Art Center College of Design announced Thursday that Robert C. Davidson Jr. has been elected chairman of its board of trustees -- the first African American to take that top leadership role at the Pasadena institution.

Davidson, 64, succeeds John Puerner, the former Los Angeles Times publisher who had chaired the board since 2007 and is now leaving it after having served three three-year terms, the maximum under current bylaws.

Davidson, a board member since 2004, chaired the search committee that last year recruited the school's new president, Lorne M. Buchman, from San Francisco, where his career in academic administration had included a five-year tenure during the 1990s as president of California College of Arts and Crafts (now known as California College of the Arts).

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Robert C. Davidson Jr. of Pasadena has been elected chairman of the Board of Trustees of Art Center College of Design, outgoing Board Chairman John P. Puerner announced Thursday.
Davidson, the first African American to serve as Art Center's board chairman, has been a member since 2004.

He most recently chaired Art Center's Presidential Search Committee, which led to the appointment in October, 2009 of Lorne M. Buchman as the new president and chief executive officer.

"Elevating Art Center to a place of new leadership has been rewarding," Puerner said in a statement. "I am pleased to pass the torch to Bob, who has proven to be a valuable asset to the college and is sure to help maintain Art Center's leadership position in art and design education." Davidson called it "an honor and a privilege" to be asked to serve as board chairman.

"As the College celebrates its 80th anniversary, it is with a sense of excitement and renewed commitment that we will partner with Lorne to help Art Center achieve new levels of greatness," he said in a statement.

Buchman said Davidson is "deeply committed to Art Center and dedicated to helping me establish a clear vision for the College, engaging students, faculty and the entire Art Center community in imagining the future of art and design education."
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The Board of Trustees of Art Center College of Design announced in a press release today that Robert C. Davidson, Jr. has been elected board chairman. Davidson is the first African-American to serve as board chairman at Art Center, and among the first African-Americans to assume board leadership of a member institution within the Association of Independent Colleges of Art and Design.

Davidson has served on the executive, audit, and governance committees and most recently as chair of Art Center’s presidential search committee which led to the appointment of Dr. Lorne M. Buchman as president.

Dr. Buchman stated, “I had the great privilege of getting to know Bob during the presidential search process. He proved to be deeply committed to Art Center and dedicated to helping me establish a clear vision for the College, engaging students, faculty and the entire Art Center community in imagining the future of art and design education.”

Davidson said, “It is an honor and a privilege to be asked to serve as board chairman for an institution as distinguished as Art Center. As the college celebrates its 80th anniversary, it is with a sense of excitement and renewed commitment that we will partner with Lorne to help Art Center achieve new levels of greatness.”

The president’s residence at Morehouse College is named in his honor, where he received an honorary Doctorate of Laws degree . Other honors include the Bennie Award for Leadership from Morehouse College, the Raoul Wallenberg Save the Children Award from the Shaare Zedek Medical Center Jerusalem, and Black Businessman of the Year from the Los Angeles Chapter of the Black MBA Association.

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Computer-generated animation isn't any quicker or less demanding than the hand-drawn cel process that artists labored over in the past, says Kathy Altieri of DreamWorks Animation.

"A lot of artwork goes in, a lot gets thrown out," Altieri said, adding that it takes four or five years and 400-500 people to produce a full-length animated movie.

"The computer allows us to make much richer images," she said. "But nothing goes faster, nothing's easier - it's just better."

 Read the full article here.

"Tis mad idolatry to make the service greater than the god," Lorne Buchman was quoting to me over lunch at his hillside campus Tuesday.

I'm thinking, the new president of Art Center is deep into "Troillus and Cressida"? The jefe of the nation's premier college of design should know from gum erasers, building a better speed racer and how to squeeze more bucks from donors, right?

Right. But I had forgotten Buchman is also a Shakespearean scholar, with a doctorate from Stanford. That he headed the theater department at Cal. What he meant with the quote was clear - Art Center had wandered from its true course, emphasizing the sizzle of glamor over the steak of solid craft.

He also gave a theatrical metaphor for his philosophy of academic management.

"My training as a director has served me well as a college president," Buchman said "You have an idea and you bring it to a community of people. You want to listen to that community, to the crew and the actors and the writer. Because, really, the most important moment is between the presentation on stage and the audience - the director is nowhere to be seen. That kind of disappearing is key to the director's success."

Buchman is no beginner in this role of college president. He also helmed the prestigious California College of the Arts in Oakland, expanding the school into a new San Francisco campus as well. He was president of the Saybrook Graduate school, a Jungian psychological

center. He was interim CEO of the San Francisco Art Institute and president of the online Kaplan.com School of Education. And he's still a young man.

Read the full article here.

To the plaintive chords of Claude Debussy's "Claire de Lune," a series of celestial bodies appear to waft by as if in a lethargic dance, suspended both in time and gravity.

The hypnotic video, "Things that Float" (seen above), is the creation of Stephen Nowlin, director for Art Center College of Design's Williamson Gallery in Pasadena. It represents the first installment in a curated series organized by NASA Images, a division of the Internet Archive, which seeks to make public-domain pictures more accessible.

 Read the full article here. 

In the same way some nerdy leading men have become definitions of cool (see: Michael Cera), graphic novels have also gotten a little Hollywood glitter on their previously geeky reputation.

With Zac Efron signed on for an adaptation of the spy graphic novel "Fire" and Blake Lively going brunette for her role as Carol Ferris in the upcoming "Green Lantern," Hollywood is still routinely mining the depths of graphic novels to find source materials for A-list stars -- and it looks like this relationship is just starting to bloom.

The romance between the film industry and graphic novels can be seen everywhere, from Disney's purchase of Marvel Comics -- which will supply them with an "endless" amount of potential films, experts said -- to independent publishers such as Top Shelf Productions pairing up with independent production companies to churn out their own flicks.

Top Shelf, said co-owner Chris Staros, "made it our mission to redeem graphic novels as a literary art form."

He's certainly been successful at marketing his line. Staros' publishing house recently struck an investment deal with Anthony Bregman's A Likely Story Productions to give Bregman first look at all new Top Shelf publications for possible development.

Staros said he expects several projects to result out of the deal over the next few years -- as well as increased exposure for Top Shelf.

"We value art and subtext, and that will always resonate. If we make a film, whether it has indie quirkiness or mass appeal, it'll have that," Staros said. But there's also the reality that "taking something to film brings it to a much wider audience, and that's one of the things we're hoping for."

Besides, "the key to movies is the key to any kind of story -- believable characters. And when you do a movie, [you're] able to infuse it with that extra dimension, like music, and bring it to life," Staros said.

The film industry's embrace of the graphic novel tightened after the unbelievable success of "Spider-Man" in 2002, said Stephen Weiner, author of "Faster than a Speeding Bullet: The Rise of the Graphic Novel" and director of the Maynard Public Library in Maynard, Massachusetts. When that movie came out, graphic novels were just beginning to gain traction as a form of literature that could be read outside of the house and past age 18.

And with "Spider-Man" fan Sam Raimi at the helm, the comic-based movie also became something more than the fare of adolescents. Raimi "was able to connect with your teenage boy and your 40-year-old guy who was able to see Spider-Man's problems as a metaphor for his own life," Weiner said.

"The days of being embarrassed to be caught reading a graphic novel is over," Weiner said, adding that "Hollywood had a big part to play. The really big success of 'Spider-Man' and 'X-Men' really changed it. They were able to take the mythical metaphors and give them human drama for people who didn't read comics."

Yet if "Spider-Man" hadn't been the blockbuster it was, earning more than $100 million at the box office in its first weekend, Weiner doubts Hollywood would even be interested in making film after film using this particular kind of source material.

"They're not in love with the graphic novel; they're in love with what they do for them," he said. "They invest a lot, and they wouldn't if they weren't getting the returns."

To date, another graphic novel-based film, "The Dark Knight," holds the crown for highest-grossing opening weekend at $158 million, followed by "Spider-Man 3" at $151 million.

As a result, "the stigma of using graphic novels has been lost," said Rich Johnston, creator of graphic novel and comic book gossip site BleedingCool.com. Now, "it's just another version of making films based on novels."

If not better, since the visuals are part of the storyline. "One of the biggest reasons why Hollywood loves graphic novels is because they have ready-made storyboards," Johnston said. "If it looks cool, that helps."

A decade ago, a studio wouldn't tout the fact that a movie was based on a graphic novel, Staros said. They've now become so mainstream that Hollywood readily puts the source material front and center when marketing a film, making the novel and its creator just as famous as the actors.

"Ten years ago, when I was at a bar, and I told someone that I publish graphic novels for a living, I would have to spend the next 15 minutes explaining what graphic novels are," he said. "And now when I say that, people say, 'Wow, do you know ['Dark Knight' writer] Frank Miller or ['Watchmen' writer] Alan Moore?' The conversation invariably turns to what graphic novels they've read or what movies they've seen based on comics."

And there's nothing like publicity to make a sale. "Watchmen," which was originally released in 1987, was boosted by the film to become the March, 2009 top-seller on the New York Times's list of best-selling soft cover graphic novels and Diamond Comic Distributors best-selling graphic novel of 2009. The novel was able to move units even though the movie version didn't do "Spider-Man" box office numbers by a long shot.

Read the full article here.

The Design Revolution Road Show that will be rolling through the Art Center College of Design campus on Monday has an agenda, and the 40 objects it's bringing in tow help make a convincing case: good design solves problems.

There are solutions to first-world problems, like needing to sync your iPod with your workout. But there are also straws to purify polluted water as you drink it, sharp jewelry to punch would-be attackers and affordable, custom-fit eyeglasses that use liquid to bend light accordingly.

The photos are of Hippo Rollers, a water transport barrel for the developing world. The Hippo has a capacity of 24 gallons, and frees women and children from having to spend most of their days collecting water for their households.

 Read the full article here.

At first, the project sounds like the opening to a bad joke – what do a camel, a refrigerator and a vaccine have in common?

For Mariana Amatullo, director of Designmatters at California’s Art Center College of Design, the elements add up to a riddle in need of solving. And it led her and her team to develop a mobile health clinic that reaches rural African villages.

The problem is too common. In communities lacking proper refrigeration and access to roads, vaccines that need to be chilled are rendered ineffective.

That’s where the camel comes in.

“The use of camels is well-suited to reach remote, scattered, nomadic communities,” says Amatullo. “This door-to-door approach has been found particularly effective, as few individuals in this population have the means to reach urban clinics and hospitals.”

On a budget of only a few thousand dollars, the team worked in partnership with the Nomadic Communities Trust and Princeton’s Institute of Science and Technology of Materials, to cheaply build a solar-refrigerator on a bamboo harness.

From there, the beast of burden can traverse the rugged terrain administering health care with a team of doctors and nurses.

Here in North America, our technology is often focused on next generation. As devices become more and more integrated in our lives, it’s hard to imagine a world without them - and we tend to forget that not everything is universally effective.

Read the full article here.

Deep in the belly of the Art Center College of Design’s South Campus Building in downtown Pasadena, flashbulbs popped, lights blazed and music thumped. There was even a deejay, complete with fashionably aloof demeanor and single-ear headphones. Models worked their way down the walkway, stomping in insanely high heels and yards of glittering fabric, pausing at the end of the ramp to vamp and peer out fiercely from under large tousled hairdos.

It was hip, it was professional, it was a showcase for ... high school kids?

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Art Center’s Saturday High Program fashion show, featuring 25 young designers from three Saturday High classes (mostly the recent fall class) who created 48 pieces that were strutted, sulked and stomped down the runway. The show was a bit like a final exam or cumulative project for these students, many of whom didn’t even know how to sew when they started.

Read the full article here.

La Cañada resident Brittany Tom took her interest in fashion to new heights when three of her creations recently were showcased in runway shows at Art Center College of Design’s south campus in Pasadena.

A junior from Flintridge Sacred Heart Academy, Tom was one of several area teen designers to take the Saturday High class geared especially to high school students.

Tom, who first used a sewing machine only two years ago, loved the rigor of the class, which included making and cutting her own patterns, learning about fabric properties, and sewing the designs into finished fashions. She only occasionally hit a snag.

Read the full article here.

Hyundai Motor broke into the U.S. market in 1986 with a $4,995 compact car, the Excel. Now the Korean automaker wants customers to buy its models less for their cheap price and more for their stylish looks.

After boosting its market share to a record this year, Hyundai aims to build on the gains with more eye-catching designs. The new focus, kicking off with the 2011 Sonata sedan and revamped Tucson crossover, is also aimed at helping South Korea's biggest carmaker command prices on a par with larger Toyota Motor (TM) and Honda Motor (HMC).

"The basic idea is a car that looks like a premium car, but not at a premium price," says Phil Zak, Hyundai's head of U.S. design. "We're looking to pull people out of Camrys and Accords and give them something different."

Read the entire article here.

As part of its role as the non-government advisor for the United Nations, Pasadena, California-based Art Center College of Design teamed up with another NGO, Un Techo Para Mi Pais, and embarked upon a humanitarian design charrette to help bring safe, clean water to the slums of Chile.

Safe Agua Chile brought 12 students to Santiago, Chile, where they lived in impoverished communities for two weeks, working with residents to develop new tools and methods of storing, utilizing, transporting, and conserving water. The students developed six solutions, an exhibition of which will be up in Art Center's Williamson Gallery until April. More documentation can be seen on the Safe Agua Chile blog, but we grabbed an image and quick description of each solution here.

Read the full article here.

Not long ago, Henrik Fisker was dashing up Interstate 5 to San Francisco when a highway patrolman clocked his Aston Martin roadster -- a car that Fisker himself designed -- going 97 mph.

He protested. ("It was 90 at the most.") He got a ticket and set the cruise control at 70. For the next four hours, "I was overtaken by every grandmother," he said. Running late, he pressed down the pedal.

This time, the radar gun caught him going 88 mph.

"How long since your last ticket?" the officer asked. Fisker paused, but decided to fess up. "Well, actually, not that long ago," he replied.

Over the last two decades, Fisker has designed some of the sexiest cars on the road: sleek BMWs and Aston Martins that accelerate from 0 to 60 in the time it takes to count the fingers on one hand.

Art Center College of Design has appointed Karen Hofmann to the position of department chair, product design, officials announced.

DesignIntelligence, published by the Design Futures Council, recently named Hofmann one of the "Most Admired Educators of 2010" for exemplifying excellence in design education leadership.

The selection was made with extensive input from hundreds of design professionals, academic department heads and students.

After working as an instructor in Art Center's industrial design department for the last eight years, Hofmann was named acting chair of the product design department in 2008.

Read the entire article here.

The city has announced its Outstanding Recycler Award Winners for 2009, including Art Center College of Design, Sequoyah School, Saint Philip the Apostle School, Waste Less Living, and Interior Removal Specialist, announces the city of Pasadena.
Awards are given each fall to promote environmental and recycling programs established in the community. They were honored at Monday night's City Council meeting.
Art Center College of Design was singled out as the overall recycler of the year for outstanding support and commitment to recycling, city officials said. The college is developing a comprehensive sustainability plan to achieve a goal of zero waste in all operations.
This year the college analyzed its North Campus solid waste stream to identify recyclables, reusables and compostable materials, then staff and students were trained how best to keep items out of the waste stream. The college also replaced its plastic food service ware with paper and bio-plastic. All food waste from campus cafeteria is composted off site.

Read the full article here.

It's only fitting that a city that boasts over 6,000 miles of asphalt should host one of the nation's biggest and oldest auto shows. Celebrating over 100 years of showcasing automotive trends and innovations, 2009's expo features over 80 exhibitors occupying 347,000 square feet of Los Angeles Convention Center floor space. And it's not all just about ogling the new cars -- there's plenty of other worthwhile entertainment value to be had at this year's showcase (starting with the $2 off admission coupon available from www.lauatoshow.com).
"It's not just static cars sitting on carpet," points out Brendan Flynn, the show's director of communications. "I know plenty of people who come to the show who aren't car enthusiasts. They're just wowed by the elaborateness of the displays, the festive atmosphere and all the cool activities."
Take a spin through the highlights: Toyota Ride and Drive (Fridays 11 a.m. - 6 p.m., Saturdays 9 a.m. - 6 p.m., Sundays 9 a.m. - 6 p.m.) gives car enthusiasts a chance to test drive an assortment of Toyota vehicles, including the new 5th generation 4Runner and the full line of hybrids.

Read the full article here.

These are not the cars that kids doodle in the margins of their math books, that men buy to cure their middle-age crises or that models slink across the hoods of.

The hybrids and electrics that dominate the Los Angeles Auto Show opening today are small, practical and green, with unsexy names like the Honda P-Nut, the Chevy Volt or the Ford Fiesta. But after decades of dealing with practical concerns, from safety improvements to quality, car designers hardly sound defeated now that the auto-industry buzzword is "green." For the autostyling mavens gathered at the Los Angeles Convention Center, the need to integrate social conscience and sex appeal seems to be a welcome challenge.

"I would love nothing better than to have that design challenge," said Stewart Reed, a former Toyota designer who is chairman of the transportation design department at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. "I would love to have a wealthy patron come to me and say, `Work it out."'

Read the full article here.

Solar-powered refrigerators mounted on camel's backs my soon deliver much-needed vaccines to the isolated Kenyan districts of Laikipia and Samburu.

The half a million people inhabiting these remote desert communities in western Kenya have suffered from poor health care and low literacy rates for decades. Aid efforts have persevered though: the Nomadic Communities Trust has been using camels as mobile health clinics for years to deliver limited supplies, but the inhospitable terrain and next-to-nonexistent transport infrastructure prevented the Trust from delivering life-saving medicines and vaccines, which require constant refrigeration. A solution was clearly needed to deliver the aid the communities so desperately needed.

In 2005 the Trust partnered with California's Art Center College of Design's Designmatters and Princeton's Institute for the Science and Technology of Materials (PRISM) to begin development of a lightweight, solar-powered refrigerator capable of transporting medicines across the desert. With a budget of just a few thousand dollars (and help from some beta-testing camels from The Bronx Zoo), the project was able to develop an innovative new mobile health and education clinic.

Read the full article here.

Opinions of cities often hang on complicated threads of good and bad experiences. So, if you have out of town guests this month, we hope this lineup of events will be a useful guide and bring out the best that Los Angeles has to offer.

This week catch a few flicks by filmmakers not afraid of a recession at the Zero Film Festival and then travel to 1920s Shanghai with the Grand Guignolers. The Pacific Resident Theatre offers a dense bill of shows while the Alyce de Roulet Williamson Gallery continues with its exhibition on tools.

Read the full article
here.

Kenya's camels recently started sporting some unusual apparel: eco-friendly refrigerators! Some of the African country's camels are carrying the solar-powered mini ridges on their backs as part of a test project that uses camels as mobile health clinics. Organizers hope the eco-friendly transport system will provide a cheap, reliable way of getting much-needed medicines and vaccines to rural communities in Kenya and Ethiopia.

Read the full article here.

The Designers Accord Global Summit on Sustainability & Education held October 23rd & 24th in San Francisco, marked an important step forward for the sustainable design movement. For two days a high-powered group of about 100 designers, educators, writers, business strategists, technologists, and futurists were assembled by the leadership of the Designers Accord to "tackle the critical issue of sustainability, consider how best to prepare our educational community to make real change, and imagine what's next in design education."

The summit took place in the AutoDesk Design Gallery, a gorgeous flowing space overlooking the Embarcadero Plaza, which is full of physical and virtual examples of how design constructs and transforms the world in which we live. The week leading up to the event had been marked by anticipation for the 350.org day of climate action on October 24th—an historic event, as it was the first ever coordinated, international grassroots action focused on issues of climate change and sustainability. The sights and sounds of a climate action rally being held in the plaza below us lent a sense of both festivity and gravity to the summit.

I'm back from glorious snowed-in Aspen Meadows, where AIGA and Winterhouse Institute staged the Aspen Design Summit. This meeting was focused on complex, real world problems that can be addressed through the ingenuity and “progressive reach of design’s influence,” in the words of AIGA’s Richard Grefé. With the support of Rockefeller Foundation — which is keen to see more collaboration and capacity building across the design industry in this social impact arena — all 64 attendees at the Summit were organized into six groups that developed preliminary strategies and action schemes around diverse challenges. Positioned as the scaffolding for feasible and fundable programs that could be executed in the next 24 months, key organizations and partners were engaged, including the CDC (healthy aging), UNICEF (educational kits and
adolescence hygiene), and Mayo Clinic (rural health delivery).

I was thrilled to be assigned to the UNICEF projects and to reunite with a previous Designmatters's partner, Christopher Fabian (head of Innovation Unit at UNICEF), and to understand more about the logistics and needs behind UNICEF’s current deployment of resources to reach underserved children and young girls. We worked both to rethink what the design of a low cost, durable Early Childhood Education kit that can be used in emergency situations could look like (and we took apart the current one); and partnered with SHE founder, Elizabeth Scharpf, to understand where we might be able to offer new strategies for a social enterprise model in Rwanda that is bringing support services for menstruating women and girls — so that they are more likely to continue to
attend work and classes during their cycles.

Beyond the fact that there is always something slightly surreal in attempting to even begin tackling world poverty issues from the pampered environment of one of the most privileged spots in the world, there were the following and exciting take-aways for me: 1) to participate in a conversation about the designer’s role in the future, and seriously attempting to come to terms with the landscape of social impact and development; and 2) getting validation and encouragement for our work.

Read the full article here.

(Art Center College, Alyce de Roulet Williamson Gallery, Pasadena). A common misconception is that only humans use tools. Actually, several other species--apes, sea otters, and various birds, among them--employ naturally occurring stones and sticks as tools. Indeed, some monkeys and even some birds (including a New Caledonian Crow named Betty[!]) go the step further to construct tools from multiple found objects. Perhaps the distinction lies in the fact that humans are the only ones who use tools to fabricate other tools.

Whether tools make us unique or not, they tell intriguing stories about our history. Artist/writer John O'Brien and curator Stephen Nowlin have assembled a provocative group of tools in an exhibition that generously displays functional and non-functional material culture. Contrasting objects created for purely utilitarian purposes with objects and images conceived aesthetically, they present a nostalgic perspective on the history of tools and those visual artists who are beguiled by that history.

Read the full article in the December issue of ArtScene.

Week by week, and drop to drop, twelve students from the Art Center College of Design are working towards social change. In partnership with Un Techo Para Mi Pais, the students develop new tools for using, storing, and transporting water to improve the quality of life of impoverished families living in campamentos/slums, Chile. Last Week, we were transported to A Day in the Life of the poorest families in campamentos. We learned the important role water plays and we also saw how families are being emotionally and physically affected by the lack of basic needs. This week, follow, step by step, the exciting work of the students to find ways to make the families' dream of having Potable Drinking Water... a reality!

Health and Sanitation
Meet Erica and Elizabeth. They are the entrepreneurs of potable drinking water for Chile. As changemakers they both consider imperative to address the Health and Sanitation issue in the campamentos. Erica says she is committed to the project, because she wants to contribute with creating healthier conditions of life for these families after she was sick during her stay in Chile. She also wants to work for the improvement of the taste of water in campamentos.

Read the full article here.

 

 

 

The newest exhibit in the Alyce de Roulet Williamson Gallery at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena explores the fine line between and the intersection of art and science. "Tools" continues the venue's series of similarly themed shows and is also a part of "Origins: Art & Ideas 2009," a festival organized by the Pasadena Arts Council.

"A couple years ago I was thinking how was I going to work with this theme (`Origins') and I started thinking about how tools were extensions of the human body, that the human body was the origin of all tools," Stephen Nowlin said.

Read the full article here.

The Art Center College of Design will host a tribute to Keith Haring on November 30th.

In 1989 Keith was invited to Art Center by renowned interpretative illusgtrator Phil Hays to paint a mural that served as a "permanent memorial to members of the art community who have died AIDS and also serve as a symbol of hope and compassion."

Read the full article here.

 

The DGA announced Friday the winners of its 2009 student film awards for African-American, Asian-American, Latino and female directors.

In the African-American category, Rashaad Ernesto Green of NYU ("Premature"), Edward Kim of UCLA ("To Wander in Pandemonium") and Ken Ochiai of AFI ("Half Kenneth") were the winners.

...

And Eliza Subotowicz of Columbia University ("Ben"), Erika Cohn of Chapman University ("When Voices Fade") and Rebecca Cremona of Art Center College of Design ("Magdalene") took prizes in the womens category.

Read the full story here.

Honda's Acura division has been building cars for some time now. They're often high-tech with an upscale feeling. They just haven't always had the boldest designs on the road, but that's going to start changing.

The 2010 Acura ZDX is a morphing of coupe, sedan and SUV in a distinctive shape drawn by a young local woman. "To get the opportunity to sketch with a team and come up with something totally new and just totally blue sky was overwhelming and really exciting," said Michele Christensen. Michele grabbed the brass ring right out of design school. Her initial sketch got the ball rolling on the project.

"Michele has just been wonderful for the studio, give a new perspective from a female perspective, but also just an alternative perspective to what was already there, so that sketch was super refreshing," said Damon Schell, design team leader.

Michelle and the others on the design team had been toiling away on the ZDX for some time. When she joined other Acura staff at the media launch of the car, she had never even driven the vehicle, so ABC7's Dave Kunz insisted she take a spin.

"This is so cool," she said.

Michele is a true California girl, growing up in a car family in San Jose. She is now living a car designer's dream, working in a studio in Southern California.

Read the full article and view the broadcast clip here.

For the fifth year in a row, Art Center's Undergraduate Product Design and Graduate Industrial Design programs were named Top Industrial Design Programs by DesignIntelligence.
Art Center was also named as the most admired undergraduate industrial design program by deans and department chairs.

For more information and to read the complete story, see the November issue of DesignIntelligence.

With midterms beginning and expensive housing payments due monthly, it’s easy to take basic things like education and shelter for granted. “Images for Human Rights: Student Voices,” a new exhibition at the Skirball Cultural Center, reminds us of their importance.
The free exhibit runs through March 14 and features student-made art, the result of a 14-week class at Pasadena’s Art Center College of Design that focused on creating posters that concerned basic human rights.

The project has its roots in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a document written in response to the atrocities of World War II and the first document to outline the fundamental rights of all human beings.

Read the full story here.

On Wednesday, Giles Taylor, Jaguar’s chief exterior designer of the new XJ sedan, visited Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. He brought along an example of the car. This was the first glimpse of the car on the East Coast, after its unveiling in London in July.

It will not be in showrooms until next spring. Mr. Taylor and the XJ are making an unusual tour of automobile design schools that began at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, Calif., and includes Parsons The New School for Design in New York and the College for Creative Studies in Detroit. At Pratt, Mr. Taylor talked about the car inside the school’s gymnasium near folded basketball goals on a tarp protecting the wooden floor underneath. Mr. Taylor pointed out themes and details of the car to students.

“We tried to keep the basic architecture of the car very pure,” he explained. He noted the restraint in details, accent and badging and showed how some features subtly carry the eye downward, to “plant the car.”

Read the full article here.

"One of the issues faced by many Guatemalans is having access to pure and clean water.
According to the Guatemala Ministry of Health, 98 percent of the country’s water sources are contaminated with water-borne diseases such as typhoid fever, hepatitis A, cholera, giardia, and amebiasis,” states the thesis of Aguapura, a water purifier developed by students from three different universities including CalTech, the Art Center College of Design, and Landivar University, which is based in Guatemala.

Engineering schools around the world are focusing more and more on bottom of the pyramid designs that will improve quality of life. And at courses like CalTech’s “Design for Development course” (taught by Professor Ken Pickar) high-design is fused with rigorous engineering and an experiential component. CalTech students from Pickar's class spend time in the field understanding the needs of Guatemalan's and bringing their insights to their design.

"In the case of Aguapura, over the course of two academic terms through spring 2008, the project evolved from a student initiative to a pilot social entrepreneurship project facilitated by Designmatters (the social impact department at the Art Center College of Design) and funded by a grant from the Southern California Metropolitan Water District." says Mariana Amatullo Vice President and Director, Designmatters department at the Art Center College of Design.

Read the full article here.

It's a scary time to be a new graduate. But some seem more optimistic than others.

Around the world, graduates are emerging from interdisciplinary master's programs that integrate design, technology, and business. These professionals are trained in "design thinking." Sure, it's the latest trendy term to sweep the business world, but it's a technique that designers and executives alike hope may help to provide a solution to some of the world's serious challenges.

The only problem? There's no consensus on how to teach it. And there's no agreement on where these thinkers should spring from. Should design schools create more business-focused creatives, or should business schools foster creative thinking in their MBAs? For now, both approaches to innovating education are rolling out, and both types of programs appear on the 2009 BusinessWeek D-school List.

Read to full article here.

Gearing up - or maybe more accurately "ear-ing" up - for the 2009-2010 season, the Pasadena Symphony and POPS orchestras launches a new and quirky marketing campaign Friday. Threading through the whole rebranding effort is a disembodied ear, a logo described by the orchestras' Elizabeth Fieux as "Magritte meets Dali."

"We wanted to find a twist, an access point we don't have right now," said Paul Jan Zdunek, executive director, who was recruited in January to lead the merged orchestras out of financial turmoil.

"The look is classic and sophisticated, a little quirky," Zdunek said of the ear logo. "People who don't know anything about the symphony experience will look, be intrigued and want to know more."

The rebranding effort - coming just six weeks before the symphony's season-opener on Oct. 24 - is a bit late, Zdunek said. But he hopes the concept will become a unifying "under one roof" image for all the orchestras' elements and programs: the symphony, the POPS, the Pasadena Youth Symphony and the Musical Circus.

With a limited budget, Zdunek and Fieux approached Art Center College of Design students in Mikio Osaki's "The Agency" advertising class, who came up with the ear.

"Isn't it a hoot? Only kids could do it," Osaki said. "It's an irreverent, creative solution - kinda hip and kinda crazy but still conceptually correct for the symphony."

Read the full article here.

Esteemed cinematographer Allen Daviau, ASC will join the part-time faculty at Art Center College of Design. Daviau, whose credits include classic films such as E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, The Color Purple, Bugsy, as well as recent hits like Van Helsing, will teach a master class in cinematography.

The five-time Academy Award nominee is also a recipient of a BAFTA award as well as a Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Society of Cinematographers. “Having an artist of Allen’s caliber teach a master cinematography class is emblematic of what makes the Art Center Film program so unique,” says Ross LaManna, chair of undergraduate film at Art Center College. “We believe visual storytelling skills are taught best by those doing the best work themselves.”

Read the full article here.

Petersen Automotive Museum's California Car Design show has "local style, global influence" as its tagline and the show's shiny examples make a good case. California was settled way later than the east coast and Los Angeles was the first major city in the U.S. built up during the automotive age. As a result, California residents spend more time in cars and naturally started to view them as personal expressions.

Since California was settled by cock-eyed dreamers whose thirst for adventure would have kept them moving if they hadn't run out of dry land, there's a natural tendency to remake/remodel/upgrade what others in more inhospitable regions might accept as "good enough." This has shown itself in the early coachbuilders like Murhpy, Earl, and Bowman & Schwartz, right through to kustomizers like the Barris brothers, Ed Roth, Gene Winfield and Dean Jeffries. Harley Earl grew up in Los Angeles, became head stylist for his father's coachbuilding firm there and was plucked to head General Motors styling where he reigned for 30 years.

Pasadena, California's Art Center School of Design has grown into the premier training facility for car design in the world. And, since the 1970s, carmakers have located design studios in California in order to stay on top of the latest automotive trends, further spreading the state's car style internationally.

Read the full article here.

Stephanie, a graphic design student at Art Center College of Design sent in four projects she's completed. Incidentally, she's also on the lookout for an internship.

Chroma Paint: Branding and packaging for an environmental safe line of paint. Chroma is a safer, scientifically reformed paint for the conscientious, do-it-yourself customer. The sustainable, easy to use modular redesign is inspired by photosynthesis, and suggests an eco-friendly image & reliability. The product line and marketing strategy has been expanded to include concentrated, clean air, and solar paint, and has an identity system that will allow the collection to grow as technology advances.

Meals on Wheels: Branding and packaging for Meals on Wheels. These standardized meal boxes are made from one die cut, easily fold together, and are designed to simplify the process for volunteers. The bright colors change daily and create an opening ceremony that brightens the recipient's day.

Read the full article here.

“Images for Human Rights: Student Voices”: A Model Design Education and Public Outreach Project from the Art Center of Design.

How do young artists and designers address human rights? How does the next generation of visual thinkers engage in a dialogue about freedom, human dignity and access to education? What are the lessons learned from a design education and public outreach effort aimed at this urgently timely theme? These and other questions were explored in a poster exhibition entitled Human Rights: Student Voices, organized by Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California, through its social impact initiative Designmatters to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The exhibition premiered at the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) headquarters in Paris from September 3-5, 2008, during the 61st annual United Nations Department of Public Information Non-Governmental Organization conference “Reaffirming Human Rights For All: the Universal Declaration at 60,” and was subsequently on view in December 2008 at the Pasadena Central Library, California, in conjunction with a citywide celebration of International Human Rights Day.

Read the full article here.

To deliver refrigerated medicines to remote parts of Kenya, one group has developed solar-powered mobile clinics, carried by camels.

Picture a mobile clinic, and you might think of a big, high-tech SUV kitted with tiny lab facilities. But in Kenya? Not so much. As Earnest Beck points out over at Design Observer, camels are the most efficient and cheap transportation in those regions of Kenya populated by nomads, and lacking serviceable roads. And that has its own problems. According to Beck:

For the past decade, the Kenyan-based Nomadic Communities Trust (NCT) has sent camel convoys -- the most efficient and cost-effective means of transportation--to the region with medical supplies. But poor equipment (basically, wooden boxes tied to the camels with abrasive sisal rope) and lack of refrigeration meant that basic medicines such as vaccines could not be made available.

Read the rest of the article here.

If you're strapped for time, Art Center at Night -- the College's continuing education arm -- offers one- and two-day workshops as well as a rich selection of 14-week classes. Spend a day brushing up on contracts with an intellectual property attorney, discovering the tactile wonders of letterpress printing or honing your ability to pitch ideas in a way that sells. Full length course topics include: motion design, typography, package design, illustration, crafting a meaningful career, sketching, advertising and many more.

For the full article, see the August issue of HOW Design.

For the full article, see the August issue of Monthly Design.

In May, 20 of the world's top designers ditched their day jobs and headed to Washington. There, over the course of three scorchingly hot days, they agonized and argued over who should win prizes in this year's International Design Excellence Awards (IDEA) program, organized by the Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA) and sponsored by Target (TGT) and Autodesk (ADSK). Today, BusinessWeek announces their decisions, with gold, silver, and bronze gongs awarded to 150 products or programs.

Reflecting the scope and reach of the design discipline itself, awards were given to everything from sleek TVs and sharp-looking computer monitors to more creative concepts with barely a toehold in reality. But this year, particular credit was given to designers who showed they had truly considered a project in the wider context of the world at large.

"Design is not just about making things pretty," says Claudia Kotchka, former head of design at Procter & Gamble (PG), who was one of this year's judges. "Designers are about making the world a better place."

Read the rest of the article here.

Wielding the same hand-held 3-D body scanner doctors use, artist David Schafer "reorganized" a Henry Moore marble figure, creating a digital image for the monumental cast bronzes just installed as the city's newest piece of public art.

"Separated United Forms," based on Moore's 1966 "Reclining Form" in the Norton Simon Museum's collections, was created using a high-tech process the iconic sculptor probably never imagined.

Read the full article here.

Each year, Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California — one of the top design schools in the nation — opens its doors to the public, for a rare glimpse of what the next generation of automotive and industrial design might look like. At the same time, it also pays homage to what came before with its Car Classic event.

But there is far more to the show than the lawn displays of several dozen beautifully maintained vintage cars and futuristic concept models. Art Center (as students and faculty shorthand it) also opens its usually tightly controlled design labs for tours. Design projects are not covered under sheets; instead, they are put on display, and several students were on hand actively making sketches or working on scale models made of clay. Ford design honcho J Mays began his career at Art Center, and it's a safe bet these students are working on ideas that will find a spot within the design language of actual car manufacturers.

Read the full article here.

The Art Center College of Design has had a profound influence over car design for nearly eighty years. Located in Pasadena, CA, the Art Center has an alumni list that is the who's who of the automotive design world: Chris Bangle, Henrik Fisker, Chip Foose, J Mays, Freeman Thomas, and others. Since 2003, the famous college has opened up its doors to the public for an inside look at the facilities as well as a car show that celebrates the ever-changing shape of the automobile.

Read the full article here.

Art Center has produced some of the world’s best transportation designers. And for the last several years, this iconic institution has produced one of the world’s great car shows too.  Taking place July 19 at Art Center College of Design’s Pasadena, California campus, the Art Center Car Classic was small but mighty. Small, because its grassy, undulating quad can only hold so many machines. Mighty, because the show’s organizing committee makes every square inch of it count.

As you would expect of a show put on by professional car designers, faculty, and transportation design students, every show has a brief. Last year’s theme could have been called “Missing in Action” as the show was on hiatus for 2008. Oh and did we miss it. ortunately, it came back with a roar – several, really – this year. 2009's theme was “By Air, Land & Sea.” You don’t have to be a psychoanalyst to figure that this meant the field would be made up some combination of cars, boats, and aircraft. Sure enough, and to the delight of everyone who attended, it was. here was a lot of room for crossing over, too: cars inspired by aircraft, cars powered by aircraft style propulsion, cars that looked like boats, boats that looked like cars…

Read the rest of the article here.

From hot rods and classic cars to cutting-edge concept cars and aircraft, Car Classic '09 showcased the best in unique and exotic vehicles Sunday.

The Pasadena Art Center College of Design show drew hundreds of patrons to celebrate  "vehicles that push the boundaries of design," organizers said.

See the July 20, 2009 issue of Pasadena Star-News for the full article.

Most classic car shows feature shapely lines, giant engines and rnlnbows of colors. But
leave it to Pasadena's Art Center College of Design to host a show featuring a flying,car, microcars and a discussion on how the latest breakthroughs will spur space tourism.

Highlighting CarClassic '09, "By Air, Land and Sea," will be an address by legendary aerospace engineer Burt Rutan, who designed the record-breaking aircrafts Voyager -- the first plane to ever fly around the world without refueling -- and SpaceShip One, the first privately owned manned spacecraft to exceed an altitude of 328,000 feet twice within a 14-day period, winning the $10 million Ansari X-Prize. Rutan recently teamed up with Virgin Airlines Owner Sir Richard Bronson to launch Virgin Galactic for civilian space travel.

For the full article, see Pasadena Weekly.

 

 

This Sunday, Art Center will host their annual Car Classic, which "celebrates the very best in automotive design and affords the opportunity to showcase Art Center's strong ties to industry." Previous years' events have had titles like "Coachbuilding," "Dream Machines" and "Legends," while this year's is titled "By Air, Land & Sea."

Read the full article here.

The Art Center College of Design will showcase top design in all modes of transportation at Car Classic ‘09 this weekend.

Historic watercrafts, vintage vehicles and exotic aircrafts will be on display at the 9th annual event, to be held this Sunday, July 19, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

The Center created the event eight years ago to celebrate the work of alumni and other great designers while providing current students with an opportunity to witness some of the world’s greatest examples of design and the men and women behind them, said Jay Sanders, the Center’s Transportation Design Department Director.

“The Art Center has a long legacy of graduating some of the top designers in the world related to automotive and other forms of transportation design,” Sanders said.

Car Classic ‘09 is particularly interesting because the Art Center has broadened the event to go beyond the automotive - it will feature design from other areas of transportation including sea, air and space transportation.

See Pasadena Now for the full article.

Last week, I had the pleasure of giving a lecture at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California. I have know about the College's Designmatters program for a while now, but left the lecture even more impressed by the students' savvy and real understanding of the pressing needs that designers have the ability to address. Through a partnership with the UN, studios in the Designmatters program have proposed solutions for international policy, global health, and sustainable development in emerging markets.

Read the full article here.

Lorne M. Buchman, former provost and president of Oakland-based California College of Arts and Crafts, will become president and CEO of Art Center College of Design, taking over the top job in October.

His appointment, announced by board Chairman John P. Puerner, follows the abrupt September 2008 departure of Richard Koshalek when the board decided not to extend or renew his contract.

For the full article, see the July 10, 2009 issue of Pasadena Star-News.

A little more than a year ago, Richard Koshalek was pushed fromt eh presidency of Pasadena’s Art Center College of Design after an eruption of resentment among many students and alumni who said that he’d become too focused on building the small, elite institution’s bigger future -- and too removed from students' immediate need of scholarships and properly equipped work spaces.

Lorne M. Buchman, announced Wednesday as Art Center’s next president, will take charge in October, bringing with him years of experience during the 1990s running a rival art and design school in the Bay Area -- and in raising money to build bigger and better facilities.

Read the full article here.

Last we checked in with Art Center College of Design, all was not well in Pasadena. Everyone -- students, faculty, alumni, staff, and trustees -- seemed to have something to gripe about, from the planned Frank Gehry-designed design research center to the widespread changes wrought by the school's fourth President, Richard Koshalek, who was replaced last fall by interim president Frank L. Ellsworth. Today the college announced a permanent replacement, appointing Lorne M. Buchman president and CEO. Buchman was "unanimously selected by the Board following the enthusiastic recommendation of a committee of faculty members, students, trustees, and staff that conducted an international search over the past ten months," noted the Art Center in a press release.

For the full article, see Mediabistro.com.

Every July at its Pasadena, California campus, the prestigious Art Center College of Design opens its doors to the public and hosts a classic car show on the lawn behind its facilities. Handpicked and pristine, each vehicle at the show is specially selected for its unique design attributes — a process that tends to give the show a distinct "quality over quantity" feeling without the sensory overload that often comes with larger events.

Read the full article here.

Get it in gear for this month's Car Classic auto exhibit, featuring a fleet of haute hot wheels and some big surprises, too!

The marriage of form and function will be celebrated once again on Sunday, July 19, as Art Center College Design stages it sixth Car Classic automobile exhibition. As a recognized wellspring of professional telent that is regularly mined by the design studios of major automotive manufacturers around the world, the College's Transportation Design Department is uniquely qualified to present a field of aesthetically compelling and historically significant vehicles.

For the full article, see the July issue of Pasadena Magazine.

It's not just about cars anymore. This year, Art Center College of Design’s annual Car Classic event moved beyond the automobile to showcase the best of all forms of transportation that push the boundaries of design.

The world’s top transportation designers, collectors and enthusiasts gathered Sunday, July 19, 2009 at Art Center ’s Hillside Campus at 1700 Lida Street in Pasadena to peek into the past as well as view the work of the next generation of transportation visionaries.

Read the full article here.

 

When Intelligent Mobility International (IMI) received the Breakthrough Award from Popular Mechanics in 2008 for their wheelchair design, it was not only a triumph for the handicapped, but the design community at large. After all, designing products for the developing world has been one of the most complex and difficult problems facing designers, with precious few success stories to count. Yet IMI's wheelchair is currently enjoying extraordinary success in Guatemala, where the company initiated a pilot program earlier this year. That's because co-founders Rudy Roy, Ben Sexson, Dan Oliver and Charlie Pyott collaborated closely with Guatemalans to produce a simple, inexpensive chair made from common materials found worldwide -- most notably bicycle parts. It's as simple as it is elegant, necessary as it is affordable, and it's being embraced over American-made models that cost 10 times as much. "I can train sports better with this chair," says Marco Sacba, a 16 year-old with low brain paralysis. "It's very light and comfortable."

Read the rest of the article here.

As I walked down the long hallway to classroom at Art Cernter College of Design in Pasadena, I began to feel a little nervous.

I sew and often create my own designs, but my sketches are... shall we say, very simple. I was to meet with fashion illustrator and designer Justine Limpus Parish for a mini-session of her one-week intensive course, "Fashion & Costume Drawing."

See Pasadena Star-News for the full article.