Tag Archives: Student Work

Teen Art Park Unveiling Today!


Art Center, Armory Center for the Arts, Flintridge Center, Learning Works Charter School and more than two dozen other community-based organizations have collaborated to develop the installation and creative programming of a “Teen Art Park” that fosters safe, artistic expression for at-risk youth in Pasadena.

Large scale, interactive installations designed under the guidance of Art Center’s Designmatters and Environmental Design Departments will be unveiled at a fun, open house-style community event today at 4 p.m. Educators, youth advocates, artists, community members and teens are encouraged to attend the event, which in addition to the unveiling of the Teen Art Park structures, will have graffiti battles, a live DJ, pizza, art projects and more.

Beyond a safe haven for at-risk youth to practice their craft, creative programming developed as part of the Teen Art Park seeks to provide workshops in a variety of visual, applied and performing arts; develop skills that easily transfer into the classroom and the workplace; deepen connections with community resources; and serve as a public space for performances and exhibits. Detailed information about the Teen Art Park collaboration, installation concepts and creative programming can be found on the Designmatters website.

“Teen Art Park has been a deeply transformative project for all of us at Art Center—an opportunity to engage with our partners, Flintridge Center, the Armory and Learning Works in a bold vision that sets forth new creative spaces for learning and community,” says Designmatters Vice President Mariana Amatullo.

“I cannot thank Art Center enough for envisioning what teens might want when searching for safe places to hang out, be with friends and express themselves as individuals,” says Mikala Rahn, executive director of Learning Works Charter School. “With community involvement and support, Teen Art Park would transform Pasadena into a better, youth-friendly city.”

The Teen Art Park unveiling will take place at Art Center’s Hillside Campus today.

Product Design Student Named NCIIA Student Ambassador

We are thrilled to announce that seventh term Product Design/Designmatters concentration student Mariana Prieto has been named a NCIIA student ambassador for 2011-12.

Prieto

NCIIA, the National Collegiate of Inventors and Innovators Alliance, is an organization whose grants, competitions, networks and ventures actively promote innovation and entrepreneurship in higher education. Art Center has been an active member of the organization in the past three years through Designmatters.

Prieto is one of 12 students selected by NCIIA for their outstanding leadership skills and commitment to practicing and promoting the entrepreneurship and social innovation mandate of NCIIA.

In her role as ambassador, Mariana receive ambassador training on the East Coast, and then work with our community to promote the programs, student grants and conferences that NCIIA offers to institutes of higher learning across the U.S.

Prieto is excited about her new role.

“Significant changes in the world come about by making small improvements within developing communities,” she says.

“The combination of NCIIA’s entrepreneurial spirit, Designmatters’ passion for social change and Art Center’s high quality standards catalyze the application of design thinking to identify such small improvements, consequently helping make the world a better place. I am deeply honored to be a part of this team and look forward to working with them during this next year.”

Congratulations, Mariana! She’ll be keeping us updated on her time as ambassador. In the meantime, check out this interview we conducted with her back when she was a second term student.

Ad and Photo Students … Join Biker Gang?

On a recent afternoon on the south lawn of Art Center’s Hillside Campus, Advertising student Tyler Jensen and Photography and Imaging student Lena Bujbara were part of an impromptu, Hollywood-style biker gang.

Jensen and Abujbara recently met up with several models from L.A. Casting to work on a collaborative project for Cazadores Tequila.

As part of the Advertising Department-sponsored ShootSell class, the two art-directed and photographed a series of retro biker scenarios for an integrated ad campaign that takes a visual cue from “B” movies from the 1960s.

There were no fights reported.

In other Advertising Department news, don’t miss today’s Advertising Department Speakers Series, in which Monotype Imaging will be talking about developments in Web fonts. Today at 2 p.m. in room A13. Open to all students.

Art Center Students Take On Sea Level Rise

Art Center students recently completed a Designmatters-led studio class, in partnership with the Aquarium of the Pacific, focusing on public education and action strategies to address the crisis of sea level rise.

Project Coastal Crisis, held Spring Term, was a transdisciplinary project embedded in the “Design for Sustainability” Product Design curriculum. Students were challenged to translate urgent scientific data on sea level rise and coastal resiliency into easily accessible public awareness communications and educational tools.

“Projects like these are about educating you not by force, but by engagement,” explains Product Design Department Chair Karen Hofmann. These projects have touch points that linger long after the experience is over.”

Students formed four different teams, each producing mixed media communication strategies to educate Aquarium of the Pacific visitors and other target audiences, including California coastal communities and policymakers. Careful consideration was taken to ensure that the campaigns would be easily accessible to a wide audience.

Read more about the four teams and their outcomes.

Grad Media Design Work on Display at MoMA

Beyond the Fold, by Sebastian Bettencourt

Two Graduate Media Design projects are included in Paola Antonelli’s most recent exhibition, Talk to Me, now at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. They are Sebastian Bettencourt’s thesis project, Beyond the Fold; and Dustin York, Ting-Yuin Chien, Scott Liao and Jae Kim’s class project, The Messenger.

Also, new Grad Media alum Hoon Oh and current student Jisu Choi just completed a project at Synn Lab based on Hoon’s thesis work of interactive hybrid digital/physical sports.

Great work, everyone!

Art Center Student Awarded IDSA Scholarship

The Industrial Designers Society of America’s (IDSA) Gianninoto Graduate Scholarship program has awarded a $1,500 scholarship to Pengtao Yu, a second-year Grad ID student at Art Center.

Yu

“My interest in industrial design started with my curiosity of how things work and my obsession with beautiful objects,” says Yu. “Four year of undergraduate industrial design training, along with several internship experiences in top design studios, has given me strong traditional design skills.”

Yu has won two International Design Excellence Awards (IDEA) awards in the student design category, and one of his furniture designs has been licensed by a major U.S. manufacturer to put into production.

IDSA’s Gianninoto Graduate Scholarship was originally established by the late Francesco Gianninoto, a US package designer who was a founder of the Package Design Council. Two of his most famous designs were the Marlboro cigarette package (mid-1950s) and “Elsie Daisy,” the Borden Cow.

Congrats, Pengtao!

Students Win Big at the ADDYs


Advertising students Adam Chang, Melissa Ploysophon, Becky Ginos and Jack Collier, in collaboration with Photography and Imaging student Jeremy Jackson, recently won a gold and two silver ADDYs for their work at the local ADDY Awards, the first of a three-tier, national competition.

Chang and Ploysophon went on to beat out over 1,000 other entries from across the country to win a National Gold ADDY for their Atomic Fireballs campaign. Film student Ian Kammer won a gold for Boxer.

Congrats on these well-deserved honors!

The Colombia Experience: Design is a Two-Way Street

The following post is from the Designmatters blog.


Guest Blogger Mariana Prieto di Colloredo (Product Design, 6th term) is the lead contact of Art Center’s social impact student organization Mustard, a member of the sustainability-focused student organization EcoCouncil and a candidate for the Designmatters Concentration in Art and Design for Social Impact.

Sustainability is more often than not linked to the responsible use of our planets resources to assure its availability for future generations. As true as this is, sustainability can also be applied to our own lives. As designers, we can “burn out” when we drain our creative resources but we can prevent this by refreshing and recharging ourselves from time to time.

While we are in school the opportunity to go out and research different cultures in a new, exciting and relaxed setting is limited, to say the least.

Because of this, EcoCouncil has taken the initiative to plan a research trip to explore a new country in a different and exciting way. This last spring Eco Council traveled for ten days to Colombia to remove ourselves from our comfortable surroundings and to work on a design project at an organic mango plantation in Anapoima, Colombia (a small town located 2 hours outside of Bogota).

Our goal was to come up with one design project during our time there while doing physical work at the farm and learning the inner workings of an organic plantation in Latin America.

After days of wielding a pickax, teak planting, mud fishing, milking, horseback riding and learning all there is to know about mango trees, we agreed the most valuable experience was working together with the farm workers through every step of the design process.

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MDP Showcased in Little Tokyo Design Week

Art Center’s Graduate Media Design (MDP) program will be among the international designers, architects, filmmakers, corporations and other educational institutions exploring the “New Urban Lifestyle” as part of Little Tokyo Design Week: Future City (LTDW) this week. LTDW celebrates the power and energy of cutting-edge design and technology emerging from Japan and its relation to current trends materializing in Los Angeles.

“We look forward to participating alongside world class designers, artists and creative thinkers and engaging the public in an exciting dialogue about the future of our cities and the future of design,” says MDP Chair Ann Burdick.

Taking place July 14 through 17, the free, four-day public festival will span the geographic breadth of downtown Los Angeles’ Little Tokyo district with a series of museum exhibitions, student installations, public happenings and temporary galleries in the form of shipping containers placed throughout the public plazas of Little Tokyo. Under the auspices of the MDP program, the College will produce three separate projects for LTDW exploring how design and technology will shape lives in the cities of the future.

“Grad Media Design emphasizes an approach that responds to issues without the assumption of a particular type or mode of outcome and, similarly, to resist the adaptation of common assumptions for topics of technological or social concern,” says Tim Durfee, core faculty and director of amp: Projects in Media and Architecture within the MDP program. “This ethic is in evidence for both our PLAN C installation and Metropolis of Me symposium, in which we approach familiar topics from somewhat novel directions in order to reveal overlooked opportunities or implications.”

There are three projects being produced by Grad Media Design for LTDW.

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Art Center Tops IDSA College Wins with Six Awards

Cadence by Seth Astle

Today the Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA) unveiled the winners of the 2011 International Design Excellence Awards (IDEA) program—a celebration of design excellence in products, sustainability, interaction design, packaging, strategy, research and concepts.

We’re excited and honored to report that Art Center topped this year’s list of college wins with six student and professional awards. In total, Art Center has won 59 IDEAs since 1991—more than any other school, and in the top 10 of any other institution, corporate or educational.

This year’s winners:

Product Design

Grad ID

Design Strategy & Management (professional category)

  • BRONZE: Mariana Amatullo, Elisa Ruffino, David Mocarski, Karen Hofmann, Liliana Becerra, Penny Herscovitch, Dan Gottlieb, Safe Agua project

Art Center also had many finalists:

  • German Aguirre, Centaur High Performance Quad Rugby Wheelchair
  • KC Cho and Jackie Black, SAFE AGUA: ReLava Kitchen Workstation
  • Jessica Yeh & Narbeh Dereghishian, SAFE AGUA: Ducha Halo Portable Shower
  • Stéphane Angoulvant, Dexter Work Sled
  • Joel Greenspan, Oplei Transitional Running Shoe
  • Jin Kim, Flameingo Sustainable Fire Extinguisher
  • Joey Wang, Lien Sustainable Funerary Ritual for Taiwan
  • Mark Huang, Orbital modular sport performance eyewear for POC
  • Mike Wang, STACK Traffic Control Products
  • Matthew Lim, Sennheiser Eco-Vinyl Turntable
  • Pengtao Yu, U-Haul Emergency Response Conversion Kit for the American Red Cross

Congratulations to all the students, faculty, and staff for your hard work and for a job well done! Co.Design has a nice gallery of the winners on their site.