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// ACADEMY OF ART UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF GRAPHIC DESIGN ALUMS FEATURED ON THE DIELINE

Founded in 2007 by Andrew Gibbs, Creative Director of Power Brands, The Dieline is the world's #1 package design website. The site's purpose is to define and promote the world's best examples of packaging, and also provides a place for packaging experts to review, critique, and stay informed of the latest packaging trends. It also serves as a place for up and coming design students to display their work and receive feedback from industry professionals. Naturally, we were honored to hear that two of our School of Graphic Design alums, Erik Gomez and Adam Mulyadi, had recently been featured on The Dieline for projects they developed in instructor Tom McNulty's Packaging 3 class.

Erik Gomez, 2009 BFA graduate, designed the packaging for these Clos Du Val wine bottles and was featured on The Dieline shortly after. "The design objective was to pick a winery and redesign three of their varietals," says Gomez. "One Cabernet Sauvignon and one Chardonnay Carneros at a $20 price point and one Cabernet Sauvignon at a $120 price point. The Clos Du Val winery is located in the famous Napa Valley in northern California where the soil is rich and the weather is just right. In my research, I visited the winery and tasted the wine. I took notes, pictures and experienced the atmosphere just like a tourist so I could translate the experience into the redesign of the labels. This is a revolutionary design direction for Clos Du Val."

Adam Mulyadi, also a 2009 BFA, asked himself, "what if BMW designed skincare?" It would be very expensive, that's what! The above image is Mulyadi's conceptualization of the BMW's fictitious skincare line, PURE.

"The name PURE is derived from the idea of the Angel Eyes headlights that every BMW has," said Mulyadi.  "The Angel Eyes represent heaven which is an expression of purity, innocence, and perfection, hence PURE, the new and sophisticated BMW skincare line."

Two more of Mulyadi's packaging designs have appeared on The Dieline, including a fictitious pet supply company called "Noah's Dogs" and a line of interior paints named after industrial designer Russel Wright.

 

// ACADEMY OF ART UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF GRAPHIC DESIGN WINS TWO AIGA (RE)DESIGN AWARDS

The Academy of Art University School of Graphic Design has been working hard to impress the importance of sustainability on their students, and in the design community at large. New sustainable projects designed by Academy students and instructors are being introduced constantly, and two of them stand out as having recently received AIGA (Re)design Awards.

R3: Products Reimagined placed second in the "sustainable organization" category. The project is a collaboration between students at the Academy and California Lithographers, which promotes ideas on sustainable design. R3 (which stands for Rethink, Reimagine, Reuse) began in one of instructor Tom Sieu's classes, when he asked his students to think less about design as decoration and more about the "big picture," which began as discussions about the life cycle of a product, but quickly moved to explore topics such as consumer dependencies, renewable resources, and human rights.

R3: Products Reimagined is a set of books, designed by Academy students, each of which explores the life cycle of a specific product (some include a hairdryer, ink-cartridge, refrigerator, tire, and audio speakers) and its redesign. Going far beyond raising awareness of sustainable design, the books offer viable design solutions to improve the life of the product and make it more environmental.

WHOLE, an fictitious eco-friendly clothing brand created by graphic design student Katy Liao, received second place in the "student environmental sustainability" category. Liao's mission was to enlighten consumers about the one million tons of textile waste that goes into landfills each year and challenge them to wear their clothing for as long as possible. When buying a t-shirt from WHOLE, the consumer is provided with a mending kit to prolong the shirt's life. And when it is finally unwearable, the clothing fibers can be recycled into journal.

Both R3 and WHOLE also received awards in the AIGA cause/affect design competition, which we wrote about here.

//THE SOFTSPOT RECEIVES SAPPI IDEAS THAT MATTER GRANT

Ashley Ciecka and Michael Jeter, both 2009 MFA School of Graphic Design graduates, received a Sappi Ideas That Matter grant for their joint thesis project, The SoftSpot.

The SoftSpot is an initiative that seeks to inspire and inform graphic designers of their role in social change by strengthening the collaborations between designers, the community at large, and their involvement with design for the greater good. Ciecka and Jeter's first step was to create a publication and hold an exhibition in which they highlighted and interviewed some of the social design frontrunners, such as John Bielenberg, Project M, Phil Hamlett, Compostmodern, and Emily Pilloton, Project H Design. The exhibition, which drew at least 450 people, asked and answered the question, "what the *#&! is social design?"

Sappi's Ideas That Matter is the only grant program aimed at helping designers contribute their talents to the charitable activities that they care about most. Sappi believes that the creative ideas of designers can have an impact beyond the aesthetic and that those ideas can be a powerful force for social good. To date, Ideas that Matter has awarded $9 million worldwide in grants supporting causes that range from youth centers and health care awareness to wildlife protection.

View all of the 2009 Ideas That Matter grant recipients.

// ACADEMY OF ART UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF GRAPHIC DESIGN STUDENT RECEIVES HOW STUDENT PROMOTIONS MERIT

JungIn Lee, Academy of Art University School of Graphic Design BFA 2008 alum, was recently featured in HOW Magazine's October 2009 Self-Promotion Design Annual for a project she completed in Michael Osborne's Packaging 4 class. Lee received a student promotions merit for Chocōcafe, a yummy packaging design for a fictitious chocolate company

Lee describes Chocōcafe as "a combination retail store and cafe where people can hang out and enjoy Chocōlate related food and products for art and chocolate lovers who are artistic, free and passionate." Chocōcafe provides four different product categories: Chocōmake, Chocōgive, Chocōdrink, and Chocōeat.

Chocōmake products include the brand's signature muffin mix, cupcake powder, cookie dough as well as the tools to make these deserts at home.

Chocōgive is a custom prepared wooden gift box containing both Chocōcafe baked goods and branded products, such as a giftcard and a t-shirt.

Chocōcafe, the cafe itself, serves Chocōdrink and Chocōeat, which are a variety of hot and cold chocolate drinks, bakery items and ice cream.

"Hand-drawn illustrations are used in every aspect of the packaging, which is printed on canvas paper, presenting each package as individual artwork," says Lee. "This unique hand-drawn motif expands into the cafe's interior design, so that customers can enjoy the artistic atmosphere and their chocolate at the same time. I want customers to feel as if they are in a gallery as well as a cafe when they are in Chocōcafe."

...If only Chocōcafe were real!

// ACADEMY OF ART UNIVERSITY ALUM LANDS DREAM JOB WITH THE OAKLAND MUSEUM OF CALIFORNIA

"It's the most incredible opportunity to be invited to work on a project that is not only challenging in scope and vision, but also so dear to my heart," says Dave Gottwald, MFA 09 and Education Co-Chair for the San Francisco chapter of AIGA. Gottwald is referring to the Oakland Museum of California's massive history gallery reinstallation, titled Coming to California. As a full-time graphic designer on the project, set to debut in April of next year, his responsibilities include everything from typography and map illustration, to exhibit set and prop design, to interactive elements and digitial media projections. "I get to have a hand in everything, and to work with a really diverse and talented team."

Both Gottwald's BA in history and his newly completed MFA in graphic design at the Academy of Art University made him an ideal candidate for the position. Out of nearly a hundred designers who applied, only one had made the Oakland Museum of California the focus of a class project at the Academy.

For Hunter Wimmer's Nature of Identity graduate class, Gottwald had chosen to completely re-brand the Oakland Museum and was able to make his three-volume, case-bound proposal (shown below) a central conversation piece during his interview with Courtney Cunningham, Exhibition Coordinator and Gordon Chun of Gordon Chun Design, lead designer and consultant on the project.

"Having just done this in-depth study of our museum demonstrated that Dave was more than already familiar with what we were doing here in terms of the overall reinstallation," says Cunningham. "And it was the depth of thinking that impressed me most. The time that a student would put into a single project like this...it was professional level work. His proposal was totally comprehensive."

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