Tag Archives: Environmental Design

An insider’s view of Art Center’s creative process with our latest round of Student/Space videos

 

Screen Shot 2014-10-29 at 4.10.04 PMArt Center has a reputation for putting students through their paces, challenging them to meet and exceed their wildest creative dreams. The work ethic instilled here is legendary as are the results of all that toiling, ideating, imagining and making.

But the journey from inspiration to finished creation has always been somewhat mysterious. So beginning last Fall, we set out to illuminate students’ creative process with the series of videos we’ve recently renamed Student Space. Now it’s become a bonafide ‘thing.’ Here’s how it’s done: We identify three students from different disciplines who are in the process of completing an ambitious project. Over the course of the term we work with them to create three videos capturing the launch, obstacles and completion of their finished work of art and/or design. At the end of the term, each student’s trio of episodes constitutes an intimate take on the agony and ecstasy of bringing an idea to life. The results have been fascinating, dramatic and nothing short of spectacular. Need proof? Check out this playlist on our YouTube page.

We’re particularly excited to introduce you to the newest group of Student Space participants with this latest round of videos. Pearlyn Lii is a Graphic Design student working on a Brian Eno book. Environmental Design student, Connie Bakshi is sending dispatches from Tokyo, where she’s participating in a collaboration with TAMA University. And Advertising student Rosie Geozalian is tackling a little subject known as human connection in her current campaign.

Join us in watching these works unfold over the remaining weeks of the term. Check this space for subsequent installments on November 22 and December 19.

Donghia scholarship winners draw inspiration from nature, food, and love

Austin Yang's Grace chair won the Editor's Award for seating at ICFF 2014

Austin Yang’s Grace chair won the Editor’s Award for seating at ICFF 2014

Good design has its rewards. In the case of Environmental Design students Haidy Gong and Austin Yang, reward comes in the form of $30,000 in scholarship support from the Angelo Donghia Foundation. Gong and Yang are among only 12 winners of the 2014 Student Scholarship Program in Interior Design, which gives awards to rising college seniors pursuing bachelor degrees. We checked in with the winners to get their reaction to the scholarship and to find out what makes for an award-winning design.

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Money magazine ranks Art Center grads among the most employable in the nation

 

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Alumnus Dan Goods, Visual Strategist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, stands with “Refraction,” an artwork he created with fellow alum David Delgado.

An Art Center education doesn’t come cheaply. It requires a high-deposit, high-return investment of resources, tapping reserves of creativity and cash. But Art Center students know these initial sacrifices will pay off down the road when they emerge with an education custom designed to equip them for creatively and financially fulfilling careers. Money magazine reinforced the College’s reputation for boosting its grads’ professional prospects this week when it ranked Art Center third on its list of 25 of the best college values.

In response to millions of parents seeking colleges that strike a balance between affordability and professional prestige  and training, Money devised a new tool to measure a college’s ROI.  The new ranking places Art Center at number three on its “Value All-Star” list since, according to the editors’ careful calculations, Art Center alumni exceed expectations when it comes to earning. Money found that our grads take home an extra $12,000 per year early in their careers, using criteria based on three equally weighted categories: quality, affordability and career outcomes. The magazine defines outcomes almost entirely in terms of how much students earn after graduation.

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Life after ICFF: Q&A with Environmental Design alum Chris Adamick

 

Chris Adamick

Chris Adamick

Chris Adamick (BA 07 Environmental Design) is the manager of Global Marketing, Store Design at Gap’s New York headquarters. He is an award-winning designer whose multidisciplinary, large- and small-scale work includes commercial, civic, educational and residential design. Adamick maintains his own studio, Chris Adamick Design, for independent projects, and has collaborated with Bernhardt Design, among others. Bernhardt honored Adamick in 2011 by featuring his Audio chair in a retrospective at ICFF of its ongoing interdisciplinary studio with Art Center College of Design, which educates students in the process of designing products for production in the commercial market. Today Adamick’s client list includes Bed Bath and Beyond, W Hotels, Disney and Haworth and he has held prominent positions at Pentagram, Rios Clementi Hale Studios, ByLissoni, Studio Gaia and other high-profile companies.

The Dotted Line: What drew you to Art Center?

Chris Adamick: Jorge Pardo [the noted sculptor and an Art Center graduate], one of my professors at UCLA, opened my mind to art existing in the world beyond fine art—in architecture, in product design. He suggested Art Center. I looked at the Fine Art program first and it was stellar, just stellar, but when I saw the design work going on there [at the College], I instantly knew that was what I wanted to do.

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Art Center arrives in force at New York Design Week 2014


With New York Design Week in full swing, the city is teeming with design lovers and luminaries seeking a competitive edge on leading talent and trends. Art Center is featured at two major events: the high-profile International Contemporary Furniture Fair (ICFF) and WantedDesign. Attracting nearly 30,000 tastemakers in the worlds of interior design, architecture, retail, manufacturing, distribution and developers, ICFF is considered North America’s premiere showcase for contemporary design.

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Scholarship seeds a new generation of sustainability designers

From Sam Julius' 'Sustainable Urban Housing' entry

From Sam Julius’ ‘Sustainable Urban Housing’ entry

Our homes, cell phones and laptop screens are filled with thoughtful and functional design. But what about art that creates social impact? Can design influence change on global issues like sustainable housing, access to clean water and empowering disadvantaged women?

Projects featuring practical solutions to these concerns designed by Product, Illustration and Environmental Design students were selected as the winners of the 2013-2014 Denhart Family Sustainability Scholarship competition. Created by a generous gift from Gun Denhart, and son, Christian Denhart (BS 10 Product), the prizes are annually awarded to students addressing environmental and social causes in their work. The scholarships are devised to increase awareness of art and design’s unique capacity to advance sustainability.

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Donor scholarship enables South African student to realize her artistic dreams

Therese Swanepoel's final envisions a electrifying vision of Coachella

Therese Swanepoel’s final envisioned a electrifying vision of Coachella

Therese Swanepoel understands better than most people how a scholarship can change a life. The second-term Environmental Design major was on the brink of dropping out of Art Center due to unexpected financial hardship when she learned that she had been selected as the first recipient of the Joseph and Rebecca Lacko Annual Scholarship.

She was visiting her parents in her home country of South Africa when she got the news via email.  “I simply started crying,” Swanepoel recalls. “My family assumed something bad had happened and soon found out that my tears were tears of joy.”

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Environmental design frames Toyota’s story at L.A. Auto Show

Stuart Fingerhut at Toyota Live

Alumnus Stuart Fingerhut on the Toyota Live stage at the L.A. Auto Show.

Stuart Fingerhut, associate creative director at George P. Johnson experience marketing firm, is gushing over the thrill of seeing people engage with his first big car show exhibition for Toyota and Scion. We caught up with him during the L.A. Auto Show media preview days leading up to today’s public opening. “This is like completely bonkers for me,” he says. “As a designer, it feels like the pinnacle.”

“We’re telling the story of the brand in a physical space,” the Art Center Environmental Design alumnus explained about the design that will travel to other car confabs including Detroit, Frankfurt and Tokyo in 2014.

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Art Center students and alumni ignite Spark!

Student Mathias Hintermann's Aiguille short track speed skater headgear won a Spark! Award.

Student Mathias Hintermann’s Aiguille short track speed skater headgear won a Spark! Award.

With designs ranging from a portable desk for low-income children in India to lighting inspired by the beauty found in Japanese metal craft, Art Center students and alumni brought home several awards last week from the 2013 Spark International Design Awards.

Students and professionals from more than 27 countries across the globe competed in the categories of Experience Design, Product Design, Spaces Design, Transport Design, Communication Design, App Design and Concept Design, with awards ranging from Bronze Awards to the highest award, the Spark! Award.

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True confessions from Art Center at Night students, captured on video

Each term, Art Center at Night holds an open house, offering current and prospective students a brief glimpse at what goes on within the walls of its open-air classrooms. It’s a fleeting, but essential, experience for career-changers and seasoned and aspiring artists preparing to make the leap into what’s arguably the city’s most high-intensity after-hours creative education. It’s also an opportunity likely missed by anyone with extended working hours or family obligations (i.e., those who need it most).

Don’t fret. We’ve got your back. At a recent open house, we asked students to get in front of the camera and share with us what Art Center’s continuing studies program has meant to them. The answers were as diverse as the individuals themselves. See for yourself in the video above.

Perhaps it’s time to contemplate what Art Center will mean to you.