Anyone would collect something, some moment, either consciously or unconsciously, and this collection explains the particles of oneself—a substantial body of personality, his/her interests, and histories. For many years I have initiated workshops based on participants’ personal collections to explore the conceptual relationship with personal objects and (re) contextualizing stories behind them in the design […]
Workshop Description Flexible Boundaries Designer Leon Ransmeier will lead a 3 day workshop at CCA to explore the design of tensile textile structures. The workshop will employ a defined palette of materials: cotton canvas, nylon webbing, nylon rope, metal D-rings, metal grommets, and fiberglass rods. The designs must use tension to achieve their form and contribute […]
A collective poster and book making workshop designed by Berg. and hosted at The California Academy of Science, The Institute of advancing Uncertainty, SF Art Book Fair, and California College of the Arts. The workshop invites the public create a poster using graphite rubbings over curated images from our research. The rubbing technique pulls the […]
The survey tool is a completely divergent enterprise. Playing in this space, using this space as a storytelling device, and using graphics to amplify the look and feel between the form and the reader. The audit begins with logistic questions, such as date and location, and it reaches the arch where it asks unanswerable questions. […]
San Francisco’s Aquatic Park has a history of heavy industry, leisure and tourism dating back to the Gold Rush. All three have been drawn to the area because of its proximity to the warm waters of the sheltered cove. It is the story of a dialogue between civilization and the sea. I have used the […]
Historically, trigonometrical surveying was a way of mapping geographic locations that started with a single straight line. In 1801, a trigonometrical survey of India started with a single seven-and-a-half-mile straight line at the bottom of the country. The intent was to draw one triangle at a time, until the entire country had been mapped. Projected […]
The project focuses on reclaiming his workspace at MFA design studios as a gallery space, and install 4 exhibitions which relate the title itself—Reclaim. The space initialed the first exhibition on 02.18.2018, and the 5th exhibition, which is the final closure exhibition, will be on view at CCA Hubbell Street Gallery from 05.10.–05.14.2018, as a part of 2018 CCA […]
Test Image explores image-making techniques to celebrate and critique the digital world that we live in. Using traditional and new forms of image-making methods (riso printing and processing) hybridized images are created that visually articulate the intersection between traditional print and new digital imaging methods.
The browser allows designers to create truly trans-media works by drawing from the same content to produce both digital and printed products. This course will use the browser to investigate systems and algorithms in graphic design in both digital and analog ways. The browser, in its mutability and its fraught relationship to form, will be […]
Opening Reception: Thursday, March 8, 5:30-7:30 PM CCA Hubble St. Gallery 151 Hubble St . . . . . . . . . . Work by: Kennis Chow Max DeVore Yangyifan Dong Winston Struye Zheyuan Zhang Mo Zhou Qi Zhou . . . . . . . . . . . Faculty: Catherine Leigh Schmidt […]
The frame defines a 2D space from the external world. I am trying to map and sum up an logic of graphic design by finding and locating these frames. From my perspective, the invisible space is the most important aspect of graphic design. Although the topic and text change, the frame is consistent supporting the visible system. […]
JPEG compression. Skewed graphics. Missing glyphs. Misaligned mechanisms. Unexpected inputs. New technologies begin as broken tools. Emerging from a primordial soup of glitches, bugs, and errors, they endure years of debugging, buffing, and polishing which gradually refine them until they disappear into the smoothness of the background. There they operate, invisible functions which pattern life until, […]
Index was created as part of my thesis project called Methods of Organization. The concept comes from the working title for our MFA Design thesis show, Fakes. The process: 1.Choose two fonts 2.Place one on top of the other 3.Remove areas where they overlap, fill areas unique to each
NOTI is an internet-connected notification device. The idea of the work is to filter messages based on the user’s focus level. Three balls made of different materials (wood, glass, and metal) are metaphors of mental heaviness, which is intuitive and innovative. View Video
This body of work, developed between October 2016 and March 2017, is part of my MFA Design thesis, examining the dissolving boundaries between the physical and digital domains. For this project I explored photogrammetry, the process of generating a 3D model through photography, as a vehicle to sample and remix data from the physical world. […]
This poster was designed for Colin Owen’s In the Making lecture and was meant to reflect his working philosophy: Accuracy, efficiency, and industry. The marks/symbols in this poster demonstrate the broad spectrum of Colin’s interests and methods. Behind the large variety of Colin’s toolkit, there was a system, represented by the parameter, which organized each part together. […]
A future scenario of personal-scale carbon cap and trade, and products resulting from it, to promote a carbon responsible future. The current Carbon Cap and Trade is reducing industrial carbon emissions, but even if we fully implement the Paris Climate Agreement proposals by 2100, humanity is still far away from sustainable life, as shown by […]
Deluge and spectacle, media and politics, and image over-saturation in the digital age – a chronological collection of material gathered during the first hundred days of Trump’s presidency. Photography by William Bottini.
Manifesto Project
Project 1: Subversive Guidelines. Each student was assigned a graphic identity of a cultural institution to research with the goal of experimenting and exposing the limitations of its design system.
The Exhibition Drawing Machines, is a result of a course taught by Colin Owen and Martin Venezky and features the work of MFA Design Students: Ashley Adams, Sophie Feller, Yisha Dai, Buge Jiang, Kate Moore, Bo Peng, Rob Exhibition Synopsis This exhibition investigates assistive and autonomous tools for art making. These “drawing machines,” created by MFA […]
Congratulations to recent CCA MFA Design graduate Praree Kittidumkerng, former student Jiho Jung, and current student Bo Peng, who were awarded the Society of Typographic Arts 100 Award for creating one of the top 100 graphic design projects of 2016. Visual Braille Type – Senses, Sound Experience Praree Kittidumkerng Jiho Jung The Legendary Debates […]
The way we use cooking tools and eating utensils influences how we approach food culture both economically and socially. The traditional European table setting which include fork, knife and spoon are based on etiquette and table manners. Eating is a physical need, and meals are a social ritual, therefore we conform to unspoken rules. […]
In this course students will create, analyze, and deploy assistive and autonomous tools for art making. Discourse will focus on the collaborative, augmentative, and translational nature of the tool/hand relationship. Built processes will veer between disciplined refinement and wild chaos. Bashing, hacking, disrupting, and refining will push both discourse and content into elegant working objects […]
For my MFA thesis I decided to explore the intersection of the made world with the natural world. New tools such as 3D scanning and 3D printing provide designers with new ways of working. I am interested in finding ways by which new tools can be used productively in the design […]
The Legendary Debates of Graphic Design The debate as to whether design (or graphic design) can truly be classified as art in the literal sense has raged on for years. It’s a complex and rather convoluted argument to have, as both designers and artists create their own visual interpretations and compositions with the skills and […]
Future Grocery Store Sponsored Studio by Intel In recent years, a lot of shopping has moved to on-line situations. This is great for some purposes. However, being in a well-designed physical space and holding tangible items on your hand could be a unique and unforgettable experience with the help of latest technologies. This project is to imagine […]
Jacket project The Jacket project is a wearable interaction design in which people can play with their body temperatures. This artwork started from research I did on a mountain rescuer’s life where I viewed the high awareness they have for temperature and equipment related to it. Jacket 1- 10 Pocket Jacket When I researched peoples’ interactions […]
Breathing Project Inspired by Scuba diving devices, I designed a set of three objects which will serve human to live better in an air polluted environment, such as China.Nevertheless, the weirdness of the object behaviors will trigger the awareness that human should breath fresh air freely and healthily. 1. THE 3RD LUNG MASK-Evolution of outside lung […]
Mapping Project One morning, I pulled some of my hair from my head while taking a shower. I began to think about how hair is a piece of DNA that each of us can easily shed, change, or let go of…I began to ask people around me (school, neighborhood, work) if I could take a […]
LED Collar This collar takes a distinctive and unique voice and translates it into a digital display, exploring how things that make us uniquely human can be transformed by technology. Each wearer has their own color scheme and pattern, exploring new ways of displaying our senses. See Video
This project began by choosing a specific “explorer” and deeply understanding one daily routine in the explorer’s life. The final project was to design a tool that related to a routine of that explorer. I picked Onnagata as my explorer and tried to understand their makeup. The Onnagata is a special Kabuki actor that only […]
Workshop description: How design can help communicate issues of climate change? Students will learn about the emerging approaches of critical and speculative design and understand how object design, storytelling and scenario-building contribute to the creation of compelling design fictions that help the public re-think important issues of our time. Building on the recent Future Climate […]
Poster for Experimental Jetset lecture at CCA.
Structured Ashtray For this project, I was assigned a word and an object, with the task of designing the object based on a language derived from the word. My word and object was “Structured Ashtray.” I chose to define “structured” in reference to the highly organized, efficient, and logical organization of time and movement. With this […]
Chronicle Books Lobby 680 2nd St. San FranciscoFeaturing:Maya Kremien William Bottini Li Lin Dashiell Corvin-Brittin Sanchit Gupta Lingjiang Lai Yunwen Tu Nicholas Hansen Aaron Levine Robert Sieg
A Tool for Making _____________ This project challenges you to create a design tool you’ve all probably used before but most likely taken for granted, the Template. This investigation aims to explore and complicate a conventional tool of the design trade in both a physical and conceptual sense. By creating a physical mark-making tool, you […]
Light Studio will center on the ethereal and physical character of light, as a source of inspiration and provocation. Light(ing) is one of the basic constituents of our built environment. The last fifteen years has witnessed a radical shift in how we consider light, primarily because of new technologies for the creation and simulation of “pervasive […]
Form Studio offers students a strong foundation in the making, assessing, and critiquing of visual materials and begins a discussion that will reverberate through the rest of their studies. Students learn the use and structure of materials and media, and the development of a rigorous and disciplined process through which they can create and analyze […]
CCA MFA Design / AICAD Symposium November 6th, 6-10 pm Organized by Sara Dean . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The field guide is a designed item, an collection of a place, and a tool for exploration. Using the Marin Headlands as […]
CCA MFA Design / California Academy of Sciences November 5th, 6-10 pm Organized by Leslie Roberts, JD Beltran, and Scott Minneman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . In keeping with CCA’s annual partnership exhibition with the California Academy of Sciences, Design Lab explores and […]
Poster for Design Lab event at California Academy of Sciences.
CCA MFA Design / Headlands Center for the Arts Oct 30th, 9 am – 5 pm Organized by Sara Dean . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . This was a one-day retreat for students and faculty at the Headlands Center for the Arts. MFA Design Faculty […]
Friday, October 9th, 4-7:30pm(@ hybrid lab) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Not Your Average Bean Bag!!!, learn to sew and make some not so average bean bags for our studio space. Workshop by Phumelele Mthimunye . . . . . . . […]
Visual Braille Type – Senses, Sound Experience When individuals lose their sight, they unconsciously develop their touch and hearing senses in order to replace the missed abilities. However, for one who has five sense completeness, how does audition and touch differ from vision? The “Visual Braille” is designed by combining two senses, sight and touch. All […]
A risograph lecture poster designed for anexact office.
Results from CCA Grad Design’s RAPID CRAFT #2 (AKA Skillshare Fridays) on February 20th, organized by Rafi Ajl. Titled: Making A Chair Really Fast, or an exercise in quick decision making and following an idea through to the end The program will provide each participant with three (3) 8′ foot 2″x4″ pieces of standard construction […]
The World, The Collective, The Secrets is a publication of the 2015 MFA in Design program at California College of the Arts. It is an archive that looks past individual inquiries in favor of a collective voice. It is a zeitgeist – a cumulation of topics addressing the current state of design. These topics include: the […]
The Graduate Program in Design is proud to present the 2015 MFA Thesis Exhibition: A Range of Indeterminate Results. The exhibition will feature individual and collaborative works of graphic, interaction, and industrial design from more than 40 degree candidates who have completed CCA’s prestigious transdisciplinary graduate curriculum. Curatorial StatementWe are shaped by the spaces and […]