Media Design Program

The Media Design Program (MDP) turns ambitious designers into leading thinkers and makers within emerging communication contexts. Three concepts help us navigate the flux: hybridity, emergence, and discovery. [more]

Working with the material constraints and cultural affordances of a range of media platforms—old, new, and yet-to-be-invented—our students learn to craft messages and experiences that resonate with real people in surprising new ways. Students are guided by a faculty comprised of thought leaders and design visionaries from a range of disciplines.

Hybridity
Communication is no longer a strictly graphic affair, although our roots are in graphic design. Our students learn to integrate aspects of architecture, film, environmental design, product design and even the Humanities and the Sciences into their work. We believe that designers with hybrid interests and experiences have the ability to understand issues from multiple perspectives which makes them agile thinkers and makers. To provide support for their forays into other fields, students are required to work with collaborators or faculty advisors from the appropriate domains. We are rigorous in our requirement that students contextualize their work within existing practices and that they are able to articulate their position intelligently to a range of audiences. This provides excellent preparation for work in interdisciplinary contexts.

Emergence
Within our graduate studios, new practices, forms, and ideas emerge out of the process of designing and we foster this activity. The MDP challenges experienced and burgeoning designers to identify their own unique place within the rapidly changing landscape. By following their own interests our students learn to adopt strategies that allow them to identify new methods, lay claim to emerging genres, or repurpose existing practices to their own ends.

Discovery
In the MDP, we embrace the idea that the act of designing is a unique way of knowing about the world. As designers, we create objects and communications that inform, influence, and alter everyday life. In the process of making, we visualize, iterate, and critique, and we believe that it is through these activities that designers can gain unique insights and generate new ideas and artifacts. MDP graduates learn to follow their curiosity and design in an open-ended way that can lead to discovery and invention. Our students generate new knowledge about themselves, about design, and about the world.

Making defines our adventures in design research. We have developed our own unique methods for understanding people through our signature Super Studio course. We use design to lead investigations into new forms of textuality, interactive objects and spaces, and the New Ecology of Things through sponsored courses and faculty-led research projects. We experiment with visualizations, short films, and interactive display strategies to develop new modes of knowledge-sharing.

Graduates with vision
As a graduate program, we have the resources and the responsibility to lead the field in new directions within an endlessly shifting paradigm. Our students graduate ready to assume or invent new positions that require leadership, vision, and visionary design.

Upon graduation, our students find positions as interaction designers, graphic designers, design researchers, experience designers, broadcast designers, information designers, futurists, authors, entrepreneurs, inventors and more. Potential career options are found in diverse contexts, from scientific research labs to think tanks—in addition to leading design studios and corporations. Several recent graduates have been hired by companies who were not looking to fill a post, but who created new jobs, with new titles and new budget lines specifically to make use of our students’ freshly defined expertise. We take this as a sign that our students are well prepared to invent the future of design on their own terms.

JULY 2008

Syuzi Pakhchyan, '05
.............................has just published Fashioning Technology, a DIY (Do-It-Yourself) guide to tech-infused crafting. Based on Syuzi's thesis project, SparkLab, Fashioning Technology introduces the reader to “smart” materials as well as sewing and assembling techniques. These dynamic materials, like color-shifting inks and hand sculptable plastic, magically give “life” to everyday items by changing and responding to their environment.

Amy Sheppard, '07
.............................will present her paper, Design Archeology: Graphic Reconstructions of Kreuzberg, Berlin at the Design Research Society's conference in Sheffield, UK July 16 -18th. This years theme is Undisciplined! - Rigour in emerging design disciplines and professions.

JUNE 2008

Peter Lunenfeld, MDP Faculty
.............................Gidget on the Couch: Freud, Dora (no not that Dora), and Surfing's Secret Austro-Hungarian Roots is featured in the June 2008 issue of Believer Magazine.

Phil Van Allen, MDP Faculty
.............................spoke about The New Ecology of Things and our NET Lab tools at the flashbelt conference that runs from June 8th to June 11th, 2008 in Minneapolis, MN. This conference focuses on the in-depth issues of designing and developing real interactive applications.

Sean Donahue, MDP Faculty
.............................recently presented his lecture "unmapping" at: University of Kansas, New School, Mayo Clinic and Cal Arts. In March, Sean organized, hosted and moderated Cultures of Inquiry: Context Research Symposium, featuring MDP alum Tina Park and adjunct professor Shona Kitchen at Art Center.

Jiyeon Song, '08
.............................was awarded the 2008 SEGD Honor Award for her One Day Poem Pavilion. The Honor Award is the highest award given for outstanding Environmental Graphic Design. This award is typically given to design firms and large architectural accomplishments; Jiyeon received it for her Fall 2007 thesis work. Congratulations!

Jonathan Jarvis (M5)
.............................was awarded the 2008 Designmatters Fellowship to pursue systems design for UNICEF at their headquarters in New York. The project builds upon the UNICEF- and mDialogue-sponsored project run by the MDP in Spring 2008, called "Hi-Fi to Lo-Fi." Students worked to develop new formats for digital story sharing in low bandwidth environments. Jonathan is developing the outcome of the class for youth communities in the Carribean and the Philippines.

MAY 2008

AtRandom #3 : Public Library
.............................Personal Libraries made Public, Public Libraries made Personal will be held at the Eagle Rock Center for the Arts May 31st from 6 - 10 pm. AtRandom #3 accesses designers personal libraries that inspire, insight and/or influence their work. Making AtRandoms' library is not singularly concerned with indexing but rather a collection of practice, inspiration, curiosity and delight. The "Temporary Library" will include over 60 books from the personal libraries of our friends and collaborators; Anne Burdick, Emmet Byrne, Simon Johnston, Victoria Lam, Gail Swanlund, Alex De Armond of the Werkplaats Typografie, Michael Worthington, Martin Venezky, and many more.

APRIL 2008

The Biggest Visual Power Show: Next Nature
.............................will take place at 8 pm on May 17 in the Million Dollar Theater. The BVPS is an intellectual spectacle that mixes movies and live performance and is the project of Mieke Gerritzen and Koert van Mensvoort, the MDP's current Dutch-Design-Visionaries-in-Residence. Featuring: Manuel Castells [Globalism and Network Theorist], Kevin Kelly [Senior Maverick at Wired Magazine], Erik Davis [Writer of Technognosis and Visionary State], Julian Bleecker [Design-technologist], Peter Lunenfeld [Media Theorist and MDP Core Faculty], and many others.Tickets and more info: www.nextnature.net/powershow2008/.

The New Ecology of Things publication launched
.............................The Media Design Program transmedia publication The New Ecology of Things (NET) is composed of a book, website, poster and web-enabled cell phone content. The publication is part of the MDP's NET research initiative that explores emerging forms of interactive communication brought about by pervasive networked technologies.

Interactive MultiTouch table returns
.............................George P. Johnson and Honda America have generously donated an Acura Oracle MultiTouch table to the MDP which allows students and faculty to experiment with designing for a large-scale, multi-user, multi-touch surface. (See video of student explorations). Developed at GPJ by alum Nikolai Cornell with interaction and technology consulting by Core Faculty member Philip van Allen, the Acura Oracle table was engineered by MDP partner Moto Development Group.

Maria Moon '08
.............................has been awarded an Honors Term Fellowship to continue to develop her thesis project, neurographica. Maria used her skills as a visual communicator to work with scientists during the discovery phase of their research work, developing visualizations that were integral to the process of analysis and assessment.

FEBRUARY 2008

Media Design students research in the Philippines and Caribbean
.............................The Media Design Program has teamed up with UNICEF in a DesignMatters-sponsored studio called "Hi-Fi to Lo-Fi" to develop new formats for digital story sharing in low bandwidth environments. Between February 1–7, Parker Kuncl (M4) and Sevenju Pepper (Photo undergrad) will travel to the Philippines to conduct research with two bureaus of young journalists. Jonathan Jarvis (M4) and Brooke Reidt (Illustration undergrad) are meeting with youth media producers in Guyana and Suriname (at the height of the Caribbean Carnival!).

Recent speakers in the MDP:
.............................Juan Devis spoke to the Hi-Fi to Lo-Fi class about cross-cultural public media interventions. Juan is a Colombian-born artist who writes, directs, and produces collaborative multimedia projects focusing on social and political accountability. Devis is president of LA Freewaves and works full time on new media projects at KCET, the award-winning public television station in Los Angeles.

.............................Robert L. Staehle, Assistant Manager for Advanced Concepts of the Instruments & Science Data Systems Division 38 at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, will discuss the complex collaborations and technical challenges that go into the design of scientific probes. Rob and his team are responsible for a spectrum of remote sensing scientific instruments, advanced software for space science investigations, and archiving the incoming stream of data from NASA’s planetary missions. Rob will speak to students in Super Studio who are designing a "technological probe" to study the impact of real-time streams in the domestic sphere.

.............................Dave Wilson, founder/director of the The Museum of Jurassic Technology and Macarthur award-winner, hosted the MDP's Design Dialogues class on a tour of the museum. The Museum of Jurassic Technology is a "specialized repository of relics and artifacts from the Lower Jurassic, with an emphasis on those that demonstrate unusual or curious technological qualities." To see the schedule for all Design Dialogues this Spring, see the Visiting Provocateurs page.

JANUARY 2008

Norman Klein, Thesis Advisor
.............................will have an opening reception for The Imaginary 20th Century on January 17th at 7:30PM at the Orange County Museum of Art. Join curator Margo Bistis, cultural critic Norman Klein, media artist Andreas Kratky and guest artist Perry Hoberman in this lecture/performance about their new project The Imaginary 20th Century, on view at the Orange Lounge from January 17 to April 27, 2008.

DECEMBER 2007

Anne Burdick, Chair
.............................has just published an essay at the Adobe Think Tank titled "Graduate education: Preparing designers for jobs that don't exist (yet)". Anne looks at how graduate design education is grappling with our current cultural, technological, and disciplinary flux. The piece features Media Design Program student work that demonstrates how the MDP gives students the tools they need to invent futures of their own making.

Mieke Gerritzen and Koert van Mensvoort
.............................will be in residence at Art Center this Fall and Spring 2007/08. Along with Koert van Mensvoort, Mieke Gerritzen will be staging one of their renowned Visual Power Shows. The Biggest Visual Power Show on Next Nature is a project by All Media, Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, TU/e Industrial Design and Sandberg Institute. It is scheduled for Spring 2008.

The Media Design Program
.............................is proud to introduce its revised curriculum to be launched in the Fall of 2008. Details can be found throughout the site.

Fall 2007 Graduate Thesis Exhibition
.............................will be on view from December 12th - 14th in the Media Design Gallery with a reception open to the public on Friday December 14th from 7-10 PM.

Jed Berk, '07
.............................is featured on the cover in November's issue of Make Magazine The article "Escape of the Blubber Bots" highlights the work Jed has been examining with autonomous forms. visit website.

NOVEMBER 2007

Peter Lunenfeld
.............................published “Dispatches from the Front: Battling for Meaning in the War between Downloading and Uploading,” an excerpt from his forthcoming book in the Athens-based, on-line journal, Re:Public, in their special issue on "Re:Imagining Democracy." (it's also offered Translated into Greek).

Peter Lunenfeld has two new catalogue essays, “The God Scan,” in Caroline A. Jones, ed., Sensorium: Embodied Experience, Technology, and Contemporary Art (Cambridge, MA: List Visual Art Center and MIT Press, 2006), and “Style’s Cruelty,” (also translated into French and German) in Mieke Gerritzen, ed., Style First (Lausanne: mudac and Basil: Berkhaüser Verlag, 2007).

He has been speaking around Southern California, at the UCI Design Alliance's inaugural conference, “The Book, the Brand, and the Box,” in the “New Modes, New Meanings,” iMAP/Adobe Panel at USC, and at the AIGA “3x3: Writing About Design” panel at Art Center.

Norman Klein
............................. will have an exhibition of the Imaginary Twentieth Century-- database interactive science-fiction novel-- opens on October 20, 2007, at ZKM in Karlsruhe, Germany. An introduction to the project at Redcat, Disney Hall on November 14 2007; and an exhibition early next year at the Orange Lounge, for the Orange County Museum of Art. The co-directors are curator Margo Bistis, novelist Norman M. Klein, media artist Andreas Kratky.

Amy Sheppard '07
.............................will be featured in :Output 10, an international competition for students of visual communication. "Letters are maps" and "Modular Book: How to make a Dadaist Poem".

Jonathan Jarvis (M4)
............................. is currently an intern of Interactive Design at George P. Johnson and was a semi-finalist in the Los Angeles Cut&Paste Tournament in October.

Manuel Alcala (M4)
............................. received a grant from Coleccion/Fundación Jumex to curate public outdoor screenings of films and videos in parks throughout Mexico City.

Hannah Regier(M6)
............................. presented her paper "The Critter: a leather and felt interface for open-ended interaction" at the Designing Pleasurable Products and Interfaces conference in Helsinki.

OCTOBER 2007

Jonathan Jarvis (M4), Manuel Alcala (M4), and Justin Gier (M4)
............................. were lead design interns with Adobe/AIGA in Summer 2007 to define the Designer of 2015 project.

SEPTEMBER 2007

Anne Burdick and Sean Donahue
............................. will speak at MAKE: A STUDIO-BASED RESEARCH SYMPOSIUM at Parsons The New School for Design. This symposium aims to spark conversations and model practices around studio-based research within the fields of art and design. With projects from Goldsmiths and the Royal College of Art in the UK, and Art Center Pasadena, Parsons and The New School in the US, this daylong symposium aims to begin an important dialog about the contribution, criticality, and seductive nature of making within a research environment.

AUGUST 2007

Jonathan Jarvis (M3)
............................. will be competing in Cut&Paste's Digital Design Tournament: Los Angeles on October 13, 2007 at the Henry Fonda Music Box in Los Angeles. Designers will battle live against one another in front of a audience and a panel of judges, with their screens projected at crowd-scale. Cut&Paste shifts the design process into performance.

The Dialectical Bus Tour: infra LA
on September 8th, 2007, the MDP will be going subterranean and submarine to site the media designer’s glocal role — to acknowledge that we work in an economy that is both global and local. Peter Lunenfeld and Norman Klein will be your guides to seeing the unseen and appreciating the unloved. We will examine Los Angeles as the main port of entry for Chinese manufacturing, challenge the stereotype of Southern California as an autopia, and configure the urban fabric as a web of transit and small enterprise. If Hollywood is the glittering surface that everyone thinks they know how to represent, then the infrastructure of LA is the area’s hidden resource.

JUNE 2007

Philip van Allen
is featured in Cool Hunting's coverage of Make Magazine's Maker Faire 2007. Watch the Cool Hunting video in which Phil describes his new open source software called NET Connect which allows the web design program Flash® to communicate with sensors and motors. This is the software that Phil uses to teach students in his Interactive Objects and Spaces class. The video also shows a version of the Oracle multi-touch Interactive Table (see news item below).

Peter Lunenfeld
is a Vectors Fellow at the Annenberg Center at USC. He will be working on a trans-media essay titled “Gidget on the Couch: Freud, Dora (No Not That Dora), and the Secret Austro-Hungarian Roots of Surfing.”

He is also featured as part of Art Center’s 3x3 series, on a panel titled, “Worth 1000 Words: Writing about Design.”

Philip van Allen
is teaching students to work with Interactive Multi-Touch table this summer using an Oracle, a round, multi-touch table designed originally for use in the harsh environment of the Detroit Auto Show (e.g. it does not use a camera for touch detection). The table, on loan to the MDP from George P. Johnson (GPJ) in exchange for a first-look at new concepts developed by our students, was originally designed by MDP alum Nikolai Cornell, Interactive Design & Technology Lead at GPJ, who brought in Philip van Allen and the Moto Development Group to design the technology.

Sean Donahue, ‘02
will be conducting a series of Design Research Workshops at the Royal College of Art in London this summer.

Sean will also be presenting the results from Impact: Engaging the Next Generation of Ideas, an ongoing inquiry into how design is understood by young adults including communities that are underrepresented within the discipline, to regional design institutions this summer. The investigation, sponsored by ArtCenter and the Ford Foundation, will continue to explore transitional tools that foster connections between young adults and degree-granting design institutions.

Anne Burdick and Lisa Nugent
will be part of a panel titled, "Designing Research" at the ICSID and IDSA Connections Conference, in October.

Qusai Kathawala (M5)
is an intern this summer at Intel Research in the Digital Health Group outside of Portland Oregon. He will be working with a team of social scientists and software and hardware engineers on an ongoing research study of mind-body health technology, an extension of his thesis research in the MDP.

Laura Janisse(M5)
just participated in an intensive one-day workshop at Kaiser Permanente's Garfield Health Innovation Center along with designers from IDEO which has led to a summer internship at the Garfield Center. The Health Innovation Center is a living laboratory where ideas are tested and solutions are developed in a hands-on, mocked-up clinical environment using human-centered design research and real-world scenarios and activities.

Jackson Wang (M5)
is working with the Culture Sector of UNESCO (the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Culture Organization) at headquarters in Paris. Jackson will be assigned to a variety of design projects for UNESCO’s Global Alliance for Cultural Diversity and the Creative Cities’ Network. His fellowship with UNESCO marks the first collaboration Art Center leads with the agency.

Justin Gier (M3), Manuel Alcala (M3) and Jonathan Jarvis (M3)
have been hired as interns at Adobe Global Research and the AIGA's Designer of 2015 Project . The Designer of 2015 is based upon Adobe's research with hundreds of graphic designers nationwide. Justin, Manuel, and Jonathan will draw upon their experience in Super Studio and Bespoke Futures, two signature MDP courses, to generate visual analysis, inventive personas, and scenarios that bring the research to life.

MAY 2007

Philip van Allen
introduced NET Connect (New Ecology of Things Connection) at the Bay Area Maker Faire NET Connect is open-source software and hardware that enables designers and others to rapidly prototype interactive objects & spaces without any programming. Phil developed the alpha version for use in the Media Design Program's interaction design courses. Phil recently showed NET Connect and gave a talk at CRCA and Cal-IT at UC San Diego..

Lisa Nugent and Sean Donahue, '02
co-presented a paper together with Dr. Ilpo Koskinen of the University of Art and Design in Helsinki at the Nordic Design Research Conference.in Stockholm. The paper focuses on the use of clarity and ambiguity in the Media Design Program's unique approach to human-centered pre-design research. Justin Gier (M3) joined them in Stockholm and participated in the presentation.

Anne Burdick
is featured in this quarter's issue of DOT in an article about research and graduate education at Art Center, along with Industrial Design Chair Andy Ogden. Burdick discusses the MDP's belief in designers using design to generate new knowledge about people, their values, and cultural practices.

Lisa Nugent
Principal Investigator of Living Profiles, Art Center's first major research grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation is thriving in the "Dognod Studio" on the South Campus at Art Center. Lisa has just returned from her third workshop with the Foundation in Nashville Tennessee where she reported on the Art Center team's progress working with teenagers with chronic illnesses. In the Vanderbilt Innovation Center, Lisa and members of the Art Center team – including medical researchers from Stanford and Childrens Hospital Orange County and technologists from Moto Development – worked with the other funded teams to explore how to integrate information technologies into patients' lives. MDP students Hannah Regier, Laura Janisse, and Peter Shultz continue their work as interns on the project. MDP Associate Professor Phil van Allen, MDP faculty and alum Sean Donahue, and MDP alum Tina Park are also working on the project.

APRIL 2007

New Ecology of Things (NET)
is a media Design publication released in April 2007. NET is more than a book, it is the physical portal to a transmedia publication. NET is an ecology of ideas that includes essays, a glossary, forums, interactive works, video, and a provocative story by postcyberpunk author Bruce Sterling. The transmedia publication is comprised of the book, cell phone content, a website, and a book jacket that turns into a poster. Each part relates to the other: place the book on the poster to see additional imagery, point a cell phone camera at barcodes on the poster and watch video, browse URLs in the book and find more content on the website. To purchase NET, click here

MARCH 2007

Up Next 2007: The Long Zoom
our bi-annual conference on the future of media design, will spark a dialogue about how designers move between the macro and the micro. As designers are called upon to imagine systems, services, ecologies, experiences, and networks, they will be developing the tools to design not only an object or a communication but also its context.

FEBRUARY 2007

Linda Yoon (M5)
will be presenting her paper, "Public Display of SMS: Beyond Personal Social Networks and into the Realm of Public Discourse," at the 6th annual Wireless Telecommunications Symposium, Cal Poly Pomona, April 26-28, 2007. The paper discusses the research and development of her project in the course, Interactive Objects and Spaces 2, as well as potential applications of the system.

JANUARY 2007

Hannah Regier (M5) and Peter Schultz (M5)
will present their papers this February in Baton Rouge, Louisiana at the first international conference on Tangible and Embedded Interaction, TEI 2007. Hannah will present her paper, "Giving Materials a Voice", and will also demo her felt "shade" interface. Peter will present "Beyond video – choosing the right medium for a media rich interaction" as well as a poster of his slide projector video game.

DECEMBER 2006

Fall 2006 Thesis Exhibition reception
and Envisioning 6-Year-Old Boys exhibition closing reception will be on Friday December 15, 2006 from 6-9PM at Art Center's South Campus.Featured thesis projects include Jed Berk, Susan Lee and Nikhil Mitter.
Full Article >>

What does Delight have to do with Global Warming?
please join the Media Design Program on Tuesday, December 12th, 2006 at 4PM to hear our first-year Media Design students reveal insights and interpretations of the research they conducted as part of the Super Studio fall semester course. Using design-driven human-centered research, the students worked with ten families from the Pasadena area to explore the themes of biosphere's voices, the interplay between place and identity, and delight.
Full Article >>

OCTOBER 2006

Envisioning 6-Year-Old Boys: Exploratory Methods in Design Research
documents the MDP's design-driven research methods. On view from October 13 - December 16 in the Public Programs gallery at Art Center's South Campus, the exhibition is a part of Art Center's Thinking~Making~Learning series. MDP graduate students approach human-centered research as a creative collaboration with their subjects and with one another. This exhibition includes the symbolic imagery, interactive objects and visual narratives the students developed from interviews and cultural probes given to 6-year-old boys as part of the Fall Super Studio course. (see the outcomes). Renowned sign painter and typographer John Downer gave voice to the exhibition with custom hand-painted lettering.
View the action

SEPTEMBER 2006

MDP Announces New Acting Chair
The MDP is happy to announce that award-winning designer, inspired educator, and noted design thinker Anne Burdick has been appointed Acting Chair. Anne is the principal of the Offices of Anne Burdick and is renowned for her design of complex text-based projects across a variety of media environments. She is one of the most lauded transmedia designers in America, winner of everything from the Liepzig Prize for the Most Beautiful Book in the World to I.D. Magazine's award for interactive design. Full Article >>

AUGUST 2006

The MDP 2005-2006 Super Studio Project, Blux
is now online. This year long Super Studio project investigated the lives of 6-year-old boys in the US in terms of media messaging, social intelligence, and the construction of manliness. view the findings

Jed Berk (M5)
recently talked at Machine Project for the Make Magazine launch party. He spoke about his project ALAVS: Autonomous Light Air Vessels. Using the Sun Microsystem technology Sunspots, he created an autonomous flocking behaviour in robotic blimps.

Jed was part of the Cold Storage Project Series at Routes and Methods. He exhibited two projects, Herding Blimps and Wireless Geese. He was also in TechnoSpheres: New Work in the Art of Technology an exhibition in part with the SECT - Seminar in Experimental Curitical Theory at the Beall Center at University of California, Irvine. View installation

Matt McBride, '05
was recently hired at Schematic as a User EXPERIENCE DESIGNER. Currently working on Interface solutions and Enhanced Content experiences for Interactive Television and HD DVD.

Claire Myoung-Jung Kwon, '04
has received the "Excellent Instructor Award" at the Art Institute of California, Los Angles at the Spring graduation ceremony. She has been teaching at the Art Institute since Fall, 2005 and is currently a full-time faculty in the Interactive Media Design department.

More News >>