video / alumni

About Alumni Awards

The Alumni Awards provide an opportunity for ArtCenter to publicly recognize the talent, service and influence of our alumni.

2021 Alumni Awards

Yves Béhar, Distinguished Midcareer Award

Yves Béhar (BS 91 Product Design) is one of the world's most widely recognized industrial designers. As founder and CEO of fuseproject, his diverse practice focuses on lifestyle, sports, fashion and technology.

For decades, the designer has blended Swiss aesthetics and elegant formality, with California cool and technology, very much in line with the identity of ArtCenter.

One of Béhar's early design projects, Jambox, a portable wireless speaker for Jawbone, had elements that could be personalized, integrating technology into the user's daily life.

His Leaf Personal Light for Herman Miller was among the first to bring energy-saving LED technology to high design, while his Herman Miller Sayl chair was inspired by suspension bridges, structures that deliver the most functionality using the least material transformed from plastics.

Béhar began his design education in Switzerland at ArtCenter's European campus before transferring to the College in Pasadena—a move he calls a transformational experience.

Beyond a place to learn his discipline, ArtCenter gave Behar a safe place to experiment, to experience and to imagine.  

In Béhar’s view, the most urgent challenge facing the world today is climate change and the inequalities it creates, making waste-reduction and sustainability Béhar’s guiding principles.

For instance, Béhar’s Ocean Cleanup sunglasses fully integrate recycled marine debris, collected from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, into a new luxury product that’s also recyclable. 

He continues to pioneer design as a force for positive social change. His humanitarian work includes the One Laptop Per Child and See Better to Learn Better, which has distributed 6 million free corrective eyeglasses to schoolchildren in Mexico over the last 10 years.

For Behar, every project shares the same ultimate goal to make the world a better place: He doesn't just design objects, he designs ideas. 

Behar is far more than an industrial or product designer. He's an entrepreneur, a storyteller, an educator, a visionary, and a humanitarian.


The accompanying video was an ArtCenter production through and through and we are deeply grateful for this talented team

Producer, Writer and Director: Matthew Rolston (BFA 78 Photography and Imaging)
Executive Producers: Keiko Doi (BFA 97 Fine Art), Laura Shumate
Editor: Denis Ogorodov (BFA 13 Film)
Moton Graphics Design: El Ogrodova (BFA 11 Graphic Design)