The Great Motivator

When group project time rolled around this semester, there was one student who wouldn't stand for anything less than excellence in his group. Promising to get our perpetual latecomer, Adam, to class on time that day, Karl Muller made it is his personal mission to ensure that his group's project was the best that it could be. And it certainly was.

Karl not only worked his motivational magic on Adam, but on the entire class. He constantly and consistently pushed the students in our class to work harder, be better, and recognize challenges in order to confront them. Karl shared so much of himself, I am sure we will always remember him as the great motivator of LA 151. Here is Karl's blog and final project. I recommend that all of you keep an eye on Karl's photojournalism from here on out. This accomplished US Army veteran is going to be part of some great things.

Wanderlust

Andi is the global perspective in our class. He was born in Malaysia, but raised all over the world. Before coming to San Francisco, he lived in Brussels. Andi studies Industrial Design but has a love affair with Architecture. Andi's contributions to our class this semester have been insightful, grounded, and very poignant. I very much look forward to seeing the work of this future World Designer. Check out his blog and final project here.

Fuzzy Little Baby Waby Aminals

I recently took a trip to Napa's Enchanted Hills Camp for a program committee meeting. It was beautiful there and the meeting was innovative and productive, but the best part was making friends with this little itty bitty baby goat.

I am a sucker for animals, which is why I was so engrossed in reading Mackenzie's latest blog post, "Animal Love." Mackenzie is a fashion student with a hear of gold. Check out her final project and passion for green and animal-friendly design here. 

Business Card

As you may recall, one of the requirements of this blogging project is to feature a protocol of a business card - the ultimate currency of professional identity.

After showing the class my own past brainstorming ideas for a card design, I promised I would make my own protocol this time around as well. Here is my best effort after about 2 hours of trying to figure out how to get a picture underneath text using Microsoft Word. What do you think?

I hope (and expect) that the students' business card protocols will turn out a lot better. I look forward to seeing everyone's creativity and professionalism! 

The Birth of a Blogger

You may remember Aryanna from her inspiration board, but I'd like to take a minute to highlight her blog this week. Aryanna is an up-and-coming Fashion Journalism student. She has her eye on current trends, future memes, and the world of fashion way-pavers (although I think I just made that word up). You can check out her blog, and final project, here. I really look forward to seeing what comes next from this bright student.

Good News from Inside Higher Ed

Apparently, these art degrees for which we so relentlessly slave away are quite a bit worthwhile in the current job market.

Be sure to forward this article to your family, friends, and other naysayers in your life.

The Story of Us

Today we discussed what makes up a community. There are several dimensions of community (technology, economy, political, institutional, aesthetic, and conceptual) and we talked for several minutes about the different characteristics of the communities to which we belong. As Academy of Art students, our community is identified by the following dimensions:

Technology - iPhones, Macs, Adobe, etc. A conglomeration of hardware and software takes us to a whole new level of understanding and efficient communication.

Economy - financial aid, indebtedness, tuition, room and board, cost of living, transportation, etc. etc. This is one hot topic for all of us - money comes and goes and as a student, it can often seem that money goes far more than it comes.

Politics - clubs, leadership, selection of certain students for the honor of participating in shows. There is an impetus to get involved, to get attention. This is all political. The personal is political (more on this next week).

Institutional - this is where roles and propriety come into play. We must go to our student service advisors for course registration, our directors for direction, ARC for resources. We must play the game to win it, including maintaining a satisfactory GPA and academic progress. This is the red tape of AAU!

Aesthetic - perhaps the most interesting thing that came out of today's discussion is the aesthetic aspect of the AAU student community. The fashion department is notorious for its students' impeccable dressing. Further, every other departments' students dress well today. The Academy, in general, has very well-dressed students. There is a serious level of professionalism here, and it shows.

Conceptual - we believe in art as communication. We believe that art is important and we believe that art makes the world a better place. That is why we are here - to become the world's next important artists.