Posters, Periodicals, and Publications — CCA’s Visual Identity by Decade

In 1907, following the destruction of his home and workshop in the San Francisco earthquake, German-born cabinetmaker and art teacher, Frederick H. Meyer, establishes the School of the California Guild of Arts and Crafts in the Studio Building on Shattuck Avenue in Berkeley for 43 students and three teachers: himself, Isabelle Percy West, and Perham Nahl. Xavier Martinez joins the faculty later that year. Meyer’s wife, Laetitia, serves as secretary. This is the course catalog for the first academic year, 1907-1908. A summer session appealing to teachers who would like to improve their skills during the summer break.

After graduating its first 5 students in 1908, the college changed its name to the California School of Arts and Crafts and had moved to its second campus at 2130 Center Street in Berkeley.

Pictured on the cover of the 1910-1911 course catalog are the two banners representing “theory and practice” which would continue to appear in the college’s branding through to the present day (now part of the CCA’s seal).

Highlights, a CSAC student publication, ran approximately between 1912 and 1922, which is determined by the address as CSAC began its move from its final Berkeley campus on Allston Way to the Treadwell Estate in Oakland in 1922. Highlights was the first of a long legacy of student and community produced publications and periodicals, each representative of the college’s campus culture during their time period and often including a range of humorous writings and observations to critical dialog about the institution. Contents include “Light on Highlights,” “The Future of Publicity,” “Art and Ego,” “Speculations” and “Mirthful Highlights.” Undergraduate student contributors for this issue included Frank Geritz (Editor), Glenn Wessels (Assistant Editor), Lomita Sievers (Josh Editor), Esther Crandall (Art Editor), and Bob Hestwood (Business Manager).

A publication of articles and accolades with both student and staff contributors: Jay S. Green (Assistant Secretary of the Students' Club 1916-1917), Eldon N. Dye (Class of 1917), and Albert H. Mundhenk (Art Editor). Contents include “Anniversary Lecture Course,” “The Latest Addition to the Art School,” “Gleanings,” “Art School Student Wins Prize of $1000,” “Students Honor Von Schmidt,” “Art School Loses in Sacramento Fire,” “Officers of the Students' Club 1916-1917.”

Imagined campus map for California School of Arts and Crafts produced in preparation for the move to the recently purchased Treadwell estate in Oakland.

The cover of this catalog was printed with a series of print blocks depicting scenes from studios and buildings around campus. The collection of print blocks was preserved and is currently housed in the archives at Meyer Library.

1935 campus map of California School of Arts and Crafts, with guide to buildings and classrooms. The next year, CSAC would change its name to the California College of Arts and Crafts along with receiving a major accreditation and the founding of several of its programs still active today such as Ceramics, Jewelry / Metal arts, Painting/Drawing, Photography, Printmaking, and Sculpture.

D’Art was a student publication, running dates unknown, but it seems it began in 1939 with this being its second issue. Contents include “Notable Judges Declare Delta Phi Delta Winners,” “Mardi Gras Coming November 11,” “Sketch Club Go South,” “Picnic at Castle Rock,” “Faculty Corner,” “Poetry Corner,” and the “Bal Opera.” Student contributors include Kenneth Pratt, Roberta Thompson, Floyle Cook, Bud Hanson, and John Morehead.

1950 campus map and building directory.

Cover of the 1953-1954 course catalog.

Promotional bulletin for the ceramics conference, Interaction, organized by Edith Heath at California College of the Arts and Crafts in the summer of 1956.

An announcement for scholarships available for the 1961 Summer Session specifically for teachers. Similar to other summer sessions, including the college’s first in 1906 before full terms were offered in 1907, it appealed to teachers who would have time during the summer break for courses to improve their skills.

The “return to the womb” issue of Ye Ferret, a student publication that began in 1960 and included the new Library Ad Lib column by the new head librarian, Robert L. Harper as well as student illustrations by Mansfield, and included writings about current happenings on campus and current events such as the Vietnam War, as well as a very humorous and sarcastic welcome to new students by John D. Whupple.

A weekly publication by the Associated Students of CCAC. Contents include “Indifference is Nothing to be Taken Down Town Lightly,” “More Results of Student Questionnaire,” “Television Sensuality,” “CCAC Pres. Ford Attends Conference on Student Gov't,” “Stop Bitching and Act!,” “Femme,” “Yearbook Information,” “Art Festival at San Francisco State,” “Red Mountain Collections,” “Words with Ron Dahl March 14, 1966,” “Classifieds,” “Bon Marche Recipe,” “Free Prose,” “Time's Eye,” “Vietnam a boom-boom,” “Heralding and Happenings.” Contributors include Geoff Bishop, Ted Ball, Bette Thomas, Bekah Wilcher, Red Ryder, Dale Smith, Leston Peck, Dona Mossholder, Bob Herreshoff, Patsy Skaggs, Corallee Ho, Gerry McCleave (ed.).

California College of the Arts and Crafts Newsletter publication featuring the opening of two new buildings, Founders Hall and Martinez Hall. In the upper left corner, the college’s logo during this time is pictured.

Mailer for the Fall 1968 program of Saturday Classes for Young People at CCAC. This piece was designed by a current student. In addition to the student publications and events, much of the college’s more official communications were designed by students, a practice that would continue through to the present day in various forms.

Winter 1968 issue of the college’s newsletter giving an update on construction progress for Martinez Hall and Founder’s Hall which would include the Meyer Library. Both projects would be completed by the Fall semester of that year.

Weekly college newsletter of announcements. This collection includes Bulletins from January 1968 to November 1968. The first shares news of CCAC’s El Molino campus in Erongarícuaro, not too far from Mexico City. Several students joined faculty Martin Streich to live and take classes in the small village. The final Bulletin announces the suspension of the program after Martin and another faculty member were detained in Mexico City during the student uprisings at the Olympics.

President Ford writes to Martin Streich regarding some specifics in setting up the El Molino campus in Mexico.

A year later a class would return to Mexico though with very different circumstances. This pamphlet highlights a fall 1969 class about Pre-Columbian and Mexican art that would travel to various locations in Mexico.

Mailer for the Fall 1969 program of Saturday Classes for Young People at CCAC.

Poster for an exhibit presenting the work of graduating sculpture, graphics and painting students: Ertas, Pecchenino, Rogers, Brigham, Meyers, Allen, Sharkey and Schaubert in the C.C.A.C Gallery at 5283 Broadway near CCAC's Oakland Campus, from July 14-25, 1969.

Poster for an exhibit presenting the work of MFA graduate students: Lobdell, Palmer, Rogers, Sumner, Stanley, Tamura, Wong and Yamamoto in the C.C.A.C Gallery at 5283 Broadway near CCAC's Oakland Campus, from December 8-19, 1969.

The first page of a 1969 report of the Student-Faculty-Staff Institute committee displaying the college seal. It includes the “theory and practice” banners that appeared on some of the earliest of the college’s branding and is not too dissimilar to the current CCA seal.

The CCAC REVIEW was published quarterly by the Alumni and Public Information Office. The front cover of M.C. Escher's lithograph ‘Drawing Hands,’ from the C.V.S. Roosevelt Collection, was among the works comprising the CCAC Gallery's first exhibit of the 1970-71 season, ‘A Show of Hands.’ Marilyn Hagberg (Editor); Evelyn Stewart Johnson (Assistant Editor); Robert Arnold, Eric Cheney, Bill Harris, And Philip Yoke (Photographers); Pacific Rotaprinting Company, Berkeley (Typography And Printing).

CCAC News is a roundup of several campus updates ranging across every area of the college. This issue includes an announcement regarding the newly founded Ethnic Studies Program.

The cover photo features an in process view of CCAC's 1976 Martinez Hall Mural, with three student muralists up on the swing stage: Diane Burke, Angela Berlinger, and Eliza Shelter.

Published by the California College of Arts and Crafts Office of Public Information.

Course catalog for the 1976-77 academic year.

Not long after the Carriage House’s second and final move to its current location, there was plans to demolish the historic building, one of the original Treadwell Estate buildings. This letter from a committee of students and faculty organized to save the Carriage House appeals to Trustee Jason Schoener, who had previously taught at CCAC. The Carriage House was saved in the end and is now a historically protected building.

The press release for a multi-media art exhibit of work by Native American students at the California College of Arts and Crafts, in the Isabel Percy West Gallery, on the Oakland Campus, February 25 - March 15 1978.

During the 1970s, Macky Hall and various trees from campus were incorporated into college letterhead. This version shows the sequoia that was once at the bottom of Macky lawn with the iconic right angle branch.

An inter-office memo announcing a commemorative woodcarving project, coordinated by carver Georganna Malloff, to celebrate CCAC’s 75th anniversary. The project resulted in the totem pole sculpture that is still on the Oakland campus today. “There [was] a surprise of an edible nature” at the event.

Spectrum was a student publication that ran in the late 1970s to early 1980s. This collection of covers were illustrated by Steve Purcell, BFA '82, cartoonist and creator of Sam & Max.

Students were not the only community members with clever publications. This is the first issue of the Business Brief, a newsletter from the college’s Business Office.

Rumors was the official, unofficial, and irregular newsletter of the San Francisco campus of the California College of Arts and Crafts which was home to the Architecture and Design programs. In 1988 the SF campus was at 1700 17th Street.

Postcard of the 1990 Martinez Hall mural, titled One Blind Mouse, created under the direction of Ethnic Studies faculty Juana Alicia.

Announcement flyer for a reading from Jean Kennedy's 1992 book "New Currents Ancient Rivers: Contemporary African Artists in a Generation of Change" given by daughter Mimi Woolford and an exhibit of Kennedy's work in the Isabelle Percy West Gallery, on CCAC's Oakland Campus, January 20, 1993.

Announcement flyer for the CCAC Gender Forum, a week long series of events and discussions on gender organized by Fine Arts, Humanities and Sciences, and Student Life, at Nahl Hall on CCAC's Oakland Campus, February 8-12, 1993.

Announcement mailer for the 4th annual Career Day, with Bay Area panelists discussing starting and maintaining a fine arts career, at Nahl Hall on CCAC's Oakland Campus, April 10, 1993. The mailer was designed by the college’s in-house design studio, sputnik, which ran from until 2016, and utilized the many talented student designers under staff and faculty guidance for many of the college’s communications.

Flyer for the Larry Reed Shadow Play Company event on April 20, 1993 presenting scenes from the Mahabharata. It was accompanied by an information and vocabulary sheet about shadow theater.

Announcement flyer for a lecture by Sarah Handler, Curator of the Museum of Classical Chinese Furniture, titled A Ming Meditating Chair in Bauhaus Light, in room 4 of the B Building on CCAC's Oakland campus, December 1, 1993.

Announcement flyer for Painting Matters, a one day symposium with four painters, two curators, and a critic discussing the significance of painting, at Nahl Hall on CCAC's Oakland campus, April 9, 1994.

Announcement card for the 6th Annual CCAC Adopt-a-Book event, April 7th 1994, at the Design and Architecture Library on the SF Campus at 1700 17th St. When the undergraduate Architecture program was founded in 1985, the SF campus did not yet have a library of architecture and design books and resources for students of the new program. Over several years they held an annual fundraiser to build out the new library. Each book that was donated received a faculty designed commemoration card that can still be found in those books in the CCA Library today.

Announcement flyer for a forum focused on the proposal to change CCAC's name, hosted by professor Barry Katz and student Patrick Barnes, in Nahl Hall on the Oakland campus on April 10, 1994. This forum predates the college’s fourth name change to California College of the Arts by almost ten years.

Announcement mailer for the Immigration & Cultural Identity conference, a week long series of events and discussions around becoming an American in the 90s, at multiple venues with events at Nahl Hall and Oliver Art Center on CCAC's Oakland Campus, November 6-12, 1994. Organized by Lynn Kirby.

Announcement mailer for an exhibit titled "Cultural Identities and Immigration; Changing Images of America in the 90s" with works by Su-Chen Hung and Gigi Jan Chang, Young Kim, L. Tomi Kobara, Saiman Li, Domingo Nuno and Julio Morales, Armando Rascon, Eugene Rodriguez, Carla Oden Santiago, Larry Sultan and Kelly Sultan, May Sun and Chongbin Zheng, on display in the Oliver Art Center, on CCAC's Oakland campus at 5212 Broadway, from November 9-December 17, 1994.

Announcement flyer for an open-mike reading at the Amici Cafe on CCAC's Oakland campus on September 28, 1994.

In 1999, the college celebrated the completion and opening of the San Francisco campus with an opening celebration on April 16, 1999.

This CCAC News publication features the Ninety-third CCAC commencement, on May 13, 2000, at which honorary doctorates were conferred on ceramic sculptor, alum, and longtime CCAC faculty, Viola Frey and philanthropist and CCAC donor, Phyllis Wattis, with a commencement address delivered by director of the Whitney Museum, Maxwell Anderson.

While attending CCAC Michael Smoler worked as a TA in undergraduate Fine Arts and wrote for the Student Affairs newsletter "CCAC weekly". This issue begins with “There is nothing but ocean beyond us” discussing CCAC's campus exhibitions and exhibition program and the Martinez Hall mural wall undergraduate student and mural artist Jim Ricks whose work was in that exhibition space at the time. Ricks was one of the members of 9/11 Forum, “a group of students, faculty, and staff members educating themselves and bringing people together in the wake of September 11.”

Reflecting the growing breadth of its programs, the college changed its name to California College of the Arts in 2003. The new logo by designer and faculty member Mark Fox introduced the distinctive "a" that is still part of the college's branding today.

After the college changed its name, community members creatively and visually explored the new name and logo. T-shirts, stickers, posters and even an informal exhibition, Logo à Go-Go, were created.

From an interactive tutorial designed by library staff to teach and quiz CCA students on the topics of finding research sources, evaluating them for quality, and ultimately integrating them into written works. It should be mentioned that all of the ephemera presented in this virtual exhibition, save this final piece, are scans of physical, print pieces: posters, memos, flyers, publications, periodicals, postcards, etc. Today, though print pieces are still produced, many of the newsletters, memos, event and exhibition announcements, and other communications are designed for digital and virtual correspondence.