Art Center: Grad Show Preview

December 12: Innovation by Design

“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world." Nelson Mandela

Remembering Gerald Montoya

We meet briefly in life, if we touch each other with stardust-that is everything.- Author unknown


With deep sorrow we report the passing of a good friend and gifted San Diego City College alumni Gerald Montoya. He lost his fight with PML on October 27 and will be greatly missed. In 2001 he graduated from San Diego City College with his associates degree in graphic design and in 2004 earned a bachelors degree from Long Beach State.

Gerald's kindness, dazzling smile and bright, positive, energetic spirit will always be remembered at SDCC. A talented graphic designer and visual artist he was fascinated with the spirit of abstraction. He used lines, colors, and shape in his paintings finding inspiration from the works of Paul Klee, Marc Rothko, Hans Hoffman and Wassily Kandinksy. His works were exhibited in many shows and he was a resident artist at the Tenth Avenue Arts Centre. He loved abstract art and believed it "made people think more and dig deeper into each piece, to discover emotions and imagery individual to their imagination and life experiences".
Gerald grew up in Albuquerque, New Mexico under "clear blue skies, large puffy white clouds, sunset shades of purple and orange reflected off the Sandia Mountains, autumnal colors of trees alongside the Rio Grande, nighttime skies filled with infinite stars and the West Mesa trails of ancient petroglyphs". These qualities resonated deeply in his beautiful abstract works.

Abstract Painting by Gerald Montoya

AIGA SDCC Student Chapter

Upcoming Events:
10/23 AIGA Membership Bash Learn More
10/30 AIGA SDCC Digitaria Tour [See information below]11/2 Green build Art 7 Sustainability Airport Tour  10am-2pm  Learn More

2/6/2014 AIGA San Diego Unite at San Diego City College Saville Theatre
3/14 -3/15/ 2014AIGA Y Design Conference #19 Curiosity
5/10/2014 AIGA San Diego Portfolio Review

October AIGA San Diego City College Student Chapter Event:
Join us for a tour of Digitaria with Executive Design Director Paul Drohan. Paul is currently teaching the web page design at San Diego City College. The firm recently won Brand Diego's Brand Agency of the Year. A digital agency founded in 1997 and aligned with JWT they are rooted in the disciplines of design, data, marketing and technology. Through immersive experiences they transform the way brands communicate and how businesses are run.
We will meet at Digitaria at 4pm. Take the elevator up to the Digitaria lobby.
350 10th Avenue #1200 in downtown San Diego

If you would like to join us email calopez@sdccd.edu by 10/28/13 to make your reservation.

AIGA San Diego Membership Bash

REGISTER NOW 

Are you ready for pumpkins, beer and a spooky time?
This is the perfect time to bring a friend and enjoy a bash to kick off the new year. (Members are free!)

Master Carver and Culinary Artist Chef Guido Michael will be joining us and carving a giant pumpkin during the event. You can get in on the jack-o-lantern fun by bringing in your own carved pumpkin to enter in our Pumpkin Contest. (Every attendee can enter one pumpkin creation.) 

Wednesday, October 23, 2013/ 6:00 PM - 9:00 PM/Modern Times Beer/ 3725 Greenwood St./ San Diego, California 92110

Pumpkin Prizes

First Prize - iPad Mini
Second Prize - $100 Oceanaire Seafood Room Gift Card
Third Prize - 1-year Contributor Membership to AIGA
Best of Show - Chef Guido's One-of-a-Kind Pumpkin
+ many more for various categories!

SDCC Graphic Design Alumni page

If you are an alumni of SDCC Graphic Design please join us. We are trying to find all our friends who have studied graphic design at City for a BIG party to celebrate the centennial of SDCC in 2014. Tell your friends and fellow classmates.

Costumes from a wilder time

Halloween is on it's way. Check out some of these amazing costumes in demilked magazine photographed by Charles Freger who traveled through 19 European nations to create this series Wilder Mann.

Help Empower Future Leaders: underserved youth in the Treobytes Program

We are looking for SDCC Design students willing to help empower kids to learn, create and develop the next great app, website or logo through the Treobytes Program. See  their website http://www.treobytes.com. Ava Mason who coordinates this effort  hopes to integrate college students into the instruction. She is looking for students to lead the instruction for the after school program.  This would require 2-4 students for 1.5-2.0 hours per week on Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday.  The students will be learning basic Illustrator techniques, basic website development and social media.  Beta testing will take place November 18-22 at Albert Einstein Academy. If you want to learn more about this or help please contact Ava Mason

Connecting with Alumni Andrea Carrillo

Humor. Chronic Dissatisfaction (the always unfinished project). Borderless.

These are some of the main ideas that have defined my design practice throughout the years.  I believe that as designers, we shouldn’t take ourselves to seriously and we should be able to laugh at ourselves, a little.  Although it may seem negative, my constant dissatisfaction with my work pushes me to improve as a designer and never settle. I strive for a borderless practice, where I become an anthropologist, a writer, a content creator: attempting to redefine what a graphic designer is.

I am a graduate from Art Center College of Design. Over the last years I have had the opportunity to collaborate with people and studios from very different industries. My work has spanned from cultural to commercial, with projects for film, architecture, education, advertising, and more.

One of the things that I am most grateful for from studying at SDCC is the professors’ unconditional dedication to the program and its students. Their constant support allowed me to create a portfolio that led to a scholarship at Art Center, and brought me to where I am today.

Some of Andrea's most recent work can be found here.

Art Center at SDCC this Wednesday October 9 -11:30-12:30

This coming Wednesday Ryan Perez, Assistant Director of Admissions at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena will be on campus. All design students are invited to Room V403A at 11:30-12:30 in the afternoon. 

You can learn more about the program and see examples of their stellar work. 

See you there!

Armin Vit: AIGA San Diego event

Thursday, September 26, 2013

6:30 PM - 9:30 PM

New School of Architecture and Design

1249 F Street

San Diego, CA 92101

There are the lucky ones who, through a combination of talented hands and eyes and brains and hard work, can create dazzling typographic compositions that make designers gasp in jealous awe. Then there are the rest of us.

Armin will show some of the best and worst typography choices he has made over the course of 15 years, from the crappy days of dot-com design to his stint at Pentagram to his own projects at UnderConsideration— most of which have been really very decently good. For the most part.

About Armin. Born and raised in Mexico City, Armin is a graphic designer and writer now living in Austin, Texas. He is co-founder of UnderConsideration, a graphic design firm and publishing enterprise all rolled into one. While he has written for most of the well-known trade publications, he is better known for his writing on the blogs that make up the UnderConsideration online network, as well as from the books he has co-authored with his wife and partner, Bryony Gomez-Palacio— their most recent efforts being Graphic Design, Referenced and the self-published Flaunt. Through UnderConsideration’s Department of Design he designs corporate identities, books and web sites for a few clients.

- See more at: http://sandiego.aiga.org/event/a-night-with-armin-vit/#sthash.Puq8Vscu.dpuf

Alumni Garrett Patz of Departure

Sharing the work of SD City College alumni Garrett Patz who hails from Departure. This full cranium agency focuses on business challenges blending creativity and digital know-how. We asked Garrett to share some of the projects he has worked on like this airport rooftop campaign for the most grueling physical test on the planet. This was hand painted so as you fly in, there it is and it's HUGE!  Here is the  Dinner Date video he worked on and Garrett's amazing projects have been featured in books like Relogo: Redesigning the Brand. To view Garrett's personal work visit his website Cogniform. As a student at SDCC he designed this beautiful vodka packaging that was featured in books and websites like Lovely Packaging. 

Leanna Jones in Brand ID Magazine

A big shout out to Leanna Jones as the packaging she created in Portfolio Building Class was recently featured in Brand ID Magazine. Leanna won best cross cultural design at the AIGA San Diego 2013 Review and was hired at Digitaria. Portfolio Building Class will run again this Spring so join us!

Alumni Profile: Bekka Palmer

Bekka Palmer-Photo by Julia Robbs

I moved from San Diego to Brooklyn, New York and started working for the blogger Swiss Miss at her brand new temporary tattoo shop, Tattly. I've been there for two years, growing with the company (which had three employees when I started and now has eight). I work as the Ambassador of Fun overseeing all our our events and sponsorships. I've also been putting my energy into creating photography.

My biggest takeaway from City College is that you have to be discriminating about your own work. If you want to be a designer, only show work that you are proud of, and if you want to be a photographer understand that probably 90 - 99% of your images will never been seen by the public. Taking the portfolio class at City College also taught me to tell a good story. People will react and remember you if you weave a narrative around your imagery. At the end of the day if you want to do what you love make sure that's the kind of work you put out in the world.

Open Lab Hours: Fall 2013

The lab is located in Room T309 on the San Diego City College. The free lab is available to registered students on the following days:
Thursday  4:30pm-9:30pm
Friday  11am-7pm
Saturday 11am-7pm

Lab technician Eugene Brown: ewbrown@sdccd.edu

Profiling Alumni Illustrator Charles Glaubitz

SDCC alumni Charles Glaubitz was born in Tijuana and grew up in Rosarito Beach. His family lived a block away from the beach and so he of course surfed, rode a bmx bike and drew since he was a kid. His dad was a German American from Nebraska who became a karate champion in Mexico, and his mom who was from Sinaloa, ran a pharmacy. Charles used to take an hour taxi ride to Tijuana from Rosarito, a bus ride from 3rd ave to the border and a 55 minute trolley to school and did that for 3 and a half years to earn his associates degree at City College. He then got his bachelors degree in illustration at CCAC in San Francisco and for many years, Charles taught illustration at San Diego City College.

Charle's clients have included Rolling Stones, Nickelodeon Magazine, Complot Magazine (Mexico), Timken Museum, San Diego Trolley, Converse, United Airlines, San Francisco Examiner, Seattle Stranger, and the Los Angeles Film Festival.

His dynamic work has been shown in galleries in NY, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Paris, Madrid, Mexico City, Tijuana, San Diego, and Seattle. He created a huge mural/installation at Museo Carrillo Gil museum of contemporary art in Mexico City and his work was exhibited at the San Diego Museum of Contemporary Arty in a Tijuana artist group show called "A strange new world"

Charles has received awards and recognition from How magazine, American Illustration 21, 22, 23. Communication Arts Illustration annual 2002 fresh section and received the 2005 FONCA (similar to the NEA) young creators grant.

You can view more of his work at Charles blog and website.

Fall 2013: San Diego City College Graphic Design Schedule

At San Diego City College Graphic Design we have a large selection of classes that meet days and evenings, on campus, fully and partially online. We have some exciting new courses to explore including Intermediate Digital Media 126 with Julie Warren where students can work with motion graphics, interactive files and comprehensively use digital tools in the development of projects published to both print and web platforms. Students who have passed Digital Media 125 are eligible for this class.Lisa Starace will be teaching the new Portfolio Process class 148C designed for advanced students who want to build process and production skills and spreads for their finished portfolio.

Sean Bacon and Candice López will be co-teaching the exciting Centennial Branding 151 class for intermediate/advanced students. This class will operate like a design studio and we will actually be designing, producing and printing four color graphics for the college centennial in 2014. Students will have the opportunity to get printed samples for their portfolio.

BEGINNING LEVEL

85395  Basic Design 100:Andrea Singer-Mon/Wed 9:35am-12:45

01749  Typography 106: Amy Becraft-Mon/Wed 9:35am-12:45    

85806  Typography 106:MaeLin Levine-Tue/Thurs 5:50pm-9:00 

97639  Book Arts 1 174A:Andrea Singer-Mon/Wed 1:00pm-4:10  

76157 Design History 118:Candice Lopez-Fully ONLINE

76179 Design History 118:Candice Lopez-Fully ONLINE

76166  Design History 118:Candice Lopez-Fully ONLINE

98562 Design History 118:Candice Lopez-Tue/Thurs 9:00am-10:25 

52803  Digital Media 125:Julie Willis-Tue/Thurs 1:00pm-4:10

57535  Digital Media 125:Julie Warren-ONLINE

INTERMEDIATE LEVEL

52812  Web Page Design 144:STAFF-Mon/Wed 6:00pm-8:30

62067  Int. GD 2: 124: Sean Bacon-Mon/Wed 9:35am-12:45   

01761  Int. Digital Media 126: Julie Warren-Mon/Wed 1-4:10

68156  Int. GD 2 133:Candice Lopez-Mon/Wed 8:50am-12 

53698  Type 206:Amy Levine-Mon/Wed 5:50pm-9 

01755  Travel by Design: Centennial Branding Class-Mon/Wed 2:05pm-5:15

                                                 Sean Bacon and Candice Lopez

ADVANCED LEVEL

74959  Portfolio 148A: Partially Online and Tue 1:00pm-4:10 

                                                Sean Bacon and Rafael Lopez

40200  Portfolio Building 148C: Partially Online and Tue 5:55pm-9

                                                Lisa Starace

Visit this link to view the requirements for the San Diego City College graphic design certificate and associates degree

Please visit this link to view the portfolios of our 2013 Portfolio Class.
Happy to report that our graduates have been snapped up by firms like Digitaria, Mth Degree, Parker White and Vitro Robertson.

Alumni Profile: Mike Stivers

SDCC Alumni Mike Stivers

This month we are profiling alumni Mike Stivers, whose skills are focused in the area of advertising art direction. He works as a freelance art director, creative director and designer.

In college I studied television/film, creative writing and photography. So naturally I spent my 20s bartending, rock climbing and leading kayak trips in Baja. Eventually, I wanted to get creative again so I took graphic design classes from the AMAZING Candice Lopez at City College and started as a production artist at DiZinno Thompson advertising. I quickly became an Art Director then Creative Director working on brands such as San Diego Tourism, The Padres, Upper Deck, Miller Brewing, Birch Aquarium, Croce's, Walking Co and Hewlett Packard to name a few.

I left to freelance in 2004 and have continued to work on various national brands: Adidas, TaylorMade, Callaway Golf, Jaguar, Toshiba, Kawasaki, Cleveland Golf, Odyssey Putters, Yamaha, Newcastle, among many others. I have particular appreciation for great writers but enjoy collaborating with anyone who is passionate about what they do.

I am interested in the unique and always strive to create messaging that is relevant, honest, emotional and visually striking. Samples of my work can be viewed at www.mikestivers.com 

San Diego City College Graphic Design Class of 2013

At the American Institute of Graphic Arts San Diego Portfolio Review the hard working, passionate students in our 2013 portfolio class pulled out all the stops to take home top honors. As a community college our students competed at this event with San Diego four year universities and private art and design schools.

Students from San Diego City College took first, second and third place overall.
Their vibrant work was also recognized by judges from the professional design community winning 14 of the 16 awards given. Their portfolios were judged as best in the following categories:
Advertising, Cross Cultural Design, Design for Good, Environmental Graphic Design, 
Identity and Branding, Illustration, Packaging, Publication Design, Sustainability and Typography.
Our students were also awarded by their peers all three Student's Choice honors and both Portfolio scholarship honors from Academy of Art San Francisco.
Please take a look at the incredible portfolios and websites of our 2013 SDCC Graphic Design Portfolio Class in alphabetical order...

JOAQUIN ALANIS

AIGA San Diego Portfolio Review 2013 Winner: 
First place overall.
Best Identity and Branding.
Academy of Art San Francisco Portfolio Scholarship.
Student Choice Award: 2nd place.

Joaquin Alanis Portfolio
Joaquin Alanis Website 

TERRI CAO

Terri Cao Portfolio  

PAULINE CAPOTE

AIGA San Diego Portfolio Review 2013 Winner: 
Best Design for Good.

Pauline Capote Portfolio
Pauline Capote Website

ETAH CHEN

AIGA San Diego Portfolio Review 2013 Winner: 
Third place overall.
Best Typography.
Student Choice Award: 1st place.


Etah Chen Portfolio

MAX DOLBERG

AIGA San Diego Portfolio Review 2013 Winner:
Best Photography.

Max Dolberg Portfolio
Max Dolberg Website























LEANNA JONES

AIGA San Diego Portfolio Review 2013 Winner:

Best Cross Cultural Design.

Leanna Jones Portfolio
Leanna Jones Website

HEBER MIRANDA

AIGA San Diego Portfolio Review 2013 Winner:
Best Environmental Graphic Design.

Heber Miranda Portfolio
Heber Miranda Website

APRIL MITCHELL

AIGA San Diego Portfolio Review 2013 Winner:
Best Illustration.

April Mitchell Portfolio
April Mitchell Website

FRANCIS DWIGHT NICHOLS

AIGA San Diego Portfolio Review 2013 Winner:
Best Publication Design.

Francis Dwight Nichols Portfolio
Francis Dwight Nichols Website

CHASE NUTTALL

Chase Nuttall Portfolio
Chase Nuttall Website

CINDI O'HANLON

AIGA San Diego Portfolio Review 2013 Winner:
Best Advertising.

Cindi O'Hanlon Portfolio

JASON PRICE

Jason Price Portfolio
Jason Price Website

NORMAN RAMOS

Norman Ramos Portfolio
Norman Ramos Website

VINA RATHAKOUNE

AIGA San Diego Portfolio Review 2013 Winner:
Best Sustainability.

Vina Rathakoune Portfolio

JULIANA TIPTON

AIGA San Diego Portfolio Review 2013 Winner: 

Second place overall.
Best Packaging.
Academy of Art San Francisco Portfolio Scholarship.
Student Choice Award: 3rd place.

Juliana Tipton Portfolio
Juliana Tipton Website

RICK WAGNER

Rick Wagner Portfolio
Rick Wagner Website 

Thanks to the San Diego design community and many scholarship sponsors of this event for their time, support, dedication to students and contributions to the 2013 city wide portfolio review. Appreciation to event sponsors Art Center College of Design and Savannah College of Art and Design. Special thanks to AIGA Education Chair MaeLin Levine for her innovations in organizing this year's dynamic review. Thanks to Mary Scott at Academy of Art for awarding special scholarships at the event in recognition of student work.

San Diego City College 2013 Portfolio Class

The SDCC Design portfolio teachers are Sean Bacon and Candice López. Lisa Starace teaches our portfolio process class. A shout out to contract faculty member Andrea Singer and our adjunct instructors, Amy Becraft, Amy Levine, MaeLin Levine, Rafael López, Julie Warren, Julie Willis and lab technician Eugene Brown.


Special thanks to our colleagues in the photography department for all their support, David Eichinger, David King and George Tubon. We thank department chairs June Richards and Alicia Rincon and Dean Trudy Gerald for their generosity and leadership. Congratulations to all the students and educators from San Diego area programs who keep our design community strong.