Tag Archives: Mariana Amatullo

Designmatters 15 buzzwords for 15 years: Co-creation

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Earlier this month, in association with ArtCenter’s 85th anniversary, Designmatters Co-Founder and Vice President, Mariana Amatullo, PhD, kicked off the 15 Years of Designmatters (#DM15Yrs) storytelling campaign. Designed to celebrate and commemorate the groundbreaking program’s achievements in social impact design, this multi-platform series will feature posts of various shapes and sizes by Designmatters faculty, alumni, students and partners. The following reflection on Safe Ninos field work in Chile by faculty members Penny Herskovitch and Dan Gottlieb offers empirical proof of the value of co-creation. 

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Doing well by doing good: ArtCenter students’ social impact innovations win big at 2015 IDEA awards

Though the hum of activity in the halls and classrooms of Hillside and South campuses has temporarily lulled as we await the start of the Fall term, Summer 2015 has ended on a high note with this week’s news that ArtCenter students’ innovative prototypes and projects were honored by the prestigious Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA) at the organization’s International Design Excellence Awards (IDEA) in Seattle on August 22.

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Art Center in the News | July 2014

 

National Geographic featured Art Center alumna xxx  and her award-winning device to detect hearing loss being tested on a baby at Vaani Vilas Hospital, Bangalore. Photo: ©Rolex Awards/ Ambroise Tézenasphoto

National Geographic featured Art Center alumna Neeti Kailas’s award-winning device to detect hearing loss being tested on a baby at Vaani Vilas Hospital, Bangalore. Photo: ©Rolex Awards/ Ambroise Tézenas

From National Geographic to The Huffington Post; from stylish sensors for your fingernails to a design to detect deafness in newborns, Art Center’s students, faculty, staff and alumni are media headliners. Click a few of the links below to get a taste of recent coverage about diverse subjects including a mobile home tour through Detroit, origami art on speed, smart growth for future generations of artists and designers, the benefits of naps and much more.

Designmatters and Aspen Institute examine the social, creative and economic impact of the new culture of ‘intrapreneurs’

Mariana Amatullo speaking at Desigmnatters' Leap Symposium on the New Professional Frontier in Design For Social Innovation." Photo by Alex Aristei

Designmatters’ Mariana Amatullo opening the Leap Symposium: The New Professional Frontier in Design for Social Innovation. Photo ©2013 Alex Aristei for LEAP

This week the Aspen Institute launched a new series of essays on the growing importance of social intrapreneurs — change-agents within organizations large and small who are fusing business success with positive social and environmental impacts — and the value they are adding to their organizations and society. To kick off the series, the Institute, in collaboration with The Huffington Post, published the following piece by Mariana Amatullo, co-founder and vice president of Designmatters at Art Center College of Design.

Safir BellaliThe Institute also named 2001 Art Center alumnus Safir Bellali, Design Innovation director for Vans, to its incoming class of 2014 First Movers Fellows. Each fellow will tackle a project that will have a positive financial, social and environmental impact on both their company and society. Bellali, who maintains close ties with the College through his participation in critiques and hiring student interns, will explore how new manufacturing technologies will allow Vans to work toward bringing production back to the United States. In Fall 2014, Vans will sponsor a Designmatters/Product Design studio at Art Center.

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LEAP Day 2: Designing strategies for the future of social impact design careers.

Overhead view of a LEAP design storm. Photograph by Dice Yamaguchi

Overhead view of a LEAP design storm. Photograph by Dice Yamaguchi

This is the second in our three-part Dotted Line series covering “The New Professional Frontier in Design for Social Innovation: LEAP Symposium,” hosted by Art Center College of Design Sept. 19–21, 2013.

LEAP’s Day One established the event’s tone, methodology, purpose and goals as well as a set of burning questions facing the field of social impact design professional pathways. The following morning, participants arrived eager to drill down into the issues that arose during the previous day’s workshops.  Leap’s faculty team of facilitators and student teaching assistants were ready to continue guiding the second day of collaborative ideation sessions.  Leap’s core programming team which included Karen Hofmann, Sherry Hoffman and Heidrun Mumper-Drumm, had mapped out a programming flow for these charrettes based on Art Center’s tried and true Design Storm methodology, which enabled intense collaborative study, brainstorming, and problem solving throughout the day.

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LEAP Symposium kicks off with a line-up of pioneers in design and social innovation

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One hundred thought leaders and educators in design and innovation will converge at Art Center College of Design September 19–21 for the LEAP Symposium, a convening comprised of a series of focused conversations exploring new career pathways for designers in the emerging field of social innovation. For more information about LEAP, including participant photos and bios, please visit the newly launched website.

The weekend-long symposium was conceived and hosted by Mariana Amatullo, Vice President, Designmatters Department with a national braintrust that includes: Allan Chochinov, Chair Products of Design, School of Visual Arts and Partner, Core 77; Lee Davis, Scholar-in-Residence, Center for Social Design, Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA); William Drenttel, Director, Winterhouse Institute and Edirorial Director, Design Observer and LEAP Symposium Editorial Director; Robert Fabricant, Vice President of Creative, frog; Jocelyn Wyatt, Co-Lead and Executive Director, IDEO.org.

Portions of the event are open to students, faculty, staff and members of the public. Check out the schedule below. And if you can’t attend in person, you can also tune into the livestream of LEAP’s opening session and LunchTime Talks here.

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Poster competition honoring Nelson Mandela features designs by eight Art Center students

 

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Organizers of the Mandela95 Poster Project suspected this would be an opportune time to commemorate Nelson Mandela’s contribution to humankind. But the project — a poster design competition conceived to align with Mandela’s 95th birthday on July 18 — may also serve a dual role as a eulogy to the anti-Apartheid revolutionary, who has been hospitalized since falling critically ill with a lung infection on June 8.

Posters designed by eight Art Center Graphic Design students, featured below, were selected for inclusion in the traveling exhibition by the South African Organizing Committee from a large pool of submissions from around the world.

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Designmatters co-founder, Mariana Amatullo, adds a voice for socially conscious design to the Executive Board of Cumulus

Mariana Amatullo

Designmatters’ Mariana Amatullo

The intersection of art, design and social impact lies at the future-facing frontier of the design world. This rapidly evolving multidisciplinary field continues to grow in size and stature thanks in no small part to the groundbreaking work of Mariana Amatullo, Vice President of Designmatters at Art Center. Amatullo recently expanded her reach as a leader in the field after being appointed to the Executive Board of Cumulus, the International Association of Universities and Colleges of Art, Design and Media.

“As the official Art Center liaison to Cumulus for the last six years,” said Amatullo of her motivation to serve on the Executive Board, “I’ve been able to observe firsthand how effective the organization has been in creating dynamic collaborations among an expanding global network and community of educators and researchers, but also through cooperation with leading industry and key educational and professional networks such as for example, NASAD and AIGA in the US.”

Cumulus, the only global association to serve art and design education universities, has long supported and encouraged the movement to use design principles to advance positive social change. First on the organization’s list of ambitious goals is to support academic institutions of art, design and media in enhancing their contribution to society. Cumulus also works to foster dialogue and collaboration through its academic forum: biannual conferences hosted by member organizations provide a dynamic platform for international exchange, workshops and academic publishing.

Founded in 2000 with its Secretariat headquartered in Helsinki, Finland, at Aalto University School of Art, Design and Architecture, Cumulus has 198 member institutions in 48 countries. Art Center, which joined Cumulus in 2006, is one of only a dozen U.S. schools granted full membership.

As a member of the Executive Board, Amatullo will help develop policies, plan activities and manage the Association’s business affairs, in addition to implementing decisions made by Cumulus’ General Assembly.

“I am deeply honored to join the Cumulus board and a very dynamic group of international colleagues who share a profound dedication to cross-cultural discourse, innovation and research,” she said.   “Through my service, I will be seeking actionable pathways to advocate for the relevance of art and design education globally.  I am energized since I believe we are at an exciting crossroads in time for our field: we have the opportunity—and responsibility–to position the expertise of our universities as a potent source for new inquiry and agency in our contemporary world.”

Art Center Faculty and Alum Dive in to The Aquarium of the Pacific Series on Art, Science and Environment

The Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach, Calif. will feature presentations by Art Center faculty members and an alumnus as part of its upcoming Aquatic Academy. Integrating art and science in order to enhance environmental communication, the Aquatic Academy offers a series of evening classes that foster dialogue on issues related to the ocean and environment.

Professor and Director of Sustainability Initiatives Heidrun Mumper-Drumm will be speaking on Thursday, April 25 from 7 to 9:30 p.m., while Vice President of Designmatters Mariana Amatullo and Alumnus Dan Goods, visual strategist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, will speak on Thursday, May 9 from 7 to 9:30 p.m. The series of four evening classes will explore how art, design and science can intersect to create and deliver powerful environmental messages.

Long Beach Aquarium

Art Center faculty will be speaking at the Long Beach Aquarium of the Pacific.

Jerry Schubel, president and CEO of The Aquarium of the Pacific, says Goods, Mumper-Drumm and Amatullo bring an ideal combined expertise in the areas of engineering, design, visual communications and sustainability.

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A Decade That Matters: Leading the Way in Social Innovation

Ten years after its founding, Designmatters is making a difference within and beyond Art Center.

By ALEX CARSWELL

“This University is not maintained…merely to help its graduates have an economic advantage in the life struggle. There is certainly a greater purpose, and I’m sure you recognize it.”

—John F. Kennedy, October 14, 1960, speaking to students at the University of Michigan

Faculty member La Mer Walker consults with students and UN Population Fund partner Christian Delsol.

As he campaigned for the White House, John F. Kennedy challenged America’s younger generation to use their talent not just to better themselves, but also to somehow make a difference in the world. Shortly after taking office in 1961, President Kennedy formed the Peace Corps, a transformational government agency that celebrated America’s core values, galvanized our national will and has facilitated service in support of that “greater purpose” for more than half a century.

Forty years later, Art Center students were surveyed on their desire to have some sort of curricular “Peace Corps-type” opportunity. The overwhelmingly positive response set the wheels in motion for what would soon become Designmatters at Art Center, the College’s innovative social-impact initiative. In addition to the Peace Corps model, the brain trust that conceived and developed Designmatters also had other influences. Erica Clark—then Art Center’s senior vice president of International Initiatives—had investigated a number of socially engaged design programs at European institutions. And here at Art Center, “Community Workshop” was already a popular graphic design class that engaged students in projects with local social-impact objectives.

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