Tag Archives: Student Work

In Case You Missed It…

As you know, there’s always something going on when it comes to Art Center alumni, students and faculty.  Some of the latest:

  • Film Department Chair Ross LaManna talks to CNN about the rise of the graphic novel in Hollywood. CNN
  • Director for Advanced Mobility Research Geoff Wardle chats with The New York Times about the Tata Nano, which will be on display next week at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum. The New York Times
  • Alumnus Tommy Lee Edwards explains his conceptual work for the film The Book of Eli. Livingston Daily
  • Indy Racing League discusses the development of its next-generation racing car, developed with the help of Art Center students. Edmunds Inside Line
  • Painter and Illustration alumnus Paul Rickert’s latest exchibit, Industrial Visions, is currently on display at Rider University in Lawrence, NJ. CentralJersey.com
  • Filmmaker and alumnus Tarsem Singh Dhandwar’s fantasy-action-drama epic about ancient Greece, Dawn of War, might be filmed in 3D. Little About

(Pictured: Out of Furnaces, Paul Rickert)

Breaking the Cycle of Poverty Through Clean Water

Fast Company has a great article about the Safe Agua Chile project, a collaboration between Designmatters and NGO Un Techo Para Mi Pais. The project, which we’ve highlighted in this blog, challenged 12 Art Center students and three faculty members to work directly with impoverished communities in Santiago, Chile, developing new tools and methods of storing, utilizing, transporting and conserving water.

Check out the great article at Fast Company, as well as the project’s official blog. Desigmnatters Director Mariana Amatullo also writes about the project in the latest post on the Designmatters blog. Great and inspiring work, everyone!

Student Work: Seventh Generation Redesign

Check out this cool hypothetical redesign of Seventh Generation green cleaning and household products by Johana Tran, a 6th term Graphic Design student.

Says Johana: “Through a redesign that exudes a natural charm and confidence, Seventh Generation offers consumers a promise of liberation from the burdens associated with mundane household tasks. In addition, the package design utilizes sustainable materials, while maintaining a hygienic appeal, ensuring a product that users can trust to be safe for both the environment and the body.”

Good work, Johana!

A Day in the Life: Safe Agua Chile

AshokaTech is following 12 Art Center students who travelled to Chile for the Safe Agua Chile collaboration with Un Techo Para Chile. Last week, we learned that storing water in multiple containers increases the possibility of water contamination, since containers are not always stored properly and often pick up dirt and germs. The conditions in the campamentos make it difficult to preserve water quality. Art Center students Erica and Elizabeth are working towards eliminating these contamination risks by designing easy and responsible solutions.

“Families in campamentos have tap water delivered but they store it for a long time in containers that are not kept clean. They do use chlorine for cleaning and purifying water, but the main problem is that they are not measuring safe chlorination. Thus, Erica and Elizabeth’s solution proposal is to enhance strong chlorine measuring education and to encourage the use of a low-cost water filter.”

Read more about Erica and Elizabeth’s study, and view their presentation, at AshokaTech.

Students Create New Identity for Organization of American States

Eight Art Center students participating in a transdisciplinary class through Designmatters were recently commissioned by the Organization of American States (OAS) to create a new identity for its upcoming 100th anniversary. Students were asked to promote greater awareness and reinvigorate enthusiasm for the OAS to the millennium generation. After much deliberation and research, a new identity and core message, “On Common Ground,” was created. This identity espouses the organization’s goals of democracy, human rights, security and development, while engaging a younger audience. 

Tomorrow, Dec. 3, the students will present to OAS leadership the campaign, which includes a Public Service Announcement for television, a new visual identity for the OAS Centennial events, a new website to help connect young people from across the hemisphere, and advertisements targeting the millennium generation. The event will take place at the South Campus Main Gallery at 10 am. Stop by and check it out!

A Student’s Account of the International Design Summit

On the Desigmatters blog, Graduate Industrial Design student Radhika Bhalla shares her experience at the International Development Design Summit in Ghana last July. The summit brought together people from around the globe to build appropriate technologies and develop the creative capacity of communities in the developing world. More than 90 attendees and organizers representing 21 countries from around the world participated.

Bhalla part of a group assigned to design and build child-friendly latrines.

She writes: “When all of us first got together, we had absolutely no idea how this was going to work. We had not one participant from the year before, and we started on a blank page. Little did we know that the IDDS vision of ‘prototypes, not papers’ would not be our biggest challenge, but how to get the prototype on a pick-up truck would be the hardest thing to do!”

Read the rest of her inspiring story on the Desigmatters blog.

A Day in the Life: Safe Agua Chile

AshokaTech is following 12 Art Center students who travelled to Chile for the Safe Agua Chile collaboration with Un Techo Para Chile. The latest installment has our students learning what it is like for the local people from campamentos, with no running, potable water.

“The students are starting to understand the issues affecting the lives of these families. They are now wondering: What if students could design a new system through which water is delivered? What if these families could actually have a running water system? What if there was a way to minimize the number of steps to their daily tasks? What if there was a way to bathe indoors? The students will have to work on these questions and find out how possible it is to make it a reality.”

Follow along with us at AshokaTech!

A Day in the Life: Safe Agua Chile

AshokaTech is following 12 Art Center students who travelled to Chile for the Safe Agua Chile collaboration with Un Techo Para Chile. This installment has the students arriving in Santiago, ready to spend 12 days living among the area’s poorest families in the slums.

“The excitement and incertitude are overwhelming. All they need to do now is focus on one question: How can they work with people living in Chile’s campamentos to develop new tools for using, storing and transporting water in order to help improve the quality of life?”

Follow along with us at AshokaTech!

A Gamer’s Childhood Dream Come True

Our dream vehicle has finally arrived! Student Garnet Hertz has taken a classic OutRun arcade cabinet and made it a real, live vehicle … that goes as fast as 20 mph. Hertz is working on an iPhone 3GS app that uses the phone’s camera and GPS to detect your position and shape of the road, and translate that information into a digital OutRun track. 

Don’t miss the video behind the jump.

Continue reading →

The First Drop to a Life-Changing Story: Safe Agua Chile

The editors of the AshokaTech blog, a great reference on innovation and social enterprise, are running a series of articles detailing a current Art Center studio collaboration with the NGO Un Techo Para Chile. For the studio, facilitated by the College’s social impact educational department Designmatters, students are challenged to develop ways to help slum-dwellers store, transport, use and conserve water. Their challenge is to create low cost solutions that can really be used in the real world.

Such an exciting project. Be sure to follow along with us at AshokaTech!