Video: Ethan Bodnar and Charles Harrison

 Filmed on: October 10, 2009

About this video

Hartford Art School student Ethan Bodnar and industrial designer Charles Harrison co-present their career and work. Bodnar is a student beginning in an age of blogs and InDesign, while Harrison is a successful designer who began his career as a military cartographer in the 1950s. While focusing on the importance of a formal education, Harrison and Bodnar share stories demonstrating how their education truly never ends. Expect an engaging and thoughtful look at the differences and similarities of these two uniquely successful designers.

Speaker bio

Ethan Bodnar is a graphic designer in his sophomore year at the Hartford Art School. He is the author of the book Creative Grab Bag, published by HOW Books. Bodnar founded and publishes two blogs, including Synthesis, the Hartford Art School's blog. He is an Eagle Scout, the online director of the University of Hartford’s student newspaper and the president of the school’s Student Art Council. He is also the leader and founder of the Hartford Art School’s AIGA Connecticut student chapter and acts as the student representative on the board. With experience as a freelance website designer, an intern working on business strategy and marketing with Behance, and creating theatrical lighting designs for main stage productions, he has been interviewed on the blog Speak Up and was nominated as one of Print’s “New Visual Artists.“ Bodnar is the recipient of the Henry Wolf Award in 2008 and the Mohawk Fine Papers Award in 2009, both Worldstudio AIGA Scholarships.

Charles Harrison is a designer and educator specializing in industrial design across multiple consumer products areas. The primary portion of his career was spent working for Sears Roebuck & Company, beginning as a freelancer, then as a staff designer and later as the head of the company’s design department. A prolific designer, Harrison’s work touched almost every area of household products from cribs to tractors and everything in between. He executed more than 700 designs, a significant number of which were highly successful in the marketplace, including his iconic redesign of the View-Master in 1958 and the first-of-its-kind plastic refuse can designed in 1963. Harrison continues to build his legacy as a speaker on the topics of design inclusion and education, and as an educator at Columbia College Chicago and The School of the Art. He is the 2008 National Design Award recipient for Lifetime Achievement and has received awards from the Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA), Executive Leadership Council and HistoryMakers. His career is chronicled in his memoir A Life’s Design: The Life and Work of Industrial Designer Charles Harrison, published by Ibis.