10 principles for good design” values design that is simple, harmonious and timeless. On his tenth principle, Rams said, “Good design is as little design as possible: less, but better, because it concentrates on the essential aspects, and the products are not burdened with non-essentials.”

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