Campus News |
ART CENTER NEWSWIRE - March 6, 2000
PASADENA, CA, USA | To keep abreast of the exciting and innovative ideas, people and projects at Art Center College of Design, the media and general public can subscribe to Art Center's news digest by sending a blank email to: newswire-on@lists.artcenter.edu. We highlight some of the newsmakers in our Art Center community on the first and third Monday every month. To report news or obtain more information, contact Jan Kingaard, tel. 626-396-2394, fax 626-683-9233.
GREAT MINDS
Pascal Bauder of Blaxxun 3d Interactive was featured as a digitalDesigners@work guest. An international company with offices in San Francisco, L.A. and Munich, Blaxxun is a market leader for Internet multimedia communication. Blaxxun designs and delivers solutions for online shopping, online banks, virtual shareholder meetings, company presentations, virtual events, online cities, customer clubs, communities of interest, virtual offices, virtual universities, and owns and operates communities based on Blaxxun's technology, including Cybertown, the largest social multimedia community on the Web.
The Digital Dialogues class presented David Kremers of the California Institute of Technology. As Caltech's distinguished conceptual artist in biology, Kremers views technology as a primitive form of synthetic life. He seeks to improve our quality of life by linking the logic of biology to hypermedia, synthetic life, and immersive reality, envisioning the future as a porous hybrid of mechanical, digital, and biotechnologies. He grew the first paintings from genetically engineered bacteria, and his work, combining living organisms and digital media, has evolved into biospace station concepts for the Department of Defense and visual information systems for biotechnology research.
ARCHETYPE PRESS
Typography 20
Pressing Issues, an Archetype Press book, was awarded Judge's Choice by the Type Director's Club for its 1999 Annual. The work was chosen out of 3700 international entries.
Typography 21The November 2000 publication will include Mythologies: A Typographical Journey, a book of letterpress typography by students of Archetype Press under the direction of Vance Studley. The Type Director's Club choice represents the 40th award for work by Archetype students.
Best 50 Books AwardMythologies: A Typographical Journey, has been honored for an unprecedented fifth time by the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA).
CritiqueThe journal of contemporary graphic design issues features a poster concept for a play by Vance Studley.
ENVIRONMENTAL DESIGN
HOW
A mix of passion and discipline drives the work of Jennifer Myers. Spaces have captivated her imagination since her childhood days of playing in her grandmother's West Virginia attic. After earning a fine-arts-based graphics degree from Marshall University, Myers became art director at Connie Post Designs in her home state. A scholarship enabled her to attend Art Center where she graduated with distinction last December. She hopes to
join a progressive architecture firm. Myers values the communicative power
of graphics but believes that architectural forms can also speak for
themselves. She designed a coffee table made of milled aluminum and veneered
wood which was selected for display at the 1999 Salon du Meuble de Paris.ILLUSTRATION
The Don Kubly Professional Attainment Award
Renowned illustrator and Art Center alumnus Philip Hays was honored for his significant contribution to the advancement of the arts and his distinguished leadership in the profession. One of the preeminent illustrators during his 25-year career in New York, Hays' work appeared in every major publication including Rolling Stone, Time, Sports Illustrated and The New York Times Magazine. His extraordinary gift for teaching has helped to ease the journey for the next generation of talent, including highly-regarded contemporary illustrators Paul Davis and Jim McMullan, who presented the award to Hays. "Phil is one of the great American illustratorsa leader in the 1950's revolution that rethought illustration as a more artistic and sophisticated art form. His influence is present in the work of every contemporary illustratorwhether they know it or not," said Davis.
eBay AuctionAn experiment with new technology and fundraising was highly successful in adding nearly $17,000 to the Dwight Harmon Memorial Scholarship fund. Harmon earned his Masters of Fine Arts in Illustration in 1969, and taught fine arts, illustration and painting classes at Art Center from 1974 until his death in 1996. His work has been exhibited at the Butler Institute of American Art, California Water Color Society, Los Angeles Art Association and in one-man shows in Los Angeles. The fifteen paintings were donated by his widow, Maria Rendon Harmon, to increase the financial support for illustration students.
COMMUNICATIONS AND NEW MEDIA DESIGN
Graduate Program
Noted designer, researcher and writer, Brenda Laurel, has joined the core faculty at Art Center in new media design. Laurel's 20-year-career has focused on work focuses on interactive narrative, human-computer interaction, and cultural aspects of technology. She holds an M.F.A. and Ph.D. in theatre from Ohio State University. Her doctoral dissertation was the first to propose a comprehensive architecture for computer-based interactive fantasy and fiction. She was one of the founding members of the research staff at Interval Research Corporation in Palo Alto, where she coordinated research activities exploring gender and technology. She has worked as a software designer, producer, and researcher for companies including Atari, Activision, and Apple. She is a design research consultant for Cheskin Research in Redwood, California; and, has published extensively on topics including interactive fiction, computer games, autonomous agents, virtual reality, and political and artistic issues in interactive media.PHOTOGRAPHY
Esquire
A former painter and illustrator, instructor Paul Jasmin took an unusual route to becoming a photographer. "One day, I just decided it took too much time to paint, and I went and picked up a camera," says Jasmin, whose work has appeared in Interview, Vogue, and Vanity Fair, as well as in many advertising campaigns. Style is very specific to the person, as opposed to fashion, which is a general thing. Californians have always bent the clothes rules to fit their more individual lifestyles, according to the editorial section that includes a photo by Jasmin of President Richard Koshalek.PRODUCT DESIGN
Fast Company
Ken Jewell's job title of the future is "Envisioner." The 27-year-old product designer works at Design Continuum, Inc., in West Newton, Massachusetts. His job is to help envision great ideas and to communicate design concepts to the engineers, technologists, and industrial designers who transform them into breakthrough products. The best thing about being a full-time envisioner? "I enjoy finding intriguing insights that could make life easier, safer, or better for thousands of people," says the Art Center graduate.
Product Design & DevelopmentCan you imagine a more exciting time to be a product designer than now, at the threshold of a bold new millennium? The promise of emerging tools and technologies is great. But so are the demands as designers strive to keep complex products simple and easy to use. Technical Editor Gil Bassak asked members of the faculty at Art Center where design is heading and illustrated their points with student work. The Internet, ease of use, virtual reality, rapid modeling, personalized objects, "smart" design, and health monitoring / diagnostic / treatment products were among the ideas presented by product, environmental, new media, technical skills, and transportation instructors.