About

Hello, my name is Bijan.
Bijan Berahimi is a graphic designer who studies, works and lives in sun-drenched Santa Clarita, California. He is undergoing his bachleors of fine arts in graphic design at the California Institute of the Arts. His areas of focus are typography, illustration and print. He enjoys honest, simple and friendly design that has both conceptual and visual merit. He is interested in design theory and design history and hopes to someday teach graphic design at the collegiate level.

Experience
Generation Arts
Over a period of three weeks (90 hours) I taught a graphic design camp at Generation Arts in Santa Clarita, CA. I created various lesson plans and lectures, the students were 11-14 years old and they completed the following projects: film poster, candy bar wrapper, album cover and an online portfolio. By the end of the camp, the students had a good understanding of the process that goes into graphic design as well as familiarity with technology and software like Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator and Dreamweaver.

BMW Designworks USA
I completed a six month mentorship at BMW Designworks USA located in Newbury Park, CA. It was an incredible opportunity to meet and work with designers from the studios communication department first hand. During this time I was in the midst of applying to art schools and my mentor, lead designer Aris Garabedian, helped me through the application process by providing valuable knowledge, experience and opinion. The work from that mentorship can be viewed here.

Cut&Paste 2009 L.A.
In February of 2009, along with seven other designers from the L.A. area, I was selected as a finalist in the Cut&Paste 2D competition at the Avalon in Hollywood.

I have been doing small freelance projects for a few years and have worked for different clients, you can view that list under the work section by clicking here.

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Stuff I like (in case you wanted to know)

Listening
Music is a large part of my life, it is something I enjoy both at home and as entertainment in the city. Living in the Los Angeles area, there are plenty of venues that host talented and popular artists from around the world. Some of my favorite musical artists are: Spoon, Arcade Fire, Sea Wolf, Beck, Coconut Records, Foals, Iron & Wine and The One AM Radio. Music is something that influences my design work, it also serves as a motivational tool in my design process.

Watching
Films also serve as a creative tool in my design process, movies provide plenty of fresh inspiration and innovation. Some of my favorite movies include: Stranger Than Fiction, Star Wars, Into The Wild, Love Actually, Lord of the Rings, Garden State, The Science of Sleep and all Wes Anderson Movies.

Reading
Reading is a critical part of my lifestyle and readings grants me access to the opinions of intelligent and significant people from all around the world whether it being in the form of politics, art, popular culture, technology or social behaviors. Two of my favorite magazines are: WIRED and TIME Magazine. I also take pleasure in literature on graphic design theory and history… particularly Emigre Magazine. Along with always reading a design book, I can also be found reading up on European culture.

Internet
The internet plays a major role in everyday life, for the better or the worse. It’s something that we’ve become accustomed to, it has become routine. There are a few websites that I read on a weekly basis and they are as follows: CNN, Design Observer, Grain Edit, MotoringFile and LAist.