As of this week, we have a full class of students to start in the Fall. Of the 90 applications we received, we accepted 38 and 31 have decided to come. That's an unprecedented yield of over 80%--more than any other program here at CCA. It's also one more than our plan so it may be a tight fit in the classrooms.

Our students come from a wide range of experiences and background--just what we had hoped for. About two thirds have traditional design backgrounds, including fashion, interaction, industrial, interior, and graphic design. The rest have a variety of business experience as entrepreneurs, managers, and leaders. We have a few international students joining us and expect about 5-6 to be commuting to the program monthly from around the USA.

We plan to enroll the class into our online learning system ASAP as we have a full summer of activities planned for them, including a summer reading list, film list, and sketching schedule. We'll be posting each of these in the next week or so.

Congratulations to this pioneering cohort!

This Summer, we've chosen 12 books to read together as a community (though optional). Some are fun, some serious and, together, represent a wide variety of perspectives and ideas. While the students and faculty will be discussing these within our online learning system, we wanted to share the list with everyone in case they want to read along.

Gangs of America by Ted Nace, Berrett-Koehler Publishers, ISBN: 1576753190
Utopian Entrepreneur by Brenda Laurel, MIT Press, ISBN: 0262621533
As The Future Catches You by Juan Enriquez, Three Rivers Press, ISBN: 1400047749
Rainbows End by Vernor Vinge, Tor Science Fiction, ISBN: 0812536363
Built to Last by Jim Collins and Jerry I. Porras, Collins, ISBN: 0060566108
Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud, Kitchen Sink, ISBN: 0878162437
The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand, Signet, ISBN: 0451191153
No Logo by Naomi Klein, Picador, ISBN: 0312421435
Free Lunch by David Kay Johnson, Portfolio, ISBN: 1591841917
The Opposable Mind by Roger Martin, Harvard Business School, ISBN: 1422118924
Why We Shop by Paco Underhill, Texere, ISBN: 158799044X
The Creative Priority by Jerry Hirshberg, Collins, ISBN: 0887309607

All are available at Amazon (just click the links)

In addition to the reading list, we've also chosen a wide variety of 12 films to watch as a community in preparation for the coming Fall semester (and the beginning of the program).

The Apartment, dir: Bill Wilder (1960) Netflix Amazon
Who Killed the Electric Car?, (2006) Netflix Amazon
Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, (2005) Netflix Amazon
Blade Runner, The Final Cut dir: Ridley Scott (1982/2007) Netflix Amazon
How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, dir: David Swift (1967) Netflix Amazon
The Hudsucker Proxy, dir: Cohen Brothers (1994) Netflix Amazon
Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price, dir: Robert Greenwald (2005) Netflix Amazon
Why Wal-Mart Works; and Why That Drives Some People C-R-A-Z-Y, dir: Ron Galloway (2005) Netflix Amazon
An Inconvenient Truth, dir: Davis Guggenheim (2006) Netflix Amazon
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007) Netflix
The Yes Men, dir: Chris Smith, Sara Price (2004) Netflix Amazon
Startup.com, dir: Jehane Noujaim, Chris Hegedus (2001) Netflix Amazon

In addition to readings and films to watch, we're encouraging our students to spend some time over the Summer carefully observing and sketching. Sketching is one of those critical communication skills that only gets better with practice. It's core to visual communication whether someone is drawing a picture, a diagram, or a system. Each week, we'll take a new theme and share the best of our sketches for comments and feedback but, mostly, the point is simply to loosen-up our wrists and arms and practice.

Hands
Shoes
Trees/Plants
Building in Perspective
People Shopping
Skyline
Landscape
Portrait
Animal
System
Self-portrait
Emotion (can be representational or abstract)