Tag Archives: Product Design

Khora leverages 3-D tech to add a personal dimension to home decor

The CNC machine creates 3-D objects from digital files

The CNC machine creates 3-D objects from digital files

In a world where personal branding has become a social and professional imperative, our surroundings and possessions have become vehicles for self-expression. And not just the kind we drive. This is particularly true of a person’s home and the things within it.  But for anyone attempting to work within an Ikea budget, creating a one-of-a-kind living space has always been more challenging than, say, buying a customized ride.

But that may not be the case for long, thanks to the team of Art Center designers behind Khora Image, a soon-to-launch start-up that will use 3-D technology to blaze a trail through the unexplored frontier of customized home décor. “We’re trying to democratize a process to everybody and get it out to as many people as we can and empower them to design their own things,” says Product Design student Jacques Perrault, who teamed up with Art Center alums Jason Pilarski, Steve Joyner Jonathan Kim and Ryan Oenning to create a company that would revolutionize the home furnishing space by providing a digital platform where consumers can use templates to create personalized wall hangings.

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Creativity 101: Harnessing the power of students’ imaginations

Photographs by Chris Hatcher, PHOT '05

Photographs by Chris Hatcher, PHOT ’05

In 30 minutes, visualize your creative process and recreate it using an 8-and-a-half-by-11 sheet of paper.

This is the first assignment in Creative Strategies, a popular undergraduate Product Design course taught by instructor Fridolin “Frido” Beisert PROD 98, INDU 08, faculty director of Art Center’s Product Design Department.

All 14 students accept the challenge. Walking to the front of the classroom, they each select a single sheet of colored construction paper and take a seat along the row of bare metal tables. As a digital timer, projected onto the wall, starts ticking, the students immediately start cutting, tearing, folding and drawing.

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How Alex Cabunoc set out to save the world, one laundry load at a time

Visitors to Art Center’s homepage may have found themselves wondering if that Brady Bunch-like grid of student selfies splayed out on Art Center’s homepage was some kind of post-modern meditation on ’70′s pop culture. And they’d be wrong. The real explanation —  a refreshed batch of student profiles — is a lot like Art Center itself: A practical solution to a real world need whose outcome is a lot more interesting than anyone might have expected going into the project.

Over the next few weeks, we’ll be rolling out a series of deeper dives into the creative lives of those profile subjects, with highlights from the body of work they’ve produced at Art Center. We’re kicking off the series with this look at Product Designer Alex Cabunoc’s truly impressive array of innovative social impact designs aimed at improving the lives of inhabitants rural communities in the developing world. For the project featured in the above video, Cabunoc teamed up with fellow student Ji A You to create the GiraDora foot-powered washing machine for a Designmatters challenge to alleviate the water shortage in Lima, Peru. The product he produced has vast potential to improve the health and quality of life of women in water-poor communities throughout the developing world. In the below Q&A, Cabunoc provides some personal context to his Art Center journey.

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Watch and learn how KILLSPENCER came to life

Back in 2008, well before the concept of a design entrepreneur had been exalted by futurists as the driving force behind the next wave of innovation, Spencer Nikosey, was ahead of the curve, approaching his work as an Art Center Product Design student with the ambition and enterprise of an MBA. Nikosi staged his own pop-up product launch event at Art Center’s Grad Show, where he began selling his nascent line high-performance men’s luggage, bags and accessories. Five years later, Nickosey has turned KILLSPENCER into a sought-after brand and model of sustainability with a line of products produced in his workshop in Downtown L.A. and sold in his recently opened Silverlake boutique.

In the above video, produced by Bluecanvas magazine, Nikosey re-traces his path to finding his foothold as a design entrepreneur. He makes fascinating pitstops throughout the piece, exploring his approach to creativity, innovation, business and his dreams for a future that includes an oceanside multi-media creative collective, where he’ll make films and products and occasionally run and jump off the roof into the ocean. Judging by Nikosey’s track record thus far, it’s only a matter of time before he takes the flying leap.

Design as Strategy: Problem finding or problem framing?

Pentago Yu's U-Haul Conversion Kit

Pentago Yu’s U-Haul Conversion Kit

Katherine Bennett teaches advanced research in graduate and undergraduate industrial design at Art Center College of Design, where she pioneered the integration of professional-level design research into the product design curriculum. The following article was originally published in the current issue of the Industrial Design Society of America’s journal, Innovation. 

Stepping beyond problem finding to problem framing and the need to eliminate bias on the part of designers and clients—these are big topics in the world of research. But are they in industry? While techniques on their own won’t eliminate bias and properly frame the problem, it is necessary to address these issues.

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Bright IDEA Awards: Art Center students collect a trio of medals

IDEA Award-winning designs by Nina Viggi, Marc Dubui and Shingo Mamiya

IDEA Award-winning designs by Nina Viggi, Marc Dubui and Shingo Mamiya

Art Center continued its legacy of award-winning leading-edge design with yesterday’s announcement of the 2013 IDEA Awards, which included three medal-winning student projects and eight finalists among the honorees of the Industrial Designers Society of America’s prestigious annual awards program.

“The IDEA awards program continues to be an effective witness to the state of industrial design and design education today,” explained Katherine Bennett, faculty member in the Graduate and Undergraduate Industrial Design Departments. “The process of articulating their designs for the IDEAs’ worldwide audience gives practitioners and students a forum for important causes we want to address, and to tell the story of design’s value to our clients, our customers and society as a whole.”

Each of this year’s trifecta of winning projects illustrates Art Center’s trademark focus on innovative design with real world social impact, informed by a meticulous, research-based approach. Graduate Industrial Design student, Nina Viggi’s One Degree High Performance Dinghy Shoe, durable footwear designed for sailors, received a gold medal. Product Design student, Marc Dubui, took home a silver prize for his hard hat suspension system, titled Oblikk, designed to protect the wearer from lateral and rotational impact. Finally, Product Design undergrad, Shingo Mamiya, was awarded the bronze for A Better Working Environment for Certified Nursing Assistants, a waste disposal system for the elderly.

Art Center students have long been a formidable force at the IDEA Awards, collecting a total of 70 medals over 22 years, with a wide array of inventive designs, ranging from the UnBathroom to the U-Haul Emergency Response Conversion Kit for the American Red Cross. This year’s winners were selected from a field of 687 finalists, to be announced live on August 21 at its 2013 International Conference in Chicago.

Art Center Partners with Dwell on Design Conference

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This student creation is on display in the Goodwill’s first boutique store in Tustin. The vinyl rockabilly outfit was part of a 2012 Designmatters project for Goodwill of Orange County focused on upcycling.

Art Center College of Design will be the only school recognized as an educational partner of Dwell on Design, “America’s Largest Design Event,” taking place Friday, June 21 through Sunday, June 23 at the Los Angeles Convention Center. The three-day exhibition and conference will feature world-class speakers, product demonstrations, continuing education classes for design professionals and seminars for consumers.

As an educational partner, Art Center is the only design school to have an exhibition space on the showroom floor featuring the work of Environmental Design and Product Design students.

Additionally, Art Center will host a special presentation on the Demo Stage Saturday, June 22 at 2:30 p.m. Environmental Design faculty will present the concept of upcycling, or the process of converting used goods, waste material, and “useless” items into new materials or products of better quality to improve their value and reduce the overall impact on our environment, as explored in Art Center’s sponsored projects and transdisciplinary studios.

Members of the Art Center community can receive a $5.00 discount off regular prices with Promo Code EDU13. To register for tickets, visit dwellondesign.com/edu13.

 

Related: Goodwill and Art Center embrace the upcycle lifestyle

 

 

Alumni Featured in AllSpark Platinum Winners Video

Yves Béhar displays the durability of his See Better to Learn Better glasses in the new AllSpark video.

Yves Béhar displays the durability of his See Better to Learn Better glasses in the new AllSpark video.

Earlier this year, Art Center alumni swept the first ever AllSpark Platinum Awards, which honors “the best of the best of the best” of the 2012 entrants to the Spark Awards.

Spark recently released a video in which AllSpark winners Yves Béhar PROD 91, Franz von Holzhausen TRAN 92 and Sujin Hwang PROD 11 are interviewed alongside other top designers, including Sam Lucente and alumnus Earl Gee GRPK 83.

In the video, Béhar speaks about See Better to Learn Better, a program his company fuseproject created in partnership with the Mexican government and Augen Optics. The program distributes hundreds of thousands of eyeglasses every year to schoolchildren in Mexico. Children have the opportunity to choose their glasses’ frame, size and color, giving them a chance to be involved in the design process.

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Student Shares Product Design Internship Lessons

Sometimes, the lessons learned in the field are the ones that stick the most. Geoff Ledford, a graduating Art Center student in Product Design, recently wrote an article for Fast Company detailing his experiences interning at Soulcake Creative in San Clemente, California.

“As a designer, I draw and work in 3D – communication via pictures and sketches,” said Ledford. “But prior to deciding to become a designer, I was a writer. My thought was that if I shared some of these lessons, they might help someone else.”

Product Design graduate Geoff Ledford.

Geoff Ledford talks about his design internship experiences in a recent Fast Company article.

His lessons boil down to four points:

  • Kill your ego. “A tinge of hubris can quickly contaminate an otherwise good relationship,” said Ledford. “And with so many capable design consultancies all ready to do the same job, it’s important to stay humble.”
  • Bring passion to your presentation. While working at Soulcake, one of the partners at the studio explained, “A good presentation shouldn’t just give me information–it should evoke emotion.” Ledford realized that his work could not solely rely on analytical justification, but rather worked best when it incorporated emotional elements.
  • Find your own voice. No matter what kind of work, this advice is crucial to anything creative. Ledford makes his case with jazz musician Freddie Hubbard who had to find a voice that was his own instead of being an imitation of Miles Davis. Likewise, when Ledford said he tried creating work he thought his boss would want, “the result was a bunch of concepts that lacked my voice and, consequently, weren’t authentic.”
  • Work will always be there.Wanting to make a good impression, one day Ledford opted to go in the office early to work rather than surf with one of the owners. Instead of pushing Ledford into the office, the owner responded that he thought Ledford should surf: “There is always work and the waves aren’t always this good.” Like any creative endeavor, exploring opportunities outside of design (like surfing) gives fresh perspective.

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