Category: Graphic Design News

Students at a graphic design college in Huntington, West Virginia recently won a competition for the best print card related to the holiday season.

Three of the graphic design and art students at the College of Fine Arts at Marshall University were awarded the top recognition by the college’s president, Stephen J. Kopp.

The competition and awards have been an annual tradition at the college for about five years now. Winners are chosen with his help and the help of his wife. Both are fans of the arts and graphic design and came up with the competition as a way to support their students.

“My wife and I were exploring ways to encourage students in the fine arts, particularly in visual arts, to help us by creating a holiday card coming from the university. We also started a series of engraved plates showcasing our students’ work to highlight some hallmark aspects of Marshall University,” Kopp told Huntington News.

Their interest in graphic design and the arts seems to be bolstering the curriculum at the school. Chair of Marshall’s Art and Design program, Byron Clercx says that their support is important to programs (like graphic design) at the school.

“To work at a university where the president is so overtly supportive of the arts is a dream come true. He and his wife have supported the arts in a number of ways for a number of years through their personal gifts. By sponsoring these three competitions and even with the artwork hanging in his office, it means that we are a visible and viable part of the campus,” Clercx told Huntington News.

The winners of the competitions hailed from a variety of the art programs at the school. Margaryta Seliverstova won the print card competition and is a junior majoring in art and design. Morgan Thompson, a senior student in the graphic design college, and John Fowler a junior majoring in art and design won the first place prize for the plate competition.

A graphic design student in Huntington, WV won a total of four awards this month for work he did during his internship.

Patrick Eason was awarded the four Pixie Awards by the American Pixel Academy, two of which were “Pixie Platinum” awards that are given to only the most distinguished works. The Platinum Pixie Award is the organization’s highest honor.

Eason is a senior in the graphic design school program at Marshall University, College of Fine Arts. He has been working at Rainmaker Inc, a promotions and public relations company in WV, as an intern while finishing his graphic design education.

The American Pixel Academy awards are not reserved for students of graphic design school, making his stellar win even more impressive. Pixie Awards are given to graphic designers in honor of outstanding animation, motion graphics, and effects.

The student at the graphic design school was just one of over seven hundred entrants from around the world. He was also one of only three groups that won as many awards. The graphic design student said that he won them because of three dimensional animation works he had done at Rainmaker.

“We had submitted four spots … two of which involved 3D models. Those two that involved models I handled fully, from motionography to animation. In addition, I created the logo animation at the end of each of the four spots,” Eason told Huntington News.

One of Eason’s professors at the graphic design school, Mary Grassel says she is impressed, but not surprised.  “We are proud of Patrick in the graphics department,” Grassell said. “He has been an excellent student.”

His fellow co-workers at Rainmaker were impressed, as well.  “I have been in this business for 30 years and frankly, Patrick is one of the most talented young students I have ever had the chance to work with,” said creative director Nancy Geletko to Huntington News.

The students of a graphic design college in Quincy, IL will enjoy the availability of ten new iMac computers to help with their studies thanks to a federal grant. The purchase brings the total computer inventory to 18.

The grant money is being used to purchase computers, keyboards, and other peripheral accessories to replace older models.

The Quincy Area Vocational Technical Center was awarded funds from the Federal Carl Perkins Grant program and administered by the West Central Region Education for Employment System. The funds were also used to purchase state of the art graphic design programs from Adobe and QuarkXPress, two leading companies in design software.

Bill Twaddle, a graphic design instructor, told the Herald-Whig that the new purchases will really increase the rate at which students can complete their course work. “They’ll be able to do things faster and so more projects. The newer versions of software don’t change significantly from upgrade to upgrade, but just the fact that kids have new machines that actually work properly is big”, he said.

Instructor Bill Twaddle is responsible for three graphic design classes at the college. His maximum class size is 18, so the number of students doesn’t exceed the number of computers in the class.

The grants are provided annually and the Perkins Grant is also awarded to professional institutions in addition to graphic design colleges. Project Lead the Way, an engineering program, won grant funds the year prior. Mark Pfeiger, the director of the college said that the graphic design program has been lacking renewed funding for quite awhile.

Quincy Area Vocational Technical School educates up to six hundred students each semester and many of them are dually enrolled high school students. Juniors and seniors from Quincy High School and other area high schools are welcome to join the graphic design program at the college, which also accepts students from nearby Brown and Quincy Notre Dame.

Graphic design students at the Cleveland College of Art and Design in the UK were afforded a unique opportunity to put their newly learned skills to work for them with a real-world contract.

Plumbing company Pimlico hired the graphic design students to work on a web promotion animation to use in their online promotions. The deal was brokered by Darlington’s Recognition PR, a firm that was hired by Pimlico.

The contract required the students to create animations, one of which was so popular with the managing director at Pilmico that it was used in their holiday e-cards this year.

Charlie Mullins, Pilmico Design Director was turned into a cartoon by graphic design student Andrew Bell. Bell’s design shows the cartoon version of Mullins having a grand old time with the likes of Susan Boyle, Jedward, Elton John and more celebrities. Bell’s work won him a first place reward from Pilmico.

This challenge was intended to teach the graphic design students about the real-world scenarios they will face when taking on commercial contracts for design work.

The second place price for graphic design under the contract was awarded to Richard Desmon who created an animation of a “heavenly plumber” and third place was awarded to graphic design student Bethany Wood for her animation design. There were eight prizes awarded in all, with the other winning students receiving a smaller monetary award.

Mullins says he’s a plumber by trade and had very little knowledge of graphic design animations.

He was impressed by the quality of work produced by the graphic design students as well as their understand of the image the company portrays to their customers.

The American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA) hosted its annual Convocation earlier this month where top graphic design professionals addressed recent graduates from its graphic designer colleges that focus on the gaming design industry.

Rajesh Rao, the CEO of Dhurva Interactive provided the convocation. He addressed the video games industry specifically providing insight about the earliest graphic designers to current demand for designs.

This as AIGA released a survey in August, gauging the overall employability in their categories of graphic design, including salary information from the worldwide industry.

Graphic design college graduates are more likely to land a good-paying job by maintaining a broad knowledge base that is transferrable between industries. Though there is much optimism among graphic design college student and in the industry, some niche’s of graphic design aren’t as open as others – a statistic that seems to be dynamically changing on a fairly consistent basis.

Predicting the future for students at graphic design colleges is really dependent on attention to the overall incline and declines of demand in certain types of industries. Graphic design related to the health care industry is a specialty skill that may pay off simply because more health care facilities are being created than before. New advertising, promotions, and interactive media will be necessary for this job sector.

For parents in attendance, Rao assured them that graphic designer college was a good choice for their children and provided graduates with guidance and information about the best ways to succeed in the industry.

Following the convocation, students were awarded Professional Diplomas from the guest speaker. Many of the graphic design school graduates are already employed in the gaming industry and some with Rao’s company.

AIGA graduate Deepa Nambiar provided a student speech at the ceremony, stating that the staff at AIGA provided her with far more than game development skills and made the experience complete.

Adobe Systems incorporate announced the opening of entries into the 12^th annual Adobe Design Achievement Awards (ADAA) on December 8^th with winners to be announced in 2012.

The event celebrates and recognizes outstanding achievements by students of graphic design colleges as well as those enrolled at higher-learning institutions for illustration, animation, computer artistry, and other computer-based creative categories.

In all, Adobe will honor students in thirteen categories. This is in addition to three new categories for instructors that recognize excellence in teaching, a component of ADAA that began during the last competition.

Students of graphic design colleges may submit any form of graphic art – from static graphic designs to motion graphics and computer-generated graphic animations. Submissions should be graphic design projects by individuals or groups that were created using any of Adobe’s creative software.

Entrance into the contest is free for faculty and students at graphic design colleges and other institutions and the submission deadlines are flexible. Design students may submit their projects by one of three submission deadlines in 2012: January 27^th, April 27^th, and June 22^nd. The extended multiple submission deadlines are set up to allow students at design colleges flexibility and plenty of opportunity to participate.

Project submissions will be critiqued by a panel of international design experts during three independent judging rounds. Graphic design college submissions results and all others will be posted following each round so that students have the opportunity to review their current standing in the competition.

In October, students and faculty who are competition finalists will be contacted and invited to attend the ADAA Award Ceremony in Los Angeles. The ADAA Awards Ceremony will celebrate the winners of the competition as well as the students and faculty members at graphic design colleges and other institutions who have shown outstanding talent that reflects the powerful joining of technology and creative arts.

The graduating class of graphic design school students at Southern Queensland Institute of TAFE hosted its annual graduation exhibition at the end of November. This year, the exhibition was titled “ConceptualEyes” and offered a chance for the students to show off some of their hard-learned skills.

The graphic design school’s annual exhibition allows graduating students the opportunity to learn realistic skills in sales and presentation techniques while focusing their final year of design school on the real-world mechanics of self promotion.

They may get the benefit of wisdom from some of their comrades, though. The graphic design school contains a diverse student body from various phases of career – some are fresh out of high school and others are already working in the industry.

The graduating class must do more than just contribute fine graphic design examples to the exhibition; they are also the only people at the graphic design school responsible for the event and are tasked to plan and execute every part of the event.

They spend a year on fundraising efforts to pay for the kind of show they would like to present to local businesses that may be future employers or clients for them.

The graduating graphic design students participating in the show are responsible for planning and organizing everything while remaining within the limits of their funding budget. The work involves every detail: securing sponsors, choosing materials and printing invitations, choosing who is invited to the event, the venue, foods, drinks, and more.