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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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
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. […]
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 […]
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 […]
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.”
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 […]
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 […]
IN THE MAKING is a new student-run faculty lecture series. This series aims to explore the grad school experience… how faculty members developed of a personal way of working in school, including relevant challenges, influences, and transition to their current practice. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . […]
Presentation Synopsis: As 3D printers increase in quality and in accessibility, we see them moving out of industrial design labs and into maker spaces, libraries, museums, and homes. Even those without physical access to 3D printers can order custom 3D prints from services like Shapeways to be mailed to their homes. But what can people […]
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 . . . . . . . […]
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 […]
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 […]
Some days technology really wrecks me. I wake up and the first thing I do is reach for my phone to switch off my alarm. Without thinking, I make my way through text notifications, email, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and the Weather app. I wake up, and I don’t look out through my window. When I […]
This thesis focuses on our relationship to the urban environments we inhabit as well as the people who we share them with. We are constantly navigating a sea of people, usually strangers, but we don’t realize the impact those people have on our perception of our surroundings, their impact on our wellbeing, and our own […]
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 […]
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 […]
IxDA conference, February 2015. The project was to create a quick-start guide for a driverless car.
Biography: Keetra Dean Dixon is a designer and artist who relocated from NYC to rural Alaska in April of 2014. She and her partner, JK Keller, test the claim “We can work from anywhere” by building a new studio practice with a remote home base. Dixon traded in her team leading role as an Experiential […]
Lecture Synopsis: Why make the Internet of Things? There’s a lot of hype today around the Internet of Things, but there are few clear descriptions of what it is, why it’s valuable, and how to design for it. This talk will describe one approach for thinking about why we make the Internet of Things, and […]
Lecture Synopsis: TBD Catalog — the near future’s normal, ordinary everyday product catalog. It’s a glimpse at your future as hinted at through 166 products, advertisements and classifieds. It’s your future, only not the future you may have imagined. It is, though, the quite likely future if the titans of Silicon Valley and their earnest […]
Homing/Wandering Compass prototype, pointing at an unknown place of interest.
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)
Biography: Luna Maurer cofounded Moniker studio with Jonathan Puckey and Roel Wouters in 2012. Moniker works on commissioned designs as well as projects of an autonomous and experimental nature. The studio works across various media for a wide range of clients in the cultural and commercial sectors. Maurer, Puckey, and Wouters’s work explores the social […]
More than Messaging: Improving Digital Communication through Collaborative Storytelling and Comics See Video