Dialogues: Poster Art of the Soviet Union Opening

Over 700 people have now seen Dialogues: Poster Art of the Soviet Union. A huge shout out to all the graphic design students and Visual and Performing Arts faculty who made the amazing opening possible. Thanks to the actors and dancers from Performing arts and to photographers Edward Honaker for these wonderful photos as well as David Eichinger for the panorama. The show runs March 13- April 13 at the City Gallery and is open Monday-Thursday 1-4pm and Thursday March 26 from 6-9pm with on site silk screening. The gallery is closed for Spring break. Special appreciation from Sean Bacon and Candice López to Ron Miriello, Amy Levine, MaeLin Levine, June Richards, Alicia Rincon, Terry Wilson, Sofia Laurein, Norman Ramos, Wayne Hulgin and Terri Hughes Oelrich.

You can view the old and new posters at this link: http://sovietpostershow.com

Gratitude goes out to the New Artists for Dialogues: Sean Adams, Michael Bierut, Gary Benzel, Stefan Bucher, Maximo Escobedo, Jennifer Hewitson, Josh Higgins, Jessica Hische, Don Hollis, Amy Levine, MaeLin Levine, Rafael López, Steven Morris, Joel Nakamura, Michael Osborne Fabrizio Scippa and Joel Sotelo.

Founder's Week Trolley Release: Design by Lindsay Jonkers SDCC Graphic Design

Vintage style at the Founders Week Trolley Roll out!

Professor Andrea Singer was the mastermind of the incredible Vintage Costumes

Old meets New at the Founder's Week Trolley Dedication

Lovely Lulubi in front of her larger than life trolley portrait

Woman of the Hour: Trolley Designer Lindsay Jonkers

Go Lindsay! Not only did she design it but she made it fit an 80 foot trolley

Portrait of Design Student Harry Kim

Professors Sean Bacon and Candice López team taught the Centennial Branding Class that developed the trolley design.

Lindsay with SDCC President Anthony Beebe

SDCC Communications Director Heidi Bunkowske organizes the big event with style

Agents of Change Trolley gets ready to roll out of the MTS yard

Graphic Design Lab Technician Eugene Brown gets playful in front of his portrait

Chancellor Constance Carroll steps back in time

Founder's week couldn't have had a more student-centered, dynamic and festive celebration than the trolley release last Wednesday. It meant so much to all of us in design to see the work of San Diego City College graphic design student Lindsay Jonkers roll down the tracks! Her design Agents of Change was unanimously selected to represent the diversity and spirit of San Diego City College. It featured portraits of students, faculty and staff artfully shot by professional photographer Stephen Simpson. Thanks to MTS for supporting this project!

The work of SDCC Graphic Design/Drama Professor Andrea Singer was simply amazing! Her flair made history come alive as she decked out students, faculty and staff in vintage costumes representing the 100 years of City College history. The Cosmetology department delivered makeup and hair that was inspiring. Thanks to Department Chair Extraordinaire June Richards for her unending support and vision. What incredible work with the organization and planning by our Communications team Heidi Bunkowske and Jamie Netherland. Thrilling to celebrate with our wonderful new President Anthony Beebe, Chancellor Carroll, interim President Lynn Neault and Trustees. Hundreds of cheering students lined the tracks to greet the trolley as it arrived from Imperial Station to the San Diego City College trolley stop.

Photography by Stephen Simpson

Union Tribune Article: City College Turns 100

 





City College turns 100
Institution hits milestone with new buildings, goals
By Karen Kucher 
Aug. 15, 2014
In 1914, a junior college welcomed its first class of 34 students to a school with no teacher of its own, set up in borrowed space at San Diego High School.

From that humble beginning, the institution eventually known as San Diego City College has grown and matured, taking on shifting roles to meet the needs of the city. Well known for its workforce development and training programs, the college has launched the careers of nurses, graphic designers, broadcasters and business leaders.

As it celebrates its centennial, City College today occupies 60 acres on the eastern edge of downtown, an urban campus that boasts $450 million worth of classrooms and labs built in the past few years. It enrolls 18,000 students each fall.

The dramatic transformation of the college, attended by more than 1 million students since it was launched, takes even longtime professors by surprise.

Candice López, who has taught at the college for 25 years, cried the first time she saw the new classrooms and lab she’ll be using this fall for her graphics design classes. The modern spaces have floor-to-ceiling windows, built-in projectors and screens, ample storage space and huge white boards just waiting for brainstorming sessions. In comparison, her dark, 1950s-era classroom had orange tile floors and fabric-covered cork squares where work was hung with tacks.

“It is almost like the voters dropped from the sky this gift on an institution that is so worthy, and it is really incredible what is possible with these facilities,” said López, referring to the $1.55 billion in bond measures financing the San Diego Community College District’s recent building boom. “The leap is so huge from what we didn’t have to what we do have it is kind of a shock.”

College officials have held activities throughout the year to mark the 100-year milestone and have a number of events planned in early September, including a fundraising gala, a student spirit day and a community open house. 

Centennial events 
September 8: City College Foundation Gala at The Prado in Balboa Park. 
September 9: Student Spirit DaySept. 10: Launch of City College “wrapped” trolley
September 11: Community Open House 

The campus is decked out in banners and posters created by design students who took a centennial branding class last fall. An advertising wrap created by students will adorn a Metropolitan Transit System trolley car that will be unveiled next month.

Anthony Beebe, president of City College, marveled at the foresight of city and school leaders to create San Diego Junior College, the fifth such institution in the state. (The name changed to City College in 1961.) He said many community colleges in California weren’t formed until the 1960s.

“There’s not a lot of colleges that have been around that long,” Beebe said. “That was a unique innovative thought process that was going on with the community back then.”

Steven Schoenherr, a retired University of San Diego history professor, wrote a 252-page book on City College. He said he didn’t know much about the college and the important role it played in the city before his project, including the way the development of the campus spawned downtown urban renewal following World War II.

“You get a sense of the place if you see it first hand,” he said, recalling his first walk around the campus. “That was an eye-opening experience. That told me how important the college was, how many things it was doing. All the buildings are not just there to look at but are performing an important function.”

In recent years, City College has been recognized for the amount of community service performed by its students, for its efforts to encourage research and for its jazz radio station.

López says there’s something special about City College — with its urban location, diverse student body and strong links to the community. She said some of its students, including those who come from other countries, seem “hungrier” for education.

“They want to do things with their lives and they have this unique voice and viewpoint that needs to be heard,” she said. “I know there aren’t enough people of color in the design profession. I feel like City College is an open door and it is a bridge that allows those voices to be heard.”

John Markley, a 76-year-old professor who teaches in the English department, said City College is “one of the friendliest places you could ever be” where students help other students and teachers focus on helping students be successful.

“Our mission is teaching, we go after people who can teach,” said Markley, who has been at the college since 1970. “We don’t have to write books to move up the academic ladder.”

The biggest change he’s seen in his career has been the increase of students going part time as they complete their studies. When he started, most students attended full-time.

Some notable graduates from the college include Josh Higgins, who was design director of the 2012 Obama re-election campaign and now works as communications design team manager at Facebook; Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Hasemyer; Costco founder Jim Sinegal; writer/film producer Cameron Crowe and professional baseball player Sergio Mitre.

Markley said Crowe was 16 when he took his writing class one summer. A few weeks into the course, he asked if Markley would drop him if he left for a week to hang out with a rock band.

The professor told Crowe — who went on to be an editor at Rolling Stone and to write Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Jerry Maguire and Almost Famous — that he could remain enrolled in the class and to be sure to keep a diary while he was gone.

“He could write. He was a really bright guy.,” Markley said. “I should have kept that diary.”

Beebe said he’s excited to welcome alumni and community members to see the campus during Founder’s Week. People who haven’t been there for awhile will be very surprised, he said.

“They are going to be absolutely blown away,” Beebe said. “That Open House is going to be an important part of kicking off a new era of connection with the community and a new chance for them to see what community college is all about.”

Beebe said his vision for the college moving ahead is to take a leadership role in promoting social responsibility and civility and to address such topics as homelessness, environmental issues and human trafficking and to encourage students to try to find solutions. “We want that curriculum to be tied to what’s important in this community,” he said.

http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2014/aug/15/san-diego-city-college-turns-100-centennial/?#article-copy

Travel through History with Graphic Designers

To celebrate the 2014 centennial of the American Institute of Graphic Arts, designers from across the United States were asked to make a social, political or cultural statement about one year in AIGA's history. Participants include Milton Glaser, Seymour Chwast, Paula Scher, Woody Pirtle, Elaine Lustig Cohen, Primo Angeli, Carin Goldberg, Kit Hinrichs, Tom Geismar, George Tscherny, Michael Osborne, Sean Adams, Ellen Lupton, Michael Vanderbyl, Jennifer Morla, Eric Madsen, Ivan Chermayeff, Noreen Morioka, Chip Kidd, Michael Beirut, Charles Anderson, Dana Arnett, Rick Valicenti, Debbie Millman, Clement Mok, Louise Sandhaus, DJ Stout, Steff Geisbuhler, Clive Piercy, Augustín Garza, Terry Marks and local San Diegans Bennett Peji and Candice López with many others. The work is now being printed and was used at the 2014 AIGA Centennial Gala in New York City.

Click on this link to view the AIGA Centennial Historical Timeline and click on the arrows to travel through history from a designer's perspective.

SDCC Design Students featured in Italian Ways Magazine

Check out this article on San Diego City College Graphic Design students who created work to support Radicondoli, a Tuscan hill town.  Thanks to Ron Miriello for documenting this unique collaboration that has resulted in outstanding portfolio work and the opportunity to make a difference with design.
San Diego students embrace tiny Radicondoli

Alumni Chris Ford gives back in a big way by hosting a WordPress Workshop at City.

Alicia Lopez snapped this candid at break.

Chris chats with Rolando and grabs a drink at break.

Lunch at Influx-that's Chris Ford 3rd from the left with a million dollar smile.

From Chris: I didn’t go to college right after high school
It took me a few years of waiting tables and making bad decisions to decide that a higher education might, in fact, be a good idea. It sounded a lot better than being a 70-year-old Denny’s waitress who rode the bus to work. (At the time I was working the graveyard shift slinging Grand Slams and futilely hoping a book and earphones would discourage the more aggressive weirdos from striking up conversations on my daily commute. It didn’t.)
When I decided to start my higher education I chose San Diego City College because I could afford it and I could get there. Fortunately this community college had a graphic design program, and the course of my life changed. I met Candice Lopez, and she ignited a passion for graphic design in me that lives on today.

Every class you take is leading up to Portfolio

Students review all the projects they’ve completed over the course of their education, refine them, hire a photographer and art direct a photo shoot of any three-dimensional projects, and put everything together in a book that’s judged by top industry professionals at the annual AIGA Student Portfolio Review.
Local schools including SDSU, the Art Institute and Point Loma Nazarene College compete. The winners take home scholarships sponsored by local design firms that range from $1000 for first place to $250 for category winners. Last year over $5,000 in scholarships were given out. I’m proud to say that my little community college still kicks. (check out this list—we swept the top three spots last year winning 14 of the 16 awards)
It’s deserved, too—the department has been filled with talent for years. A lot of graduates get scholarships and continue their educations at Art Center and other top design schools. Alumni have held positions like the Creative Director at top local agency Digitaria to manager of the Communication Design team at Facebook—even as the Design Director of the 2012 Obama re-election campaign.

Our portfolios were our ten best projects. They were photographed or output at a service bureau, then mounted and flapped on black board. Most students spent a lot of time having intricate portfolio cases designed and fabricated. It could get pretty pricey, at least on my limited budget. Plus you had to ship the whole shebang to any potential employers or schools. That meant only one person at a time could see your portfolio. So I went a different route.

I had fallen in love with Director and the REM interactive floppy disk-based press kit for Monster. I decided to put out a 100% “interactive” portfolio. My only costs were printing the labels and cases, and having the executable file burned to a CD-ROM (There were no home CD burners yet, and I knew it wasn’t going to fit on a floppy). That portfolio led to the job that taught me HTML, and my career path was set.

On April 11 I’ll head back to my old stomping grounds. I’ve volunteered to teach a WordPress workshop to the entire graduating class. I’m excited that I have the opportunity to enable a new generation of graphic designers to use WordPress to get a job, get into art school, or start their own freelancing journey.

 

THANKS CHRIS!

The graduating class and design faculty want to let you know how much we appreciate the amazing job you did giving the gift of WordPress to our graduates. You are making such a difference for us and we can't wait to connect with you again in May to polish those websites. Special thanks goes out to Flywheel because they are all about building strong designers. The six months of free hosting will really help these students hit the ground running. Hats off to the plethora of generous donors who helped fund this workshop and subscriptions to Elegant Themes. Chris hosted a Crowdtilt campaign and raised $1,195 for this endeavor. We plan to thank each and every one of you when we get your names! It was fun, educational, informative, empowering and FREE to students who really deserved this terrific opportunity.

CuriositY Conference Follow up 2014

http://jamesallen.es/y-conference-aiga-san-diego-y19/

Thanks to SDCC graphic design student James Allen for posting this great informational piece on the Y Conference.

Y Conference Presenters

Journey of the 2014 Commencement Speaker: Josh Higgins

On May 23, 2014 San Diego City College will celebrate our 100th commencement. The centennial commencement speaker is one of our own. Josh Higgins, a City College graphic design graduate, talks about his incredible journey to become Design Director of the 2012 Obama re-election campaign and his time at City College. This wonderful video was a collaboration between San Diego City College Graphic Design & Radio TV students Aliya Bora & Cassarah Coffey. Kudos to them for their fantastic work on this video. 

To view the video go to this link

http://vimeo.com/user9661541/joshhiggins


Here's a video another design alumni Garrett Patz produced with Josh worth watching:
What's in your heart: http://vimeo.com/62562979

UNITE 2014

SDCC thanks Clive Piercy for sharing his wisdom and passion at UNITE 2014.

Photos courtesy of Ruben Hernandez

Happy 100th Birthday City College!

We wanted to celebrate the San Diego City College Centennial with graphic design. In the Fall 2013 semester our Centennial Branding class taught by Sean Bacon and Candice López worked to create a wide variety of projects to commemorate the 100th anniversary of our college. Many of these projects were produced and some never make it off the drawing board. Thanks to our good friends at MiresBall for creating the identity and brand guidelines. Scott Mires and Dylan Jones met with our students to help them along the way. This was such a great learning process. With this post we share the exceptional work of our students.

We want to express our sincere thanks to President Lynn Neault, Vice President Randy Barnes and past President Terrence Burgess for their vision to make the Centennial Branding class a reality. The support of our Visual & Performing Arts department chairs Wayne Hulgin, June Richards and Alicia Rincon is over the top. We also tip our hat to two terrific colleagues in Public Relations, Heidi Bunkowske and Jamie Netherland who were a big part of our team. Thanks to professional photographer Stephen Simpson who shot City College's phenomenal dancers for the theatre and dance posters at the end of the post. Our colleagues Dave Eichinger, David King and George Tubon in the photography program generously lent us studio space to shoot the theatre and dance poster imagery. Photography students delivered incredible shots of our new architecture and campus to use in promoting the centennial. We couldn't have done it without SDCC Adjunct Professor Paul Drohan for support on the wallpaper and City Moves application. Paul is a City College alumni and the Design Director at Digitaria. We salute our good friends at MiresBall, Scott Mires and Dylan Jones. Thanks to Professor Duane Gardella for his inspiring work on the 2014 Martin Luther King float and collaboration with our student designers.

The biggest shout goes out to San Diego City College Graphic Design students for their dedication and amazing work!

In an effort to bring Artist Shepard Fairey to exhibit at our new gallery
Russian nesting dolls were handmade featuring his iconic designs and packaged in a wooden crate.

The crate was hand delivered to Shepard Fairey's office in Los Angeles by students.

Brainstorming for an identity system and name for the new campus art gallery. The gallery name is still to be determined.

An adaptable, flexible identity system for the new gallery.

Gallery Visualizations by Bradford Prarie and Donovan Salazaar

Concepts to update the old college seal [see old seals below] for the Centennial led by Bradford Prarie and Richard Apocada

History of the Old College Seals from 1958 and 1968

Banners designed by Environmental team: Sam Spratt, Cage Langill, Aliya Bora and Devan Moore

Cityscape Cake poster design and illustration by Gina Brereton

Lulubi Garcia delivers the brand language with a dose of our new architecture and graduates

Alumni Book Timeline-Team: Luis Hernandez, Yvonne Anaya and Alicia Brianne López

Sharing the stats that make City College one of a kind-unique!

Custom buttons for the graduation sash to celebrate campus programs

Graduation Sash and Buttons designed by Satomi Yuinawa

Graduation Program design team Denise Vega, Rosa Jijon and Satomi Yuinawa

Downtown bus shelters designed by Lulubi Garcia

Denise Vega crafts an option for the 100th commencement program

Rosa Jijon visualizes a new diploma cover

Wallpaper for campus computers. Thanks to Web Design Professor Paul Drohan for Creative Direction.

City College inspires people to change their lives.

Tradition of student success

Designers created a variety of wallpapers to celebrate student success

For 100 years we've been changing lives, inside the classroom and beyond.

We inspire change on the campus and across the community.

Celebrating a century of success and a vision for tomorrow. 

Preparing the next generation to lead the next century. 

San Diego thrives at City.

Apparel designs using the Centennial symbol.

Envisioning a new seal to promote campus pride.

Lanyards with a message.

Striking caps.

The class was partial to this design featuring a revised seal.

Patterned brims

Beach gear for SDCC 

Exploring brand language

This concept fueled the Martin Luther King float for 2014.

Environmental Design by Cage Langill, Sam Spratt, Aliya Bora and Devan Moore

Spreads for the Centennial History Book.

Kudos to our college historian for documenting the City College Story

Original photographic compositions to represent the decades. 

Design Concepts for the 9th Annual International Book Fair feature erasable chalk art

Book fair postcard with a perforated bookmark.

Clever Urban Buttons to express Book Passion.

Customized book bags.

Design Concepts for the World Cultures Program express Education without Boundaries

A World of Cultures in the Heart of San Diego

Banners for the Library would hang from a curtain rod 

Concepts for a new phone app City Moves. Thanks to Paul Drohan for creative direction.

Theatre and Dance Program team is Richard Apodaca, Rosa Jijon and Isa Morse.

Professional photographer Stephen Simpson got some amazing shots of City College dancers.

Richard Apocada art directed the photo shoot with choreographer Professor Alicia Rincon and Candice López

Martin Luther King Parade Float-the handiwork of Duane Gardella and SDCC Graphic Design student Sam Spratt