Otis College
of Art and Design
Admissions Office
9045 Lincoln Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA. 90045
310-665-6800
800-527-OTIS
admissions@otis.edu
http://www.otis.edu
2007-2008
COSTS:
Tuition:
$28,346
Room
and Board:
$2,400
Fees, books, misc.:
$400
Los Angeles, California
Overview
Founded in 1918, Otis College of Art and Design
prepares diverse students of art and design to enrich the world through
their creativity, their skill, and their vision. Its programs embrace
new technologies and emerging disciplines, uniting these practices with
established strengths in fine arts, design, and fashion. Otis College’s
reputation attracts students from thirty-nine states and twenty-six countries,
making it the most ethnically diverse private art college in the U.S.
The College’s diversity is its strength; it prepares students to
imagine what lies ahead and benefits employers who know the value of creativity.
Otis graduates shape the visual world, from museum and exhibition design
to the Hollywood screen, from the clothes people wear to the toys children
play with. Otis alumni are cultural leaders working around the world in
companies like Mattel, Sony Pictures, Nike, Gap, Electronic Arts (SIMS
Game), Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Pixar, Hasbro, DKNY, Abercrombie
& Fitch, Ben & Jerry’s, Warner Bros., and Disney Imagineering
(theme park design). Fine arts alumni include Masami Teraoka, Robert Irwin,
Billy Al Bengston, Allison Saar, Kerry James Marshall, and Jim Rygiel,
who received Academy Awards for special effects work on the Lord of the
Rings trilogy.
Otis began in 1918 when Los Angeles Times founder and editor Harrison Gray Otis bequeathed his property in MacArthur Park to create an art institute.
The College offers two-year M.F.A. programs in writing and fine arts, which allow advanced independent work. In both graduate programs the emphasis is on an interdisciplinary approach to developing artistic vision.
Location
and Community
Otis’ main 5-acre campus is on Los Angeles’ west side in the
midst of Southern California’s dynamic film, digital imagery, and
toy design industries. The proximity of art museums, studios, and galleries
allows students to experience some of the most significant fine art in
the country. The School of Fashion Design is in the heart of downtown
L.A.’s garment district. The third campus, in the beach community
of El Segundo, houses individual studios for graduate fine arts majors.
Academic
Life
The first-year Foundation Program helps new students master a vast array
of studio skills, including life drawing, form and space, color and design,
and drawing and composition. Liberal studies and art history courses are
carefully designed to complement the studio curriculum. At the end of
the year, having developed both a creative vocabulary and a grounding
in liberal arts, students select a major.
Within each major, the curriculum reinforces creativity through integrated learning. Students take advantage of a coordinated set of offerings and disciplines to gain deep training in each discipline. They graduate with cross-boundary thinking and the ability to formulate transdisciplinary solutions to problems that may not even exist at the time of their matriculation.
Majors
Offered
Within the design fields, Otis offers six majors.
Communication arts (advertising, graphic design, and illustration) focuses
on the connections between applied art and design concepts and current
and emerging technologies. Students gain an essential understanding of
drawing, painting, typography, narrative sequence, storytelling, visual
literacy, and history.
The digital media program endeavors to strike a balance between traditional art and technology, teaching students how to communicate and tell stories through motion, art, and design. The major includes five components: motion graphics, broadcast design, animation, visual effects, and game, which includes two-dimensional (image creation and manipulation, text as image, and typography), three-dimensional (character design and animation, props, vehicles, and virtual sets), motion graphics, interactive design, and Web design.
The architecture/landscape/interiors program offers a synthetic curriculum of the spatial design fields: architecture (buildings), landscape (including parks, gardens, and recreational surfaces), and interiors (spaces within buildings). The focus is on design rather than craft, to train designers for communication and collaboration with builders, craftsmen, and artisans working in any scale, material, or technique.
Toy design combines product design, marketing, and engineering. Each year of the program focuses on a specific category, such as plush, action figures, preschool, vehicles, dolls, or games.
Interactive product design, the newest major at Otis, encourages students to integrate their art-making and creative-thinking skills with engineering and cutting-edge technology to create products with sports, fashion, medical, and lifestyle applications.
In the fashion design program, the year follows the same calendar as the professional seasons, allowing students to work on three collections annually. In the final two years of the program, students interact with professional designers through the Mentor Program.
The fine arts major offers three areas of concentration (painting, photography, and sculpture/new genres) that encourage students to discover their own artistic vision. Faculty members and visiting artists work with students in a cross-disciplinary approach (e.g., painters work with photographers, and video artists interact with sculptors). A new program within fine arts, ACT (Artists, Community and Teaching), gives students a broad introduction to teaching art as a social practice and as a career path.
Facilities
and Resources
Each of the campuses features state-of-the-art tools and equipment. Facilities
include a well-equipped wood and plastic shop, which includes a Stratasys
Dimension SST 3-D printer; metal shop and foundry; a CNC milling machine;
a complete letterpress lab; color and black-and-white photo labs with
mural capability; a printmaking studio; and both analog and final cut
digital video editing. Students have access to cutting-edge software across
several platforms in more than 300 computers, scanners, and output devices,
including large-scale output. The library holds an excellent collection
of books on the arts, subscribes to more than 150 periodicals, and offers
a wide range of electronic resources, such as full-text databases and
e-books. The 40,000-square-foot Galef Center for Fine Arts houses painting,
sculpture, and photo/video lighting studios as well as dedicated senior
studios, work space, classrooms, and galleries for student exhibitions.
It also houses the museum-quality Ben Maltz Gallery, which presents a
diverse program of group and solo exhibitions in a variety of media.
The Fashion Campus occupies 18,000 square feet of prime space at downtown’s California Market Center, the headquarters for the West Coast’s fashion design industry. Students design with the latest equipment, study in a dedicated library, and use current computer technology—all in proximity to the professional design studios of Los Angeles’ fashion district.
Campus
Life
Otis has three campuses and state-of-the-art facilities for its programs
in architecture/landscape/interiors, communication arts, digital media,
fashion design, fine arts, toy design, and interactive product design.
On the graduate level, Otis offers programs in fine arts and writing.
Otis’ newest building, the Galef Center for Fine Arts, is an “art
factory” in which students research painting, sculpture, photography,
and new genres in light-filled loft spaces. The building also houses two
large museum-quality art galleries.
Otis’ approximately 1,050 students earn degrees accredited by both the Western Association of Schools and Colleges and the National Association of Schools of Art and Design. The College also annually enrolls approximately 2,600 weekend and evening students through its continuing education programs.
Expenses
Tuition and fees for the academic year 2007—08
are $28,346. Housing and cost of living and other incidental personal
expenses vary depending upon individual circumstances. These costs are
estimated to run from $2400 to $7000 per year.
Financial
Aid / Scholarships
Otis awards more than $4 million in scholarships to its students. In addition,
aid from other sources, such as the state and federal governments, provides
aid monies to more than 78 percent of the student body.
Students must complete the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA). California residents should file the Cal Grant GPA Verification Form and FAFSA before February 15. Financial aid is awarded on a first-come, first-served basis according to availability. All aid is based on artistic and academic merit and a student’s financial eligibility as determined by the United States Department of Education.
Admission
Requirements / Application
Admission to Otis is based on artistic and academic
preparation. Applicants should have solid academic credentials and basic
artistic skills. Required materials for students applying directly from
high school (no college experience) are the application and fee, high
school transcript, standardized test score (SAT or ACT), essay, and portfolio
of original artwork. Required materials for students who have prior college
experience are the application and fee, transcripts from all colleges
attended, an essay, and a portfolio of original artwork. (In some cases,
high school transcripts and/or test scores may also be required for students
who have some college work.) Additional requirements for students who
are citizens of countries other than the United States are the TOEFL score
(or appropriate equivalent), certified and translated copies of transcripts
from all work completed outside the U.S., and verification of sufficient
funds to pay for tuition and fees and all related expenses.
Otis College of Art and Design
Admissions Office
9045 Lincoln Boulevard
Los Angeles, California 90045-9785
310-665-6800
800-527-OTIS
Fax: 310-665-6821
admissions@otis.edu
http://www.otis.edu
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