The Art Center College of Design – located in Pasadena, California - is one of the leading graphic and industrial design colleges in the world. It offers undergraduate and graduate degrees in a wide range of disciplines, as well as Public Programs, providing design education to all ages and levels of experience. The Art Center classes are held at its Hillside Campus and new South Campus in downtown Pasadena.
The Art Center was founded in 1930, by the advertising and educational visionary, Edward A. “Tink” Adams, with an aim to teach real-world skills to designers and artists, and groom them for effective leadership roles in publishing, advertising, and industrial design. The Art Center was had its beginnings on West Seventh Street in Los Angeles with an initial strength of 12 teachers and 8 students.
Mounting enrollment and associated space constraints in the present site forced the Art Center to relocate to a larger building on Third Street on Hancock Park, in 1946. The center became an accredited four-year college, in 1949.
As enrollment started to outgrow the Hancock Park site in the early 1970s, a new and more spacious campus became a necessity and as a result built the Hillside Campus, amidst 175 wooded acres, on Lida Street. The steel-and-glass 21,000-square-foot structure provides space and facilities for the center’s 1,400 students and is home to the Art Center’s undergraduate and graduate programs.
The latest addition – the 100,000-square-foot South Campus – handles the Center’s growing Public Programs and provides the class room and studio space for more than 5,200 students in its non-degree programs. It is also home to the Archetype Press and Printmaking studio and the 16,000-square-foot Wind Tunnel exhibition and event space.
But no mention of the Arts Center would be complete without the Orange Dot – the Art Center’s identity and symbol of creativity. It is associated with the center’s corporate identity through branding (letterhead, business cards) and is often referenced in the center’s publication titles and websites.
Though "the Dot" was changed a couple of times for the sake of a modern graphic design for the center, it repeatedly made its way back, thanks to the special place it has in the heart of the center’s many alumni, students, faculty, and staff.
The Art Center College of Design is accredited by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges.