Back in December, you’ll remember I co-hosted an event called GOOD Design LA with Casey Caplowe, something we hoped at the time would become a recurring thing. Little did we know how quickly that would become reality: Immediately after the event, Art Center professor Petrula Vrontikis approached us with an idea to recreate the event as an assignment for her graphic design students. So for eight weeks, myself, Casey, Art Center alum-turned-designer at GOOD Atley Kasky, Art Center chair Nik Hafermaas and presentation guru Tony Luna worked with the students as they picked LA problems, designed solutions and put together five-minute presentations of their ideas. Oh yeah, and they also created graphics and promotional pieces for the event itself (we picked the graphic by Orlando Sanabria you see above). They unfortunately did not choose the event name I came up with: GOOD Design II: Mo’ Art Center, Mo’ Problems.
I covered the whole evening over on the GOOD blog, so rush over there to check out the brilliant solutions to LA problems from wildfires to walking to fame. But I want to specifically thank our two speakers who helped introduce the evening: Art Center’s current Visionary-in-Residence and my fellow friend-of-design Kurt Andersen (who also worked with the students during their problem-solving period) and Krista Kline, Urban Planning and Design Coordinator for the office of LA’s recently-reelected Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who talked a little about how the stimulus plan would affect LA (positively).
And of course many thanks to all the students for their awesome ideas, and to Petrula for coming up with such a great concept for a class. And this is now an officially recurring event since it has recurred, so if you’re interested in doing this with your LA design students, let me know!
