If there has been one constant at Art Center during its long and innovative history, it’s adaptability. The College has remained on the cutting edge of design leadership by meeting expected challenges of growing enrollment, technical innovation, cultural change and an evolving job market.
Founded in 1930 by advertising man and educational visionary Edward A. “Tink” Adams, Art Center was the first school to teach real-world skills to artists and designers and prepare them for leadership roles in advertising, publishing and industrial design. For the time, this was a radical new concept. Yet, its viability was quickly proven—even in the midst of the Great Depression, Art Center’s graduates achieved a 97% job-placement rate.
Art Center’s original campus was located on West Seventh Street in Los Angeles, a site sufficient for the needs of Art Center’s then 12 teachers and eight students. By 1940, enrollment had grown to nearly 500 students representing 37 states and several foreign countries. After the war, returning veterans pushed enrollment numbers even higher, prompting a move to a larger building on Third Street in 1946, as well as a commitment to a year-round schedule. In 1949, Art Center became an accredited four-year college, and offered its first bachelor of professional arts degrees in Industrial Design, Photography, Illustration and Advertising.
Throughout its existence, Art Center has continued to respond to, and often anticipate, the many cultural and technological landmarks of the 20th century while continually refining its educational arsenal to remain on the forefront of design education. The College played a seminal role in the founding of the first advanced-concept design studio for the automotive industry in the 1950s. Art Center was, in the 1980s, the first design school to install computer labs, spearheading the revolution in digital design. It’s now leading the way with transdisciplinary programs and studios that better prepare students to become leaders and innovators within and outside their chosen fields. Crucial to this adaptability has been a commitment to providing the physical space, resources and facilities necessary to prepare each generation of designers and artists. http://www.artcenter.edu
