The Media Design Program is overseen by the Chair and Core Faculty who work together to define the curriculum and research activities of the program. The program is supported by the Managing Director who oversees all student exhibitions and program events, and also provides curricular support to both students and faculty.

Anne Burdick, Chair
Anne Burdick is the Chair of the Graduate Media Design Program at ArtCenter College of Design where she is deeply invested in defining the future of graduate level education and research in design. In her practice, Anne collaborates with texts and writers  to produce new modes of reading and writing. Despite winning the prestigious Leipzig Award for the “Most Beautiful Book in the World,” Anne does not call her practice book design. Rather, she designs spaces for writing in diverse media and environments, which sometimes includes books. Her projects are wide-ranging: poetry installations for the Getty Research Institute, unique approaches to lexicography with the Austrian Academy of Sciences, experimental fiction at the Walker Art Center’s Gallery 9, and books of literary/media criticism by authors such as  Marshall McLuhan and N. Katherine Hayles. Anne has been the Design Editor of Electronic Book Review since 1995.

Peter Lunenfeld, PhD., Core Faculty
Peter Lunenfeld writes about the history and theory of media. His books include The Digital Dialectic (MIT Press, 1999), Snap to Grid (MIT Press, 2000) and USER (MIT Press, 2005).  He is working on a new book called The Secret War Between Downloading and Uploading: How the Computer Became Our Culture Machine. As creator and editorial director of the multi-award-winning Mediawork project, he produced a pamphlet series for the MIT Press that redefined the relationship between serious academic discourse and graphic design, and between book publishing and the World Wide Web. This past summer, he was a Vectors Fellow at the USC Annenberg Center, and the year before that was a fellow at the Columbia University Institute for Scholars in Paris. He is the founder of Mediawork: The Southern California New Media Working Group, and the Director of the Institute for Technology & Aesthetics (ITA) He holds a B.A. From Columbia University, an M.A. From SUNY at Buffalo, and his Ph.D. From UCLA.

Phil van Allen, Core Faculty
Philip van Allen is an interaction designer, educator, researcher, and technologist with 30 years experience at the intersection of technology and the creative arts in fields ranging from sound recording to interactive media installations. He is a core faculty member in the Graduate Media Design Program at Art Center College of Design with research interests in experimental information systems, interactive objects and spaces, and ubiquitous computing. He founded his interactive production company, Commotion, in 1993 and has worked on CD-ROM, Web, and interactive exhibitions with a range of clients including George P. Johnson, Interval Research, Philips, Yahoo, Nestlé, U2 and Yoko Ono. In 1996 van Allen founded the Web magazine ArtCommotion.com that focused on the contemporary visual and literary arts in Los Angeles. Recent projects include award winning interactive exhibition projects installed at the major auto shows for Infiniti and Acura. Philip is also the lead author of the transmedia publication (book, website, mobile phone content and a poster) The New Ecology of Things. As part of van Allen's ongoing research, the publication explores the emerging world of ubquitous networks, smart objects & spaces, and approaches to design practice that embrace mythology, meaning making, and embodiment.

Sean Donahue, Full-time Faculty
Sean Donahue is a faculty member of the Media Design graduate program at Art Center College of Design and is principal of ResearchCenteredDesign, a Los Angeles-based design practice. His practice consists of professional commissions, self-initiated research, design advocacy, education and publishing. Sean has accumulated a portfolio of projects that, by their very execution, question how and where design is able to make a significant contribution. Sean's persistence in moving from theory to practice has resulted in the development of projects ranging from media impact studies for city development to hybrid languages for low and no-vision communities. Sean has lectured and published internationally on the practice of media design and design research. Most recently he has led studios at RISD, RCA and North Carolina State University where he was also the 2004 Designer-in-Residence. Recent research has been published with the University of Cambridge, Princeton Architectural Press, MIT Press and ID magazine. Current inquires include projects that explore the perspectives and representations of female action sports athletes and culture and an examination of the influence and use of graphic design in the United States Justice System.

Kevin Wingate, Director
Kevin Wingate is an artist and educator. Kevin cares about cultural fetishes, geometric abstractions and the physical limits of materials. He exhibits his paintings at Acuna-Hansen Gallery in Los Angeles. While exhibiting nationally, he has been apart of Pillow Lavas, a collaborative group that intersects lifestyle, culture and social interaction. In 2004 they were part of the Class: C Gallery for the Orange County Biennial of Art. Kevin holds a MFA from University of California, San Diego and a MA and BFA from Webster University in St. Louis. He is currently the Director of the Media Design Program.

Each student completing an independent thesis project works with an advisory team comprised of MDP full-time faculty members and MDP Thesis Advisors. Advisors are chosen for their unique positions within their respective fields and are themselves frequently hybrid practitioners who bring multiple perspectives to bear on student work. The advisors change from time to time in response to shifts in student interests.

Peter Cho
Peter Cho is a Los Angeles-based media artist and designer. Cho holds a Master of Fine Arts degree from the UCLA Design | Media Arts department, where his work dealt with issues of language, writing, and meaning and a Master of Science degree from the MIT Media Lab, where his design research explored custom models for typography in time-based and reactive media. He has received honors for his work from Ars Electronica, Tokyo Type Directors Club, New York Art Directors Club, ID Magazine, and Print Magazine. His work has been shown at the Telic Gallery, Ginza Graphic Gallery, Ars Electronica, Art Sonje, Seoul Arts Center, the Art Directors Club, and Cooper Union. His interests include issues of electronic textuality, narrative, and mapping.

Tim Durfee
Tim Durfee is an architect whose work attempts to reconsider spaces, objects, and ideas of all scales. In addition to buildings, his work – often in collaboration with other designers, artists, and engineers – includes exhibitions, furniture, urban sign systems, interfaces, videos, posters, and maps.  He is a partner of the Los Angeles office Durfee | Regn with Iris Regn and teaches at Art Center College of Design, Woodbury University, and – since 1993 – at the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc), where he was director of Visual Studies from 2001 to 2005.  Current projects include several houses, a penthouse loft and rooftop in downtown LA, concepts for spatial graphics and metro mural maps for the MTA, and a new museum for the growth of transportation in Los Angeles. Durfee | Regn has also created - mostly in collaboration with Louise Sandhaus Design (as DRS) -  award-winning exhibitions for LACMA, The Hammer, Huntington Library, Pacific Design Center, UCLA, The Indianapolis Museum of Art, the International Center for Photography in New York, and – with the design collaborative WildLuV – a permanent exhibition for Target Corporation’s headquarters in Minneapolis. He also collaborates with artists, including – in 2005 - Ultraworld at the Centre Pompidou’s L’ARC in Paris with Doug Aitken. He has developed interface prototypes and production designs for SF MOMA and LAUNCH and an award-winning website for LACMA. Before receiving a Masters Degree in Architecture from Yale, he studied literature and history at the University of Rochester.

Norman Klein
Norman Klein is a cultural critic, media historian and novelist. His work concentrates on how consumer spectacle and confused urban planning hide social conditions. He has expanded these interests into two series of books, one on cultural histories of forgetting, another on the history of special effects environments. Among his best-known work:  The History of Forgetting: Los Angeles and the Erasure of Memory; The Vatican to Vegas: The History of Special Effects, Freud in Coney Island and Other Tales; and Seven Minutes: the Life and Death of the American Animated Cartoon. In 2003, a chapter from The History of Forgetting was expanded into the award-winning database novel Bleeding Through: Layers of Los Angeles, 1920-86" (1,100 images and films). Currently, he is the author and co-director of a science-fiction database novel, on how the twentieth century was imagined before it began (1893-1925). Entitled The Imaginary Twentieth Century, it recently opened at ZKM (The Center for the Arts and Media, in Karlsruhe, Germany), where it will run for two years. In 2008-2010, Klein has contracted to complete three projects: the second edition of The History of Forgetting; a novel about LA/NY in the fifties (more broadly 1909-1960); and a study on The History of the Present (media, cities and power, 1973-2009). He is a professor at the California Institute of the Arts. He has taught as adjunct faculty at Art Center since 1982; and is now also a thesis advisor for the Media Design Program.

Lisa Krohn
Lisa Krohn is the creative director and lead designer at Krohn Design, an internationally recognized brand and design practice specializing in furniture, lighting, consumer products, environments, packaging, graphics and copy-writing. Clients have included: Herman Miller, Walt Disney Imagineering, Alessi, and the San Diego Children’s Museum. Lisa's products and furniture are in the collections of the San Francisco and New York Museums of Modern Art and the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum. Her approach to design problems is broad, and reflects her belief that the best ideas are hybrids. Combining training in art history and fine art with her design practice, Lisa plays with forms and ideas until they disintegrate and their components recombine as something fresh. She is inspired by people's relationships with technology and by shapes and solutions found in nature. Following her studies in art and art history at Brown University, Lisa trained as a designer at the Cranbrook Academy of Art and later earned a Fulbright fellowship to Italy to work with renowned designer Mario Bellini.  She has received numerous design accolades including Grand Prize in the Forma Finlandia competition, the Brooklyn Museum's Young Designer award, an NEA Design Arts grant, the Daimler-Chrylsler award for Innovation in Design and the prestigious Rome Prize.

The Media Design Program works with faculty and staff from other departments within the College to lead classes and provide support for student projects. We also draw adjunct faculty from all regions of Southern California, including world class educational institutions such as CalTech, USC, UCLA, and SciARC, in addition to working with leading designers and entrepreneurs.

Brad Bartlett
Brad Bartlett is a designer and educator. He earned his Masters Degree in Design from the Cranbrook Academy of Art in 1998, graduating with the highest honors. He also holds a Bachelors Degree in Graphic Design from North Carolina State University. His work at Cranbrook, exploring the relationship of media and culture, was presented at MIT and Fabrica of Benetton in Italy. He was selected as New Visual Artist by Print Magazine before establishing a small, multidisciplinary design studio in Los Angeles in 1999. He has been an educator at Art Center College of Design since 1999 and was awarded Great Teacher in 2003. The work of his Los Angeles-based design studio has won many awards and has been widely published. Projects include branding for UCLAlive (International Design Awards in 2004 & 2005, How magazine; Regional Design Annual 2006, Print magazine; Website of the Week 2004, Communication Arts), The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (American Center for Design 100 Show), Art Center College of Design (Graphis Poster Annual 2006, Graphis Platinum Award 2007, Step Inside Design, Readers Choice), Xtra Magazine (Communication Arts), and The Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising (University & College Designers Association, Award of Excellence) among others. Current projects include branding design for The Nevada Museum of Art and The Los Angeles Institute of Architecture and Design.

Michael Berman
Michael Berman is the CTO at Art Center College of Design. His clients have included Federal Reserve Board, EDUCAUSE, Siemens Research Laboratory, Bell Laboratories, California State University, and California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. He is the author, Data Structures via C++: Objects by Evolution, published by Oxford University Press. Michael received a BA Pomona College, MA and PHD Rutgers University.

Gerard Brown
Gerard Brown works in the Writing Center and teaches in the Liberal Arts and Sciences at Art Center College of Design.

John Brumfield
John Brumfield received his BA UC Berkeley, , MA California Institute of the Arts, and MFA CSU Los Angeles. John has received an NEA Grant and his work has been seen in Afterimage, Art Issues, Artweek, Artforum, Graphis, LAICA Journal, Camera Obscura and SF Camera Work.

Daniel Frydman
Daniel Frydman is a creative director who most recently directed FOX’s new media campaigns for their full slate of TV programming. He was awarded a Fullbright Lecture/Research Award in 2005-2006 to develop an interface for HIV Infected Tanzanian youths (EPIC). EPIC blended new technologies with traditional oral culture to provide critical heath care information and education to underserved communities. Daniel received his MFA from Art Center College of Design and a BFA from Rochester Institute of Technology.

Simon Johnston
Simon Johnston was educated at Bath Academy of art in England and the School of Applied Arts in Basel, Switzerland. In 1984 he co-founded 8vo studio, and instigated and published Octavo Journal of Typography. He opened, Praxis, working primarily for clients in the arts and cultural field. More recent work has focused on design for print, in particular book work for museums and cultural institutions. His work has received numerous awards, including American Association of Museums Design Awards, AIGA top 50 books, Type Directors Club of New York, ID Magazine Annual Design Review, and the American Center for Design 100 Show.

Geoff Kaplan
Geoff Kaplan of General Working Group has produced projects for a range of academic and cultural institutions, including MOCA, the Walker Art Center, and CalArts. His work is in the permanent collection of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Geoff received a BFA from Carnegie Mellon University and a MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art.

Gilad Lotan
Gilad Lotan explores the intersection between culture, technology and spatial design, made possible through new media. He uses technology as a tool to strengthen connections between people and to places. Gilad recently has a MFA from New York University's ITP and a BSC from Tel-Aviv University.

Lisa Nugent, Visiting Researcher
Lisa Nugent teaches and conducts human-center design research with an emphasis on pre-design research that informs and inspires concept prototyping and speculative design. She is the primary investigator on a project entitled Living Profiles that is funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Prior to teaching, she was principal and founding partner of ReVerb, a renowned design and branding firm in Los Angeles. Nugent and ReVerb received the Chrysler Award for Innovation in Design, her work has also been recognized in numerous national and international exhibitions, competitions and publications. She holds a B.F.A. in Illustration from CSULB and a M.F.A. in design from California Institute of the Arts.

Krister Olsson
Krister Olsson is an artist, designer, and programmer currently exploring the role of memorials and anti-memorials in contemporary society. A co-founder and principal of San Francisco/Los Angeles design firm Tree-Axis. Krister received his undergraduate degree from Swarthmore College, and his graduate degree from UCLA's Department of Design | Media Arts.

Thea Petchler
Thea Petchler, Art Center's Director of Writing, is on the Humanities and Design Sciences faculty. She teaches courses on postwar U.S. history, creative nonfiction, and visual studies. Her research focuses on the democratization and professionalization of creativity in American business and education. She has served as a visiting scholar at Princeton University's Center for Arts and Cultural Policy and as a program officer at the Center for Arts and Culture in Washington, DC. Thea holds a B.A. from Yale University and an M.F.A. from the University of Iowa. She is completing a Ph.D. in American Studies at the University of Minnesota.

Jason Pilarski
Jason Pilarski is co-founder of MachineHistories, a collaboratie design group. The designs are derived from the idea of involving a collection of machines and technologies, and factoring in the language, the gesture -- i.e., the history of that said device. Jason received his MFA from Art Center College of Design and BFA from School of Visual Arts.

Holly Willis
Holly Willis is an Associate Director at the University of Southern California’s Institute for Multimedia Literacy. She is also the editor of The New Ecology of Things (Art Center College of Design, 2007) and she is the author of New Digital Cinema: Reinventing the Moving Image (Wallflower Press, 2005). The former editor of RES Magazine, Ms. Willis has written extensively on experimental media practices for a variety of publications. She holds a Ph.D. in Critical Studies in Cinema-Television from the University of Southern California.