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 […]
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 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 […]
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. […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
In numerology and mythology, 9 represents completeness, yet its strength is built on whole individual units and its scale is infinite. For the nine graduating designers, the 2016 MFA Design exhibition is both a culmination and the start of a new phase of practice.”
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 […]
Tim Parsons is a designer, design writer and Associate Professor in Designed Objects at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. A graduate of the Masters program in Design Products at London’s Royal College of Art, he has gone on to teach product design for fifteen years at universities in Britain and America. Tim […]
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
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 […]
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 . . . . . . . […]
Biography: Monica Martinez is an artist, educator and entrepreneur whose creative work explores ideas about food production and economics. In 2011 she launched Don Bugito, the first startup food business in the country with a full menu based on edible insects, and placing her at the forefront of the sustainable foods movement. Monica is a […]
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 […]
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 […]
MFA Design is an open site for the investigation of contemporary design practice. Built on a firm foundation of technical skills, pushing the limits of cutting-edge tools and technologies alongside traditional craft-based techniques, MFA Design students work to reimagine the methods, modes, and meanings of design in contemporary culture. Whether intended to be commercial, civically […]
Jon Sueda / Chair Sara Dean / Assistant Chair Christine Lasher / Program Manager
Negash Asegde Annika Bastacky Yuhan Chen Yiming Cui Lingyin Du Cynthia Escalante Mitch Greer Rebecca Hanson Jiahao He Linya Huang Jenn Jiang Xinheng Jiang Yuan Jiang Anqi LI Chengru Li Chang Liu Yaqin Liu Yang Liu Pei-Chi Lu Jinghan Luo Andrea Murchie Pushan Panda Dan Qian Zeng Qian Juan Pablo Rahal Kelly Rouser Xinyue Song […]
Rafi Ajl Mary Banas Cory Barr Matthew Boyko Mark Brest Van Kempen Sara Dean Donald Fortescue Guillermo Galindo Cristina Gaitan Christopher Hamamoto Eric Heiman Jonn Herschend David Kasprzak Mathew Kneebone Barry Katz Stuart Kendall The Letterform Archive Ana Llorente Brett MacFadden Marty Marfin Emily McVarish Scott Minneman Paul Montgomery Randy Nakamura James Pierce Calvin Rocchio […]
Amy Balkin Julia Born Emmet Byrne Julian Bleecker Keetra Dixon Dinamo typefoundry James Edmondson Experimental Jetset Frank Grießhammer Jason Groves Na Kim Mike Kuniavsky Maryam Omar /Turquoise Mountain Jenny Odell Jonathan Olivares Monica Martinez Tim Parsons Megan Prelinger Leon Ransmeier Valkyrie Savage Sarah Teasley Bruce Tharp Etienne Turpin Marco Walser Allan Wexler
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 […]
Rules, habits and definitions arise from agreements that humans have made to construct a reality that we can all understand. These parameters create order within ourselves and our environment, allowing this world to function. However, I wonder whether an excess of automated behavior restricts our ability to experiment with new ways of making and delight […]
Cristina Gaitán’s thesis focuses on enabling a sense of ecological imagination in the urban population of San Francisco. She examines water systems as a typology of natural systems, seeking to make massive scales and systems legible at human scale. The body of work is a collection of discrete performative objects, deployed as interventions into public […]
With California facing a severe drought, the way we consume and waste our water is becoming an increasingly important issue that must be addressed both individually and collectively. Yet, information regarding such environmental concerns tends to be presented in forms that are abstract, overwhelming, and easily dismissed as ‘someone else’s problem.’ The goal for […]
Hear Here is about the use of sound as an effective medium of communication to improve intimacy and longevity of long-distance relationships.Initial field research determined that the use of environmental sound as an alternative means of communicating, in real time, what is occurring in the respective lives of each person in a relationship enables a […]
My thesis project presents a constellation of work that surrounds the idea of presentness. What is it to be present in the world? How can an object be designed to facilitate and enhance presentness in the user? How can an experience be designed that occupies a space of becoming, a moment in time that an […]
The Instruments of Harmony are digital instruments, constrained by specific parameters and a specific intent. The parameters: (1)The instrument should be for two or more people to play together. (2)The instrument should be controlled by gesture only, without traditional digital music controls like knobs and buttons. (3)The instrument should play digital sounds. The intent: To […]
Lecture Synopsis: Bruce will be discussing the topic of discursive design—when designers use the product-form as a means to communicate substantive ideas in hopes of inspiring reflection and debate, allowing design to participate more broadly in culture. While this mode of design has historically been located outside of industry and commerce, it is now being […]
Processes, Recipes, Laws, Operations, Techniques, Titles, Teachings, Prescriptions, Modus operandi, Equations, Programs, Haiku, Philosophy, Paradoxes, Requests, Puzzles, Principles, Proposals for actions, Methods, Invitations to participate, Restrictions, Poetry, Proverbs, Pure concepts, Training, Coaching, Lessons, Constraints, Restrictions, Abstractions, Rituals, Mechanisms, Conditions, Protocols Instructions, Scores, Algorithms etc. explores using process-based systems, algorithms, and instructions to generate discursive images […]
Nazgol Ansarinia (2003) Edward Blake (2013) Maggie Fost (2004) Zach Gibson (2011) Matt Johnson & Chris Yamane (2014) Wioleta Kaminska (2014) Kristin Neidlinger (2010) Melissa Martin (2009) Heidi Meredith & Renee Walker (2011) Nazanin Oveisi (2011) Jennifer Sonderby (2002) Joel Stillman (2009) Rosanna Yau (2010)