The National Archives is almost finished with a recent competition for graphic design school and other art students to produce works of art for their latest challenge on challenge.gov.
The grand prize for the winning design is $500 and will be the best from all categories. Winners will be announced on February 6th.
The purpose of competition was to find multimedia projects about the environment created by students in the categories of graphic art, video, and poetry. Students were asked to express their own point of view about their immediate surrounding environments and how they view the current state of their environments.
According to the contest website, the challenge was born of a 1970’s EPA decision to hire photographers to document environmental problems facing the U.S. Now, The National Archives wants to update the journalistic library to include new, fresh perspectives of the environment through the resources found in graphic design schools and art institutions from around the country.
The original project “Documerica” encompasses the environmental perspective of thirty-years ago through more than 15,000 photos. Recently, the EPA and National Archives created a similar project called “State of the Environment”. Graphic design and arts students were encouraged to use these photos as the basis of their presentations for the competition and their project submission had to include a notation showing which image had inspired their competition submission.
Judging ended on January 27th for the graphic arts submission hat could include scans, cartoons, and photos. All video graphic designs were uploaded to YouTube prior to judging and can be found under search term “Documerica” for interested parties. Each of the categories will also award three finalists. Each will receive $70.00 and a framed print from the National Archives. The grand prize award is courtesy of the Foundation for the National Archives.
