I started at Art Center College in the fall of 1967, when the psychedelic era and flower power were in full bloom (heh-heh). I was 21, and it was an exciting time to be in Los Angeles. Art Center required an extreme level of discipline, so any involvement in the general activities of the day, including hair length and dress, was not an option. As a Transportation Design major, our first Transportation class began in the second semester. Some of the students already had professional design experience, and were attending to get a formal graduate degree for better career opportunities. Don Wyatt was in our class, and had been a Tech Designer at General Motors Design Staff. He was familiar with the sketch and design techniques in use by GM designers, and he could hold his own with many of them. I was “blown away” by his technique skills at Art Center, as he exhibited his work for critique every week in each class. Gaylord Eckles was a Product Design major from San Francisco, and he was an incredible talent. From the simplest sketch to the most detailed design models, his work was truly exquisite and always delightful. Eckles later became an award-winning instructor at Art Center, and I am sure he was a tremendous inspiration to many fortunate enough to have had the benefit of his knowledge and design wisdom.

Our instructor for the first Transportation Design class was Hugh Jorgensen (click here to read an interview with Hugh Jorgensen). In my opinion, he was the best possible choice for our introduction to the very challenging and competitive world of professional automotive design. Jorgensen was always optimistic, motivational,positive and supportive in his critique of our work. He was never negative or derogatory, and he inspired much-needed confidence.

For our second Transportation Design class in third semester, our instructor was Strother MacMinn. ”Mac” was a legend at Art Center and in automotive design centers and related publications all over the world. He has had more influence on the careers of more automotive designers than any other single individual—ever. Unlike Hugh Jorgensen, Mac could be brutal and scathing in his student critiques. It was high praise, indeed, to receive any compliment from Mac!

Fifth semester was the beginning of Advanced Transportation Design classes for two days each week, and Mac was the instructor. For this semester, we were required to first design and then construct one-fifth scale, high-density urethane foam models of our final selected sketch theme directions. Mac normally was the instructor for the two day sixth semester Trans classes. Two new instructors were brought in for our sixth semester, because Mac was taking a sabbatical in Detroit during this time in 1969. The two instructors were Harry Bradley for one day and renowned Shelby designer Pete Brock for the second day! Harry and Pete were only scheduled to teach this one semester, but Harry Bradley stayed on for many years after. What a fantastic experience having Bradley and Brock as our sixth semester Advanced Transportation Design instructors.

General Motors, Ford, and sometimes Chrysler would come out to Art Center every other semester to assign a design project for which they would provide a final critique for each Trans students presentation. I was honored to participate in a General Motors Design Seminar for my seventh semester. The GM design team was represented by the legendary Dave Holls. Our final presentation included finished renderings, design development sketches, and a package component layout illustration. Also included was a space buck skeleton framework in scale to accurately illustrate in three-dimensional form the placement of seating and drivetrain components within equally spaced sections, indicating the outer body shell surface contours. Complimenting the space buck was a detailed clay model.

Our GM design assignment was the end of an era, as it turned out. We were to design a close-coupled front wheel drive 455 V8 personal luxury coupe for the mid-seventies. I selected Buick for my proposal, and created the “Centuro” name as a contemporary variation of Buick’s famous Century and Centurion nameplates. My design theme incorporated “applied form” raised rib forms over the front wheel openings and “sub windows”. Sub windows were smaller, fixed window areas that later became more well known as opera windows, as seen on the 1971 Cadillac Eldorado. The Centuro also included alloy wheels and a reverse “Z” line as a variation of Buick’s familiar “Sweepspear” on the body side with urethane body color front and rear bumper surfaces as pioneered by Pontiac’s GTO in 1968.

Send Dean’s Garage your interesting, scary, awe-inspiring, eye-opening, and funny stories from design school!

Some examples of Dick Nesbitt’s student work from Art Center.

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The Art Center Bandsaw.

Late nighters or all nighters were the norm. It didn’t start out that way. When the semester first starts, you promise yourself that you’ll work on the class assignment that night. But after a couple of weeks you find yourself scrambling to get tomorrow’s assignment done. I fell asleep briefly standing up during a critique once. But that is another story.

One day I was in the shop waiting for some tool at the tool crib window. Near where I standing was a pretty big band saw. Pushing something that needed to be shorter through the blade was a student with that glazed over “I’ve been up a few nights” look. The thing he was pushing was a chunk of hard wood with the table tilted about 30 degrees, so it was feeding fairly slowly. The student was concentrating hard on what he was doing. In his state of mind dealing with several factors at once was probably not much of an option. Not having any other distraction, I watched the action at the band saw. I soon noticed that the student’s thumb was strategically positioned to hold the wood to give the most stability to the endeavor. I also noticed that if he maintained that grip, both his thumb as well as the wood would soon be shorter.

The feeding was going slowly enough that I could wait and see if he moved his thumb. But he kept pushing—past the point where I would have adjusted my grip on the board as to not whack off any appendages. Still, there was still time for him to act. Not a lot of time mind you, but some. But he kept pushing, way past my comfort level, and his thumb moved precariously close to the blade. It wouldn’t do to watch him cut his thumb off. I left my place at the tool crib window, stepped over and grabbed the student’s arm.

“Hey! Be careful. You’re going to cut your thumb off!

His response? “What? Oh. Yeah. Thanks.”

—Gary Smith

Click on this link to download the Detroit Institute of Automotive Styling course in PDF format (39MB).

Detroit Institute Ad from Popular Mechanics, December, 1946

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Style Conscious: The Art Center College of Design at 70

by Chris Poole

Source: Collectible Automobile magazine, August 2000, courtesy of Forgotten Fiberglass

Subtitle: America’s premier design school remains the world’s most renowned, alma mater to more star auto designers than any other single institution. Here’s a look at the unique college where design is both art and science-and dreaming is always part of the curriculum.

It’s true what they say: Experience is usually the best teacher, and practice tends to make one proficient. For 70 years, there’s been no better place for would-be car designers to get healthy helpings of experience and practice than the Art Center College of Design (ACCD) in Pasadena, California.

There’s certainly no better school for an aspiring designer to have on a resume. It’s estimated that Art Center graduates account for at least 50 percent of all the designers who’ve ever worked in Detroit and there have been dozens more at companies from Audi to Volvo. Is it any wonder, then, that Art Center alumni have popped up so often in Collectible Automobile—personality profiles over the years?

In 1946, Art Center SchooI, as it was then named, moved from its or original First Street campus in downtown Los Angeles to this large, rather palatial-looking facility on Third Street to accommodate a burgeoning postwar student body. It would remain the School’s home until 1975.

Still, it’s the glamorous “Trans Design” program that continues to give Art Center much of its high public visibility and a formidable reputation that has automakers scrambling over each other to hire its graduates year after year. Of course, the graduates themselves have had much to do with that, and their achievements testify as much to the quality of their education as to their personal abilities and talent.

George Jergenson (left) was co-founder of the Industrial Design Department and its chairman through 1969. He was also an active instructor, as seen in this early-Fifties photo.

But a long procession of illustrious alumni doesn’t fully explain Art Centers rise to become what Fortune magazine once termed “the most important autodesign school in the U.S.” There is, for one thing, the excellence of its teaching, long acknowledged by corporate employers and based on the two simple precepts mentioned at the start of this article. Perhaps more important, Art Center was, for many years, the only auto-design school in the U.S. Indeed, it was preparing students for careers in industrial and commercial design almost before the professions were born.

Design executives from major automakers remain frequest visitors to Art Center, critiquing studen projects, doing a bit of lecturing perhaps, and scouting out possible hires. GM design chief Bill Mitchell made the trip frequently over the years. Here he explains the fine points of surface development with the aid of a 1960 Buick. (No doubt he is explaining that GM prides itself on the fact that every square inch has to have an arbitrary surface change.)

Determined to close these gaps, Adams persuaded a group of friends and colleagues to help fund and set up a school taught by working design professionals. Thus was founded the Art Center School in 1930, with Adams as president and director, plus a handful of instructors working in their spare time out of several small studios on Seventh Street in downtown Los Angeles.

A Jetsons-like personal helicopter backdrops a mid-Sixties chat between (from left) Chuck Jordan, Jergenson, Mitchell, and Stother MacMinn.

With the outbreak of World War II, Art Center’s ability to train proficient technical illustrators attracted the attention of Southern California’s aircraft industry. The late Strother MacMinn (CA, June 1994), an ACCD faculty member for 50 years, was then working for the prestigious Henry Dreyfuss firm. As he told Collectible Automobile, companies like Lockheed and Douglas “were hiring [relatively) unskilled people . . . to read blueprints and put things together. That is pretty impossible. But if you can give them an 'exploded' view in a perspective, they can see how the assembly works and it's much quicker. So that efficiency became an essential part of the war effort."

Afterward, as MacMinn told us, "Adams contacted two graduates, George A. Jergenson and John D. Coleman, who were working in the Detroit area, [and) persuaded them to come back out to California and reconstruct the Industrial Design Department. They essentially built the curriculum schedule that exists today based on Adams' idea of having one class that runs all day, like a professional experience. And then tile next day it's another class. and so on."

Basic illustration is part of the early semesters core curriculum for all Art Center students. The Third Street campus and a '71 De Tomaso Pantera made absorbing subjects for this group. (Gosh, didn't anybody bring a digital camera?)

One of Art Center's most remarkable facets is long-lived leadership in the face of vast social and technological change. Adams didn't step down until 1963, and his successor, alumnus Don Kubly, carried on through 1985. It was under Kubly that the school changed its name to Art Center College of Design in 1973, then moved to its present campus three years later: a sleek 166,000-square-foot building with complete workshop and studio facilities nestled on 175 acres in the hills above Pasadena's Rose Bowl. David R. Brown took over upon Kubly's retirement, then retired himself in late 1999. His successor, Richard Koshalek, a former director of the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, is thus only the fourth president in Art Center's 70-year history.

Jergenson (right) reviews a scale model with student and instructor, circa 1965. (The instructor was Joe Thompson, a wonderful, gentle scupltor who got the most from his students with encouragement and expert guidance from years of professional experience. I remember going over to his apartment once to help him with some issue regarding his '69 Camaro. The man on the far left was the shop instructor, Joe something.)

Another Art Center constant has been its creatively competitive and physically taxing curricula. Per Adams' precepts, students spend an entire day in one studio course—five different classes per week—ranging from basic illustration and model making in the first and second terms to senior-student projects sponsored by major corporations. But that's not all. Evenings (and sometimes Saturday mornings) are devoted to required academic courses in the humanities, social and behavior sciences, natural sciences, art history, and, for "Trans Design" majors, studies ranging from human factors to basic automotive engineering. One wonders when students find time to sleep.

A seating buck for a mid-Sixites project suggests rear-engine, forward controls much on the student's minds. (Obviously this was before the government got involved with car design.)

With that in mind, day-to-day instruction strives for complete realism, nail-biting stress included. "We teach in a competitive fashion because that's the way Art Center has always been," says Ron Hill. "You put your design up on the board for your final critique and you want to outshine everybody. That intensity is what's really important. The students learn from each other, the self-induced competition. Extremely competitive, but extremely good in terms of a disciplined learning experience."

Strother MacMinn talks form and function in the early Sixties with future Pontiac Designer Terry Hinline (left) (that's Terry Hinline?) and another student. (Perhaps Strother is talking about aerodynamics, since this shot is taken in a wind tunnel.)

Role models for those qualit es are as close as Art Center ‘s teaching professionals. As Strother MacMinn once observed: “When [the instructors] come in and talk about the things they were doing yesterday at their business activity, it enhances the students’ attitudes no end. They cherish those moments of sharing, because then they feel they’re sort of part of it.”

Bill Mitchell holds forth on one of his “pets,” the 1960 Mako Shark Corvette.

With all this, it’s no surprise that so many Art Center grads end up designing the cars that end up in the worlds driveways. ” In the mid Fifties,” Hill recalls, “there was one opportunity, and that was Detroit. Now there are multiple opportunities: the burgeoning industry in Southeast Asia, Latin America, certainly Europe.” Lately, there’s also that perennial bellweather of automotive trends, Southern California, which is now home to satellite design operations established by most all of the world’s leading manufacturers. Significantly, ACCD’s MacMinn was a key advisor when the first of these outposts, Toyota’s Calty Design Research, was set up in 1976.

Model building has always been a must skill for Art Center students, especially Trans Design majors, and facilities have improved tremendously since the Fifties. (I guess so. I have stories.)

But can such creativity be taught, even at Art Center? “I believe you can darn near train anybody to paint, and render, and draw well,” says Hill. “We have a very good program for doing that. But what if they don’t have anything to say? What we’re trying to do is to get students to put their creativity out in front, to make that known. I think it can be nurtured. I think it can be encouraged. I’m not sure that it can be taught. I’m not sure it can’t. My suspicion is, if it can, it’s very difficult.”

Gordon Buerhig (center) and his Cord 812 Sportsman convertible pose with Jorgenson and Carroll Shelby’s iconic Cobra Daytona coupe, circa 1970. (There was a student parking lot, but students also parked on the street. I remember seeing some students new silver Rolls Royce Corniche convertible with a red interior, top down, parked all day on the street. Not everybody was struggling to pay the bills.)

By nurturing such talent for seven decades, Art Center has arguably done more than any other institution to legitimize the design disciplines, which it does by insuring that graduates have what Bradley calls “the level of superiority and expertise the industry is looking for.” In this respect, imitation has been the sincerest form of tribute. The Center for Creative Studies in Detroit, the Royal College of Art in London, and many universities have long offered programs modeled closely on Art Center’s.

Recent student work is always on view in the lobby of today’s Pasedena campus. This future-Camaro proposal dates from the mid-Eighties.

(Left) Late semester students get little rest trying to get their sponsored projects done. (Right) Veteran Chrysler designer Neil Walling leads a “crit” at the Pasadena campus in the early Nineties. Critiques expose students to the competitive world of a working designer. (That may be Neil Walling, but standing to his right is Geza Loczi.)

Stother MacMinn (left) looks on as Bill Mitchell comments on a student project in the Sixties.

Harry Bradley agrees, but then adds, “It’s a thrill to work for the best. What else can I say?”

Sliding doors—one students answer.

Instructor Harry Bradley helping a student with his model.

Manufacturers often sponsor Art Center projects to get a fresh perspective on their current products and how younger minds see them evolving. Here, Chrysler’s Tom Gale brainstorms future minivans with students assigned to come up with the next generation ideas.

Another frequently visiting executive was Gene Bordinat, longtime Ford Design Chief.

You might not think so from this crowded scene, by Art Center has always been a small institution, with many more applicants than it can handle, which makes for an elite, highly motivated student body (take note, clients and potential employers!). This Pasedana workroom is a far cry from the facilities in the College’s early days.

Director of Admissions
Art Center College of Design
1700 Lida Street
Pasadena, CA 91103
(626) 396-2300
Website: www.artcenter.edu

Alumni: Email photos from your time and experience at Art Center or any other design school for a future post!

Road & Track’s Le Mans Sports Car Design, as built by a small group of enthusiasts

By Strother MacMinn

This article was first published in Road & Track magazine, August, 1960. It is interesting to me how a styling exercise can turn into a major project with so little to really go on as to the odds of success, either as a competition car or a design that could be successful in the marketplace. There were so many unknowns and uncertainties. But that is the charm of that era, that people were caught up in their dream and willing to invest their money, time, and talent. Those days are long gone.

Illustration from Stother MacMinn’s book, Sports Cars of the Future.

A number of people wrote, expressing definite interest in attempting the project, and the series of articles actually did trigger three dedicated Southern California enthusiasts into action. Marvin Hortan, an electronics technician for a ram-jet manufacturing corporation, father of three, and a solidly qualified amateur sports car engineer, had long had dreams of an ideal sports competition car that was far from anything offered by current manufacturers. Although his chassis concept differed somewhat from Bond’s, he felt that the general body envelope suited his purpose very well, an opinion shared by friend and electronics co-worker Ed Monegan, whose long experience in high-speed boat building was to provide invaluable. Using the published body drawings as a rough basis, they completed a full-size lines loft in June of 1958 and began a wood frame for the male body plug, which was three-quarters complete in August, when they contacted the author. A clay model that had been used as a basis for the design was transferred to Horton’s Pacoima home where the work was being done. In consideration of the high-speed runs to be attempted with the car, Hortan decided to raise progressively the rear of the body, beginning amidships, in order to cancel more of the top surface negative pressure behind the cab, and add more in the underpan area. This change, accomplished in the wood frame stage, resulted in an upswept “platform line” crease on the body’s side, but provided a more efficient tail conformation.
Clay, as a mold plug medium, was prohibitively expensive, so plaster was used to fill in the frame. It took several months to refine the surfaces and general shape with a grinder, primer, putty, and endless hours of patient work.

About February of 1959, Alton Johnson, another enthusiast with real and individual ambitions and extensive fiberglass experience with the Victress Manufacturing Company, had nearly completed a chassis of his own, with dimensions coincidentally close to the original Bond idea. He contacted Horton, and it was agreed that for his help in finishing the body plug and mold he would receive the first shell.

The mold was completed by June of 1959, and a superlight basic body form, sans windows and rear wheel cutouts, was cast and transferred to Johnson’s operation area at Victress.

Horton then returned to his own chassis fabrication, which was completed and running by February of 1960, having been delayed by an Olds engine installation in a Studebaker and a compete one-off Formula Junior project. On the coupe, he elected to use wishbones and longitudinal torsion bars (machined from pre-1949 Ford driveshafts) for the front suspension, but a transverse leaf spring (as suggested in the article) provided weight support for the independent rear. A space-tube frame, tied in with a structural aluminum reinforced fiberglass driveshaft shaft tunnel provided the lowest possible seating between side members, and a firm body mounting. His program is due for completion about mid-summer of this year.

Johnson had his own chassis enclosed in the first body by August of 1959, when it was possible to run an airflow observation test at the Riverside International Raceway. White wool tufts for determining air-flow direction were easily visible against the dark grey primer, and sections that had already been cut out of the body for the two headlight tunnel openings were carefully taped back into place to provide a completely smooth form. Howard Miereanu (now a General Motors designer, but then a student at the Art Center School in Los Angeles), possessor of a Bolex 16-mm motion picture camera, was perched in the passenger seat of an accompanying car and panned past the coupe which was run at steady speeds of 60, 70, 80, 90, and 100 mph down the 5,100-ft back straight of the race course. Viewing this film at slow speed later confirmed theories that some of the top boundary layer could be diverted around the corners of the cab by use of a sharply peaked cowl and windshield, and that the general air flow was true to the developed contours with a minimum of turbulence.

One of the world’s greatest automotive aerodynamicists, upon analyzing a still picture of this test, expressed concern over the sharp edges of the fender sections as a barrier to smooth cross-flow, and the obvious desirability of a complete undertray (which Johnson’s car did not have), but satisfaction with the flow behavior around the cab.

Johnson has since built an entirely new chassis for his car, using the original Chevrolet engine, but an all-independent wishbone suspension with coil springs, and disc brakes, all of which should be covered by a revised version of the original body by mid-summer.

Since Horton’s “original” car will probably be licensed about the same time, or possibly earlier, it should make this dual culmination of Bond’s far-reaching suggestion a most exciting reality.

Photos of the LeMans Coupe from Hot Rod Magazine, June, 1960, and photos of an unrestored surviving car owned by Geoffery Hacker.

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Thanks to Geoffery Hacker, Forgotten Fiberglass

My father, Ted Youngkin, was something of a legend to a generation of students at Art Center College of Design. For many of these young and aspiring designers, illustrators, and painters his class was their first experience at the college, and possibly the most terrifying. He demanded nothing less than their absolute best. He challenged them, taught them to think, and made them work harder than they had ever had before to achieve more than they ever thought they could. He was absolutely and ferociously dedicated to honing their skills and drawing out their talent. But as scary as “Mr. Youngkin” might have been, it’s pretty hard to argue with his results. The students who passed through his classroom are the absolute best at what they do. It was a great source of pride for him that his students are in charge of the design future of major car companies in nearly all industrial nations. And not just the automotive industry—he was fond of saying that most of the products we use in modern life have probably had his students working on them as part of a design team that made the product come to life. He loved that.

I had a privileged view of my father’s teaching, as I was born just a few years after he started to teach, and was always a regular visitor to his classes. My father was a talented artist and designer in his own right—his own contributions to the design world are significant. But it was always obvious that his greatest joy and gift was teaching and developing the talents of others. As hard as his students had to work for him, he worked just as hard for them. I’m enormously proud of him and his legacy.

My father passed away last year, at the age of 88. In keeping with how he lived the rest of his life, he died quickly, quietly, and without fanfare—almost matter of factly. He was never sick a day in his life. In the months since then, our family has heard from many of his students, sharing their sympathy, memories and incredible stories. It’s meant so much to us, and it is such a tribute to him. So thank you to all of daddy’s students. You’re all an essential part of his remarkable biography.

—Heidi Youngkin

I have very fond memories of Ted Youngkin from my student days at the Art Center College of Design (1969–73). I remember he ordered a new blue Chevy pickup, and when it was delivered he realized that the instrument cluster had a blank where a gage could have been. He called it his humility gage, because it reminded him he didn’t have everything.

He also had some opinions about colors and textures. He said that wood is a great material if you are making a tree, but it doesn’t belong on the inside of an automobile. Same thing about the color green. Makes for great grass, but don’t paint a product that color.

I was thinking about another memory from ACCD. One day Ted brought in a sample of his design and illustration work, I assume for a product design client. It was a gorgeous chalk rendering of a plastic… port-a-potty. In my world high-end design only included cool stuff like sports cars. That was an eye-opener to me. That so much thought and expertise went into designing and improving the more mundane things in life. That every project was worthy of the best you can give it.

I remember in class one day he saw some airplane cartoons I had done, and told me I wouldn’t graduate unless I gave him a portfolio of the cartoons. That made a big impression on me, that he would take the time and the interest to want to keep some of my work. A designer’s world is one where nothing is ever good enough, but those simple drawings were something that your dad thought was good enough. It meant a great deal of encouragement to a struggling student. Recently, Heidi contacted me and returned the portfolio that her dad had kept all of those years.

There is an excellent photo essay about visiting Ted at his home on the Gurney Journey blog entitled Ted Younkin in Perspective.

—Gary

Click on the first thumbnail in the gallery to view all eight pages in order.

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