Featured News
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail... I mean, a name. The story of San Francisco's greatest new art space, Will Brown
Posted on Thursday, May 10, 2012, by Lindsey Westbrook
Will Brown is an actual guy. A very cool and nice guy, according to all who know him, plus a CCA Curatorial Practice graduate student. Once upon a time, not too long ago, Will was spending a lot of time by himself down at 3041 24th Street, which some of you may recognize as the address of the late, great Triple Base gallery. Triple Base was founded in 2006 by CCA Curatorial Practice grads Joyce Grimm and Dina Pugh (both class of 2006) and finally closed in 2011. Toward the end there, the space's main "resident" who was keeping it up and running and officially occupied was their friend Will.
Read the rest >>>UnHackathons Tackle Real-World Problems Through Design Thinking
Posted on Thursday, May 10, 2012, by Allison Byers
In April 2012, 80 designers, technologists, and business strategists convened for a hard-working 24 hours at CCA’s San Francisco campus. The occasion: the second Mix & Stir UnHackathon event. The goal: to devise innovative solutions that will create economic opportunities in underserved communities and neighborhoods.
Read the rest >>>Iconic Cinema Visionary John Waters at CCA: A Divine Treat!
Posted on Wednesday, May 9, 2012, by Brook Hinton
Legendary film director John Waters [Pink Flamingos (1972); Female Trouble (1974); Polyester (1981); Hairspray (1988); Cry Baby (1990); Serial Mom (1994); A Dirty Shame (2004)] made a special guest appearance at CCA as part of the Film Program’s Cinema Visionaries Lecture Series.
Read the rest >>>Maja Ruznic's Big Break: "Intimate Scale Belies Powerful Punch," says New American Paintings
Posted on Saturday, May 5, 2012, by Christina Linden
Maja Ruznic's painting Self Portrait as Mother of All Evil was recently featured on the cover of New American Paintings. That, plus the sudden flurry of activity that has followed (including a hefty feature on ABC news and commissions from around the world, have been extraordinary and gratifying, and the biggest break thus far since her graduation in 2009 from CCA's Graduate Program in Fine Arts. The acclaim is certainly well-deserved for this busy and driven artist, athlete, activist, social worker, and dedicated family member, whose practice and personality reflect her unflagging optimism and perseverance -- and the conviction to keep making work that feels urgent, instinctual, and necessary.
"When I found out that I made the cover, I was ecstatic!" Ruznic exclaims. "When the edition came out and I saw it, I started crying. I could not believe it. And it has been completely transformative. People have contacted me from all over the world -- Puerto Rico, Japan, Croatia -- to buy my work. I definitely feel that the cover has somehow 'legitimized' me as an artist." She is particularly excited about a commission from the medical doctor, clown, performer, and social activist Patch Adams to create a painting for his hospital.
Read the rest >>>CCA Faculty and Recology Alum Barbara Holmes Stages New Work at SOMA Residencies
Posted on Wednesday, May 2, 2012, by Lindsey Westbrook
Furniture faculty member Barbara Holmes spent most of February installing a tour de force exhibition in an impressive new space in one of San Francisco's more down-and-out neighborhoods. Located at 1045 Mission Street between 6th and 7th Streets, it will be on view through Sunday, May 27, 2012. Since it's viewable only through the front windows, visitors are welcome to come take a look 24 hours a day. At night the piece is theatrically lit with interior spotlights.
1045 Mission Street is a 100-foot-long window-front space on the ground floor of SOMA Residencies. In 2011, the owners invited Recology's artist in residence (AIR) program to utilize it for off-site exhibits. Holmes is one of the first artists to install there, and she leaped on the opportunity to conceive her most ambitious piece to date -- one that would specifically take advantage of the entire available space and the nighttime illumination possibilities. The opportunity to create something so abstract, almost alive, on this big of a scale, was deeply interesting.
Also interesting were her interactions with people who live in the neighborhood and passed by while she was installing. The door was closed, but that didn't stop people from tapping on the window pretty much daily, wanting to ask about what she was doing and, occasionally, relate their life story. "It's a pretty tough neighborhood. Sometimes the interactions were funny, sometimes sad. A lot of the people who were passing by, seeing the piece, were not people who would ordinarily go to art galleries, so it was wonderful to reach them with an artwork."
Read the rest >>>Interview with Bob Aufuldish, Design Director of Sputnik Design Studio
Posted on Monday, April 30, 2012, by Bob Aufuldish
Sputnik is CCA's in-house, award-winning undergraduate design studio. Sputnik is a unique model that simulates (and in many ways certainly is) a typical professional client/agency relationship, where the client is a CCA staff member with a project, and the agency is Sputnik. Graphic Design faculty member Bob Aufuldish has been the faculty advisor for Sputnik since its inception in 1995.
Aufuldish has taught at CCA since 1991. In 1990 he cofounded the graphic design studio Aufuldish & Warinner. He has designed diverse projects for such clients as Adobe, Advent Software, the American Institute of Architects, the Center for Creative Photography, the Denver Art Museum, Emigre, the de Young Museum in San Francisco, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. In 1995 he launched the digital type foundry fontBoy to manufacture and distribute his fonts.
Here he talks to Nathanael Cho, Deborah Lao, and Liz Tran, all current Sputnik students, about the Sputnik experience. The interview was part of an exhibition-making advanced studio course led by Jon Sueda, in which the three were enrolled in spring 2012.
How did the idea for CCA's student-staffed, in-house design studio come about?
In 1995, the CCA board committee overseeing publicity was reviewing all the stuff the college was publishing. The chair of that committee was a former advertising agency person, and he said, "This stuff is terrible. We need to do something about this." At the time, the college didn't have the resources to hire people to design everything and manage all the projects that needed to go out.
David Meckel (now CCA's director of research and planning) knew I had gone to a school that had an in-house graphic design studio staffed by students. I told him what that program was like, and we decided to start something like it here. In the beginning, it was myself working with CCA vice president for communications Chris Bliss and two students, Eric Heiman and Nadine Stellavato. We didn't do a lot of work -- just a few projects here and there. This is because people were a bit skeptical about a group of students being able to pull off important projects. My attitude always was: All you need to do is point students in the right direction, and they'll do great work. I was right!
Read the rest >>>Design Does a Body Good: DMBA Alum Adam Dole Uses Design Thinking to Reframe the Health Care System
Posted on Monday, April 30, 2012, by Allison Byers
If you want to make a major impact on solving the country’s health care crisis . . . you go to design school, right? OK, so it may not be the obvious choice (yet!), but for Adam Dole (MBA in Design Strategy 2010) it was the best choice. He now has his dream job as a business planning manager for the Mayo Clinic. He is based in Silicon Valley and serves as a member of a “new ventures” team, focusing on identifying and incubating future Mayo Clinic commercial products, services, and businesses.
Back in 2008, when Dole realized that an MBA was what he needed to take his career to the next level, he knew from extensive professional experience that something was missing from almost all of the programs he was researching. Determined not to go the traditional business-school route, he saw clearly how the hybrid curriculum of CCA’s MBA in Design Strategy program would be perfect for his purposes.
Ready for Anything
Dole leverages his CCA MBA training on a daily basis. He hit the ground running at the Mayo Clinic by being able to effectively identify and evaluate new opportunities using a hybrid approach: Creative thinking defines what is possible, and analytical thinking determines what is required to bring new ideas to fruition. “Our health care system is on the brink of bankrupting our country,” he says. “We are now raising the first generation of children who are expected to live shorter lives than their parents. We can no longer rely on traditional thinking and existing models to solve these problems. Nor will they be solved by incremental improvements in operational efficiencies. Real solutions will require a systems-thinking approach.”
Dole graduated from Syracuse University in 2004 with a bachelor’s degree in communications. He began his career as a research associate in the Human Factors department at NASA, studying astronauts’ biometric feedback under stressful conditions in preparation for long-duration spaceflights to Mars. From there he took a position at Jump Associates, a growth strategy consultancy in San Mateo, California, and then in 2007 he was hired to lead the research department at Method Inc., a San Francisco-based design and innovation consultancy.
In 2008, he had two distinct realizations that impacted his career trajectory dramatically. One was the disheartening reality that a human-centered design mindset is sorely lacking in the Fortune 500 realm. Company leaders consistently ask the wrong questions when it comes to thinking about how to grow their businesses or gain competitive advantages. “Today, established, long-standing business models are being challenged by nontraditional competitors that didn’t even exist three years ago,” Dole says. “As new competition begins to gain traction and market share, more established companies end up competing on price and increasing efficiencies, usually resulting in shrinking margins and diminished customer satisfaction. Competing on cost with razor-thin margins is not a sustainable solution when new companies in your field are taking a human-centered, design-thinking approach and reframing emerging opportunities to create new value for customers.
“My second realization was something that I could no longer ignore -- something that started keeping me up at night,” he continues. “I wanted to have a major impact on solving our country’s health care crisis.” Knowing that the typical four-to-six-month consulting engagement would not be sufficient to effect deep changes, Dole decided to explore graduate programs that would equip him with a unique skill set to exert a meaningful impact.
Choosing the Right Fit
The traditional curriculum espoused by many highly respected business schools wasn’t going to work for him, it was clear. “In recent decades, we have seen older business models struggle to remain relevant in a rapidly changing economic landscape,” says Dole, “and yet business school curricula are still largely unchanged. These programs appear to be more concerned with maintaining their long-standing brand reputation than with reinventing themselves to provide students with the most relevant skills necessary to create and lead change in an evolving and increasingly ambiguous business landscape. We need more change agents, not more B-school analysts who are great with Excel.
“When I discovered CCA’s MBA in Design Strategy program, I was impressed by its hybrid curriculum and approach -- how it deliberately combines principles from both design and business. The program is mindfully designed to provide students with the toolkit and the confidence to lead systemic change across any industry or economic climate.”
From the Classroom to the Boardroom
With insights gained through his work experience and new CCA degree, Dole was perfectly positioned for his current role at the Mayo Clinic. The Mayo Clinic is a world-renowned nonprofit health care institution -- a leader in medical care, research, and education. Dole describes his job role as an “entrepreneur in residence”; he is responsible for identifying and incubating future products, services, and businesses that leverage the Mayo Clinic’s unique ability to address unmet patient and consumer needs. The idea is to extend the Mayo Clinic’s reach beyond the walls of the hospital, with the hope of preventing hundreds of millions of people worldwide from ever needing to visit the Mayo Clinic (or any other medical facility).
One example of this is Mayo Clinic Healthy Living at the Mall of America in Minneapolis, which opened last August. It is part health and wellness service, part retail store. Dole and his colleagues designed this new space for the “live” testing of prototype health and wellness services aimed at a broad consumer market. It is run by a staff of Mayo Clinic “health navigators” and coaches trained in helping customers assess their current health status, define their wellness goals, and gain access to information and resources. Think of it as interactive “store” for health.
More recently, Dole has been focusing on defining a new mobile health business for the Mayo Clinic. He can’t say too much about it yet, but he is clearly excited about the new venture and believes it could have a major impact on how millions of people understand health and experience health care.
“The design process often involves an initial period where the answers are unknown and the opportunity spaces may be ambiguous at best,” says Dole. CCA’s Design Strategy MBA curriculum lends itself well to this. “Designers tend to be comfortable with this level of ambiguity, and approach ambiguous problems by collaborating in interdisciplinary teams in order to understand what questions we should even be asking in the first place. They get out into the world to spend time with their target audiences in order to develop a deep understanding of unmet needs before devising solutions.”
CCA as an Incubator
Dole approached the MBA in Design Strategy program as a two-year incubator for the exploration of new solutions. “Each semester I focused on a different aspect of the industry’s ecosystem,” he says. “I ended up designing numerous projects that, along with the supporting curriculum, helped me develop a unique point of view around creating new value propositions and customer experiences in health care.
“One of my favorite courses was Venture Studio (our thesis class) taught by the serial entrepreneur Asher Waldfogel and the highly talented design strategist, Bill Wurz. I worked with my classmate, Paul Colando, on a venture project called be.Healthy, an integrated health and wellness service intended to address the growing epidemic of chronic disease in our country. We used positive social support and tight feedback loops to motivate people to establish and sustain healthy behaviors and habits.” This holistic targeting of mind, body, and nutrition was intended to make a healthy lifestyle seem fun, social, and sustainable.
Most importantly, Dole reports that the program taught him how to take an idea and turn it into a fundable and sustainable business. Because his job requires him to create new businesses within the arms of the Mayo Clinic, this kind of from-the-ground-up thinking has been invaluable.
Awards and Accolades
Already he has been widely recognized for his innovations in the field. In 2009 he won the InnoCentive Healthcare Ideation ChangeNow4Health Challenge, and in 2010 he was named a semifinalist by Launch.org, a global initiative between NASA, USAID, the State Department, and Nike to showcase and support innovative approaches to global challenges. Most recently, Dole was awarded a Front-Line scholarship to attend TEDmed, where he was surrounded by many of the world’s most creative minds across all industries, brought together to inspire, shape, and create the future of health and medicine.
“Being a change agent inside of a large company trying to disrupt the existing healthcare system requires me to approach challenges and roadblocks as opportunities. The opportunity to eradicate preventable chronic diseases through new products, services, and businesses is what keeps me up at night . . . and makes me excited to go to work every day. I am thrilled to be working in an industry that needs more people who believe in leading change and thinking differently to do it.”
Related Links:
Four Things Video Games Teach Us About Motivating People, by Adam Dole, on Fast Co.
Read the rest >>>CCA Names Melanie Corn Provost
Posted on Friday, April 27, 2012, by Chris Bliss
Melanie Corn has been appointed provost of California College of the Arts (CCA), it was announced today by President Stephen Beal. Currently CCA’s associate provost, she will assume the position in May 2012. As provost Corn will be CCA's chief academic officer with broad responsibilities for the strategic planning, development, and administration of the college's academic programs.
Read the rest >>>Sanjit Sethi: Community Works
Posted on Monday, April 23, 2012, by Simon Hodgson
What links the children of Oakland's Emery Secondary School with the inmates of San Quentin? Answer: CCA students have worked with both in partner programs organized by CCA's Center for Art and Public Life. The Center, operating out of an unassuming office on Broadway opposite CCA's main Oakland campus, is a dynamic hub connecting the college with organizations across the Bay Area operating in the fields of art, education, business, design, community work, ecology, and beyond. Its ever-widening network is overseen by the Center's director, Sanjit Sethi, whose formidable leadership skills and affable manner have made him much admired and extraordinarily well connected.
In the last four years, Sethi and the Center have focused their activities into three well-defined programs, which immediately benefit hundreds of CCA students every year. ENGAGE at CCA organizes semester-long courses in collaboration with faculty members that occur across disciplines throughout the college and operate in partnership with outside organizations such as Bethany Senior Center Housing or the Temescal Mural Project to solve specific, well-defined issues. The IMPACT Social Entrepreneurship Awards give up to $10,000 to interdisciplinary teams of CCA students to devise, plan, and execute social and humanitarian projects benefiting specific communities, anywhere in the world, over one summer. CCA CONNECTS are structured "externships" in which 40 students every year work at outside organizations such as the design firm Rebar or the architectural group Asian Neighborhood Design.
Read the rest >>>Mara Hancock Appointed Chief Information Officer
Posted on Thursday, April 19, 2012, by Chris Bliss
Mara Hancock has been appointed to the position of chief information officer (CIO) at California College of the Arts (CCA), it was announced today by CCA President Stephen Beal.
Read the rest >>>