Newsletter Archive

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Newsletter – Spring 2014
Newsletter – Spring 2014

With more than a solid decade of design education for social innovation under its belt, the Designmatters Department at Art Center College of Design continues to fuel an inspiring number of educational projects, special initiatives and activities…

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Newsletter – Summer 2014
Newsletter – Summer 2014

Designmatters and the Graphic Design Department partnered with the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) Health Education Programs HIV/AIDS Prevention Unit for a Summer 2011 studio that challenged students to create an awareness campaign to reinvigorate HIV/AIDS prevention efforts and condom use, targeting at risk youth from the LGBTQ, African-American and Latino communities…

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Newsletter – Fall 2014
Newsletter – Fall 2014

In the Summer of 2014, faculty and students from the Advertising Department teamed up with Designmatters and the U.S. Department of the Interior Technical Assistance Program (US DOI ITAP) office in Chile to create a campaign to raise awareness on illegal trafficking of endangered species and rally public support for pending CITES (The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora) legislation…

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Newsletter – Spring 2015
Newsletter – Spring 2015

The ‘Girl Effect’ Studio, Fall 2014, built on The Girl Effect’s vision of the power and potential of girls around the world, and brought together Art Center’s Designmatters and Product Design Departments, the Nike Foundation, Yale School of Management (SOM) and fuseproject…

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Newsletter – Summer 2015
Newsletter – Summer 2015

Our summer newsletter is here, and in this issue you will find what you have come to expect from our quarterly updates: wonderful highlights of notable projects and publications and links to stories of impact from our community.

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Newsletter - Fall 2015
Newsletter - Fall 2015

This Fall’s newsletter takes a slightly different editorial approach to our varied quarterly updates in order to focus your attention on a few stories about our new Designmatters website. We invite you to navigate through these links to experience the site and get a behind-the-scenes take about our important partnership with the superlative team of Noformat with whom we collaborated closely to envision and execute this reimagined digital platform.

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Newsletter - Spring 2016
Newsletter - Spring 2016

"Celebrating the creativity and innovation in our midst, creative work is person-centered." -- Michael Mumford This seemingly obvious observation from Mumford, one of the most respected organizational scholars who studies creativity (which he defines broadly as “the generation of new ideas”) is in many ways embodied in the many layers of significance one can peel off from the stories we highlight in this current issue of our spring newsletter.

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Newsletter - Summer 2016
Newsletter - Summer 2016

This summer we mark the publication and nationwide release of a book that is very close to the Designmatters 15-year practice at ArtCenter, LEAP Dialogues: Career Pathways in Design for Social Innovation.

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Newsletter - Fall 2016
Newsletter - Fall 2016

As the calendar year draws to a close and we near the end of our 15th anniversary since the founding of Designmatters, the purposeful and practical design outcomes of our projects offer many reasons to feel proud of the boundless creativity the ArtCenter community continues contributing to the growing field of design education for social innovation.

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Newsletter - Spring 2017
Newsletter - Spring 2017

Our Spring Newsletter is here. We are pleased to highlight in it some of the courses, special projects, publications and the many events and consequential initiatives our community has participated in, and contributed to, during the past quarter.

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Newsletter - Summer 2017
Newsletter - Summer 2017

This summer, the Designmatters Minor officially launched at ArtCenter, offering students from nine undergraduate disciplines the opportunity to enroll in a specialized curriculum in art and design for social innovation.

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Newsletter - Fall 2017
Newsletter - Fall 2017

In times of transition and change, we sometimes find ourselves reflecting on our roles and asking important questions like, “Why do we do what we do?” Each of us on the Designmatters team will attempt to answer that question, both for ourselves, and as a way for our stakeholders to get to know us better.

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Newsletter - Spring 2018
Newsletter - Spring 2018

We are pleased to highlight some of the studios, special projects, publications and events our community has participated in over the past term.

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Newsletter - Summer 2018
Newsletter - Summer 2018

What a whirlwind year it’s been! The Designmatters minor in social innovation celebrates its first year at ArtCenter. Since its launch in May 2017, we’ve seen 27 students graduate from the Designmatters program and more than 30 declare the minor since our promotional campaign launched across campus.

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Newsletter - Fall 2018
Newsletter - Fall 2018

We are pleased to highlight a selection of our recent special projects, videos, publications and events.

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Newsletter - Spring 2019
Newsletter - Spring 2019

Each term, we celebrate a new class of students graduating from ArtCenter with the Designmatters minor in social innovation. As they gear up to enter the working world, we’ve asked a couple of soon-to-be-graduates to share how Designmatters shaped their ArtCenter careers...

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Newsletter - Summer 2019
Newsletter - Summer 2019

We are pleased to highlight some of the studios, special projects, publications and events our community has participated in over the past term.

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Newsletter - Fall 2019
Newsletter - Fall 2019

I was honored this July to be appointed Executive Director of Designmatters. It is not an exaggeration to say that working at the intersection of design, art, education and social innovation is my dream job, a culmination of my interests and passions built over the course of my life.

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Newsletter - Summer 2020
Newsletter - Summer 2020

As the social innovation department at ArtCenter, Designmatters takes our responsibility to provide educational opportunities for students, faculty and staff to become agents of change very seriously.

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Newsletter - Fall 2020
Newsletter - Fall 2020

This Fall, Designmatters reached a milestone with a record 80 students declared in the Designmatters Minor in Social Innovation. Last Fall, we had about 55 students declared in the Minor. We have seen an increase of 30% over a year of students interested in pursuing a course of study, and a series of studios, dedicated to exploring the complex dynamics of working with communities and how designers can create and work towards positive social impact.

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