Tag Archives: Student Work

OutNetwork Presents Mapping at Brewery Annex

OutNetwork, Art Center’s Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgendered, Questioning, Intersex and Allies (GLBTQIA) student club, will exhibit the work of a dozen artists and designers the L.A. Artcore Brewery Annex in downtown Los Angeles throughout March. The exhibit, Mapping, examines the GLBTQIA community and their location geographically, politically, internationally and locally.

Mapping is an extension of the mission of OutNetwork, which not only supports and embraces a variety of individuals from every socio-economic background, but also provides opportunities for networking and advancement for its members.

An opening reception will be this Sunday, March 6, from 2 to 7 p.m. at the Brewery. Refreshments and hors d’oeuvres will be served.

Art Center students exhibiting in the show include:

  • Lauren Coffin (Advertising)
  • Adam Cottingham (Environmental Design)
  • Natalie Embrey (Photography and Imaging)
  • Richard Funsten (Graphic Design)
  • Braden Graeber (Environmental Design)
  • Jaime Lopez (Graphic Design)
  • Jessamyn Prince (Photography and Imaging)
  • Rene Rodriguez (Photography and Imaging)
  • Bryce Shawcross (Graphic Design)

Alumni exhibiting:

  • Takayuki Shimada (Fine Art)
  • Jason Shorr (Illustration)
  • Jennifer Whitney (Illustration)

The exhibition will be on display through March 31 at L.A. Artcore Brewery Annex. Regular gallery hours are Wednesday through Sunday from noon to 5 p.m.

Focus Screening Saturday

Mike Ross

Broadcast Cinema student, filmmaker Steve Hwang, is bringing an interesting topic to the big screen: a feature-length documentary on professional gamer Mike Ross.

For Focus, Hwang followed Ross throughout 2010 as he travelled the country, competing in Street Fighter 4 contests and preparing for the big tournament.

The film premieres tomorrow evening at Hillside Campus. Admission is free, and you can RSVP here. Check out the trailer below.

Ducha Halo Up for Award: Vote Today!

The National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance (NCIIA)’s Open Minds video competition is now underway—and Art Center students Narbeh Dereghishian and Jessica Yeh need your vote!

The annual Open Minds contest features cutting-edge innovation by students from around the country.

This year, 15 teams have been selected to participate in the high-profile event, which involves an exhibition and video competition held in partnership with Inventors Digest.

Product Design student Dereghishian and Environmental Design student Yeh have been nominated for their Ducha Halo, a low-cost, portable shower designed in 2009’s Designmatters Safe Agua studio.

Check out their video, and vote for it, at the Inventors Digest site. Voting lasts through March 14. Winners will be announced March 26 at the Open Minds event, held at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C.

Good luck, Narbeh and Jessica!

Art Center Broadcast Cinema Students Win Big

Broadcast Cinema student Paul Linkogle has been selected to join the Blue Ribbon Panel for this year’s College Television Awards for his Johnson & Johnson spot seen below. Linkogle is also is a winner in the American Advertising Federation Los Angeles ADDY Awards competition.

Kevin Synder, another Broadcast Cinema student, has also won the American Advertising Federation Los Angeles ADDY Awards competition for his V8 spot:

Congrats, Paul and Kevin!

Happy Valentine’s Day from Art Center


In honor of Valentine’s Day, we’re featuring this lovely poster from the Designmatters Human Rights Exhibition studio. A partnership with the United Nations Department of Public Information, the studio challenged students to interpret and represent the Universal Declaration of Human Rights visually through a series of posters.

This poster, Everybody, was designed by Graphic Design student Christopher Kosek. (Kosek graduated in 2009.)

Everybody addresses Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Kosek writes:

“All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood. I wanted to talk about the realization that once you get past nationality, race, gender and the external human things, we are all the same inside.”

From November 2009 through March 2010, the Images for Human Rights: Student Voices exhibition were on view at the Skirball Cultural Center. The exhibition is now in the permanent installation at the Holocaust Memorial Center in Farmington Hills, Mich.

See the rest of the posters (in PDF form) and read more about this studio at the Designmatters site.

Changing the World, One Project at a Time

A Designmatters transdisciplinary studio with a San Diego-based international health and humanitarian aid organization has resulted in a beautiful promotional film created by Art Center students.

The studio, held last summer, focused on rebranding Project Concern International (PCI) for their 50th anniversary.

In August, three Photography and Film students traveled to Zambia with PCI to observe and document their work in the field.

“My goal for the film from the start was to document the people in Zambia, and to show the world what their lives are like,” said Film student John X. Carey, director of the piece.

“It was a difficult first film for me to make, but such an incredible experience.”

In other PCI news, this week the organization launched a new identity stemming from the student work in last summer’s studio.

“There is a different level of engagement when you are working with design students—their enthusiasm and energy are palpable,” PCI’s Shawn Ruggeiro said about the studio. “Their perspective on this project, as well as our organization, was refreshing and inspiring.”

View the piece below, and read more about the Designmatters/PCI 50th Anniversary Project.


West Coast Bright Design Challenge Brings Scholarships to Art Center

In December, five Art Center students were awarded generous scholarships through the inaugural West Coast Bright Design Challenge.

Sponsored by the National Association for Surface Finishing (NASF), the West Coast competition was co-sponsored by the Metal Finishing Association of Southern California (MFASC).

The West Coast Bright Design Challenge was incorporated into last term’s Material Explorations class, led by Art Center instructors Catherine McLean and Krystina Castella. A transdisciplinary team made up of Product Design, Environmental Design, Fine Art and Graduate Industrial Design students spent the term learning about surface finishing technologies and applications, and worked with local electroplating companies to enhance their understanding of the process. Students were challenged to create innovative works utilizing these technologies.

At the end of the class, students presented finished 3-D prototypes and presentations to a panel of faculty and MFASC judges. The students with the top three concepts as judged by the panel were each awarded $5,000 scholarships, and two additional students received honorable mentions and $2,500 scholarships.

Scholarship Winners:

  • Viirj Kan, Environmental Design: $5,000 Prize
  • Carlos Vides, Environmental Design: $5,000 Prize
  • Ed Schofield, Graphic Design: $5,000 Prize
  • Byron Wilson, Product Design: $2,500 Prize
  • Ji Hyun Lee, Product Design: $2,500 Prize

Art Center and the MFASC were thrilled with the collaboration and plan to continue the West Coast Bright Design Challenge in 2011. Congratulations to the student winners!

(Pictured, from left to right: Edward Schofield, $5,000 scholarship award recipient; Virginia Kan, $5,000 scholarship award recipient; Bryan Leiker, K&L Anodizing; Carlos Vides, $5,000 scholarship award recipient; Dan Cunningham, MFASC executive director; Alan Olick, MFASC president and president, General Plating Co.; Byron Wilson, $2,500 scholarship award recipient; Ji Hyun Lee, $2,500 scholarship award recipient; Gregg Halligan, former MFASC president.)

Next Big Thing: The Lumi Process

Brand X wrote a great cover story this week on Art Center Product Design students Jesse Genet and Stéphan Angoulvant and their studio Lumi Co. The pair created a new form of printing onto materials, which they call the Lumi Process.

The cutting-edge technology allows the printing of vivid, photo-like images onto natural materials such as denim, wood and leather without the use of chemicals—something never before done in the world of design.

From the article: “Lumi Co.’s first products — a supple leather wallet printed with an image of the Brewery’s neighboring warehouses and a laptop bag featuring a 1960s Richard Avedon print — might not appear to be anything innovative. After all, photography and design have a history of playing off each other. But what makes their technique unique is that the image is ingrained in the fiber, meaning materials like pleather do not have to be used to display a print.”

Also interesting: Lumi Co got its start last year with funds raised on Kickstarter. Genet explains the process in the video below.

Read more: Lumi Co.’s photographic furniture design

A Rising (Sixth Magnitude) Star

Open issue 49 of CMYK Magazine (due on newsstands this month) and you’ll find the work of recent John Marshall High School graduate and Saturday High student Richard Kam.

A logo and poster Richard created for the nonprofit The World at Night was selected for inclusion in the magazine by Connie Hwang of San Francisco’s Connie Hwang Design. The logo and poster were part of a rebranding assignment in Zohrab “Z” Gevorkian’s Graphic Design Saturday High course last spring. Gevorkian was so impressed by Richard’s work that he encouraged him to submit his work to CMYK, a magazine that features work by emerging college art students.

The World at Night, poster by Kam

“I felt Richard’s work was at a place that was deserving to be competitive,” explains Gevorkian. “Yes, he was a high school student, but it is a college course. He was hesitant at first, but Richard ended up submitting his work, and he was selected. He really broke the mold.”

We recently caught up with Kam to chat about the honor.

Dotted Line: Tell us a little about the work that CMYK selected.
Richard Kam: They’re printing a logo and a poster I designed for The World a Night (TWAN), an offshoot of Astronomers Without Borders. TWAN is a photography group whose slogan is “One people, one sky,” and its members, who come from all around the world, upload and share beautiful nighttime and space photography. They also organize an annual exhibition. Their basic philosophy is that regardless of which country you’re from, the night sky is for all of us to share.

Dotted Line: Why did you choose TWAN?
Kam: I really like astronomy and space exploration. It’s a whole new frontier and it’s so vast. And I really like what TWAN is doing, so I wanted to bring some new light to them.

Dotted Line: Is TWAN aware of your redesign?
Kam: A few weeks before CMYK contacted me, I gathered together all my files, and I wrote TWAN a really long email. I started with, “If you’re really busy right now, please don’t read this. Open it at a later time. And please forward this to somebody who’s in a position to read this.” The rest of the letter was the creative brief I wrote for the project in class. I ended by asking them to just look at a fan’s work and see what they think.

Continue reading →

Happy Holidays from Art Center!


Happy Holidays from Art Center! We hope you have a happy and safe holiday season. Check out our beautiful holiday greeting, designed by Graphic Design students Jason Yeh and Nadia Tzuo.

For Art Center, 2011 will be a pivotal year, culminating in a year’s worth of preparation and resolve. Under the leadership of our president Lorne Buchman, and in conjunction with our 80th anniversary, the Art Center community came together this year to envision what our future will look like. Early next year, we will unveil the College’s new strategic plan, building on a long tradition of preparing art and design students to become leaders in their chosen fields.

We hope you will join us as we embark upon the next 80 years.

Our campus and administrative offices will be closed beginning Dec. 23 and will reopen Jan. 3. Happy Holidays!