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2022 Graduate Yaritza Velazquez’s Real-World Experience in Otis College’s Design Lab Has Her Poised for a Thriving Career

Yaritza Velazquez (’22 BFA Communication Arts, Graphic Design with a minor in Advertising Design) arrived at Otis College ready to dive into graphic design, even though she had no prior experience. “I knew I wanted a place that had the patience and willingness to work with a student like myself, who wanted to learn design but never really knew about it,” she says of her decision to move from East Palo Alto, California to Los Angeles to attend Otis.

Communication Arts Graphic Design Junior Show: inter + connections

The Communication Arts Graphic Design Juniors invite you to our Junior Show, titled inter + connections, an exhibition curated by our class that includes work spanning across disciplines, mediums, and across our years at Otis. The show’s title comes from the collaborative nature of our studio classes and of our community.

Communication Arts Panel Discussion: Sing-Sing and Caboose

Otis College welcomes Sing-Sing Studio (Adi Goodrich and Sean Pecknold) and Caboose (Clay Hickson and Liana Jegers) to present and share their work and professional practices. While the studios operate in different areas of art and design—Sing-Sing in set design, advertising, interiors, and film and animation, and Caboose in independent publishing and illustration—they have often found ways to collaborate on self-initiated projects, client projects, and more.

Communications Arts Visiting Lecture: Kimberly Varella

Kimberly Varella is an artist, graphic designer, and founder of the award-winning Los Angeles-based design studio Content Object—a content-driven, object-oriented studio specializing in book design. Varella’s practice builds from a foundation of printmaking, durational methodologies, and conceptual art—teetering the lines between play, resistance, academia, formalism, and a distinct take on materiality.

Zoom link to attend: https://otis.zoom.us/j/98908662404

Jeremiah Chiu Slideshow

Headlines

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New York Times: Building Coachella’s Giant Art

Over the weekend, there’s a good chance your social media feeds were flooded with photos and video from Coachella.

Over the past two decades, the music festival has become a kind of unavoidable cultural juggernaut, famously spawning not just scores of imitators, but also an entire season on the fashion calendar. 

The Drawing Board

On any given day you might find senior Aaron Gonzalez sitting in the Commons drawing ideas; in the printmaking lab creating his own sketchbooks; or at the skate park next door to campus, an added bonus of going to Otis College of Art and Design. He might be hand-lettering announcements on the chalkboard in the Communication Arts office where he works part-time, or utilizing the campus laser-cutter in the 3D printing shop.

AIGA Eye on Design: Silas Munro

“Weekend With” is a new series that explores the world of design through the eyes of a designer on their days off. Our last installment took us on a typographic tour of Chinatown with Tracy Ma. This week, Silas Munro, founder of poly-mode, assistant professor at Otis College of Art and Design, and an advisor and chair emeritus at Vermont College of Fine Arts, takes us through a typical weekend in his adopted home of Los Angeles.

Scratching the Surface: Silas Munro

Silas Munro is a designer, educator, and writer based in Los Angeles. He’s currently an Assistant Professor in Communication Arts and MFA in Graphic Design at Otis College of Art and Design, Advisor, Chair Emeritus in the MFA program in Graphic Design at Vermont College of Fine Arts, and his work and writing has been published in many forms around the world.

Artists Magazine: This Artist Tells the Stories of People of Color in Black and White

“People of color have to live with the burden of past and present discriminations and injustices every day,” says artist Kohshin Finley. “The subjects I paint have only become stronger because of this burden, and have not become weakened by it.”

Finley’s contemporary portraiture was submitted to Artists Magazine’s Annual Art Competition. The raw power of his stark, emotional art paints a light on racial discrimination in the U.S.

From Conversations to Powerful Portraiture