Tag Archives: Product Design

Wearing your heart rate on your sleeve: Inside the wearable tech revolution

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By now you’ve heard of Google Glass. But what about bracelets that measure sun exposure? Headphones that double as heartbeat monitors? Or jewelry that unlocks your front door? Are you ready for the dawn of smart watches, smart earrings, smart contact lenses and smart wigs? And no, that last one isn’t a joke.

The “wearables” field is in an early yet promising stage of its evolution. But Art Center, always striving to stay ahead of industry and cultural trends, has had wearables squarely in its sights for years. Today, our students, instructors and alumni are busy imagining where this technology might head next, creating the devices that are paving the way for the future, and questioning how a wearables-saturated world will change our behavior as human beings.

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Of one minute wonders and sustainable paper planes: February’s Art Center alumni notes

Hiroshi Sugimoto's design for for his museum complex in Odawara, Japan

Hiroshi Sugimoto’s design for for his museum complex in Odawara, Japan

From art installations inspired by NASA’S space oddities to a self-styled museum in Japan: Art Center alums have been busy in February. Read on for more details about last month’s alumni accomplishments, including Designmatters’ new alumni engagement efforts.

News

Dan Goods GRPK 02 was featured in a story on Yahoo News about his work at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).  Yahoo

Satyendra Pakhalé PROD 94 discussed his design process and curiosity in a One Minute Wonder video. One Minute Wonder

Hiroshi Sugimoto PHOT 74 has announced plans to design and build a new museum for his work, the Odawara Art Foundation, which will be located in Odawara Japan. Wall Street Journal Blog

Jennie Warren PHOT 05 collaborated with Welsh singer Cate Le Bon and illustrator Erin Althea and on a series of promotional images for Cate’s upcoming tour. Erin Althea’s Blog

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Speed making: Art Center students make a clean sweep in Dyson’s rapid prototyping workshops

Before James Dyson first mesmerized TV viewers with his early demonstrations of his sleekly designed and innovatively engineered vacuum cleaner, capable of coaxing the dirt from off any surface, home cleaning devices were many things but sexy wasn’t one of them. But after Dyson’s invention captured the popular imagination (not to mention a landfill’s worth of grit and grime) and became the industry standard for home suction, consumers’ perceptions (and expectations) of vacuums were forever altered, in terms of both performance and prettiness.

Though such paradigm shifting innovations are dependent upon a mysterious combination of luck, timing, research and inspiration. The Dyson company has continued to expand upon its success by upholding its high standards for innovative design and engineering. Cultivating the next generation of design innovators is another vital part of the company’s forward-thinking ethos. To that end, the James Dyson Foundation has been rewarding ground-breaking feats of creative engineering with the James Dyson Award, created in 2002, which offers a $45,000 prize to a design that “solves a problem.”

The foundation has recently started seeding the field by conducting design engineering workshops with K-12 students in Chicago. Last week that strategy graduated to the college level, when a team of Dyson engineers lead Art Center students from three departments — Transportation, Product Design and Graduate Industrial Design — in an exercise testing their teamwork, problem-solving, creativity and craftsmanship.

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Alums invade CES. Their Trojan horse? An electric scooter.

Team URB-E at CES

Alumnus and instructor Grant Delgatty with Jordan Crook of TechCrunch at CES

UPDATE: Surprising many in the crowdfunding space, the Art Center alum/instructor team behind the URB-E personal mobility device today launched a campaign on Indiegogo.  Since making a splash at CES, the team has secured an impressive wave of exposure about the compact e-scooter.  The invention was selected as the official mobility device of the American Pavilion at the upcoming Cannes International Film Festival and will assist the crew of an ocean research vessel in a Discovery Channel doc.

The group of Art Center alums behind the URB-E electric scooter didn’t make anyone’s list of newfangled gadgets most likely to ignite a media brushfire at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. Team URB-E entered the preeminent tech convention unannounced and exited the event basking in the glow of a media love fest any celebrity would envy. The upshot? Chutzpah + a great idea + a well-executed product = a perfect set-up for URB-E’s Feb. 1 Indiegogo campaign launch.

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Art Center’s first Myspace occupation concludes. Prepare for phase 2!

We came. We saw. We influenced change as we learned to create.

Beginning last October, we enlisted four Art Center students to lead the charge in a week-long homepage takeover of the recently relaunched Myspace. The first-wave social network had reinvented itself as a community and breeding ground for artists and creative types of all stripes to exchange work, feedback and inspiration in the digital sphere. In other words, Myspace had become a sandbox custom-built for Art Center students and alums. And, as is our way, we came ready to play.

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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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ACCD reciprocity: Corporate partnerships seed design innovation and design careers

Meet the Clump-o-Lumps, designed by Max Knecht

Meet the Clump-O-Lumps, designed by Max Knecht

The day Max Knecht pulled a squid, a walrus, a deer and a bunny out of a bright green vintage suitcase is the day he landed his first big deal as a designer.

“It was a formal meeting in [Knock Knock company founder and CEO] Jen Bilik’s office,” recalls Knecht PROD 11, who was still a student at the time. “But bringing all those animal body parts in a suitcase broke the seriousness.”

These were no ordinary plush toys. An imaginative take on swapping identities, Knecht’s bright-colored animals had a clever postmodern flair. Each one separated into three segments, and he demonstrated for Bilik how these “lumps” could be zipped together in any combination. She loved the crisscross-creature concept and offered Knecht a buyout on the spot. Today six different Clump-O-Lumps are available on Knock Knock’s website.

It’s tempting to call moments like this magic, the proverbial rabbit pulled out of a hat. Or a lucky break, all about who you know.

But it was none of these.

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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.

Veterans enlist at Art Center to influence hearts and minds through art and design

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Art Center’s reputation, culture and even the school’s site in Pasadena have been shaped by the military veterans who have come through its doors. From the post-World War II student population burst, sparked by the GI Bill, that led the College to move from its Seventh Street location to the larger Third Street campus, to many notable alumni and faculty, Art Center’s history has been enriched by individuals who honorably served their country.

Today, servicemen and servicewomen—whose discipline and desire to make a positive impact align closely with the College’s educational mission—continue to distinguish themselves as students and alumni.

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Nike designer D’Wayne Edwards dares students to supersize their dreams

D'Wayne Edwards at Pensole demonstrating a few of the kicks he's designed

D’Wayne Edwards at Pensole demonstrating a few of the kicks he’s designed

“Are you awake?”

With these words, more of a challenge than a question, D’Wayne Edwards begins to make inroads into rowdy scrum of inner city high school students seated before him in Art Center’s Ahmanson Auditorium. The response: a cacophony of groans.

It’s 8:30 a.m. on a late October Monday morning and Edwards, founder of Pensole Design Academy and former design director for Nike’s Jordan brand, has come to Art Center to inspire and illuminate the opportunities available to creative students in various areas of design. He has spent enough time with teenagers to know that engaging them at this time of day can be a losing battle. And he’ll need to act quickly to establish that he understands where they’re coming from and, more importantly, he knows what they need to do to get to someplace worth going in the future.

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