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Graphic Design News

Graphic Design Schools Celebrate National Contest Winners

A commemorative poster competition drew attention to a few of the best graphic design schools in the nation recently.

The Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools (ACICS) is celebrating its 100th year this year and opened up a competition to graphic design schools for a Centennial poster design to honor the landmark birthday.

The top three students placing in the contest were Clayton Stewart of the graphic design school at Westwood College, Michael Fitzgerald of the graphic design program at Anthem Institute, and Raul Pastor Lopez of the graphic design school at John Dewey College. All three students created outstanding posters using their graphic design training, which can be viewed on ACICS’ website with a bio of each designer.

The winning design by graphic designer Clayton Stewart features a blue and black theme and bears the phrase “100 Years Making the Transition Between Education and the Workforce” and shows a student walking into the phrase on the left and a businessman walking out on the right.

The Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools works with independent graphic design schools and any independent teach facility seeking accreditation from the agency.  It is responsible for accrediting over 900 schools in the United States alone and is a non-profit agency based out of Virginia.

The graphic design school where Stewart attends classes at Westwood College is located in Houston Texas. The graphic design program is one of many offered at the college, which is currently closed to new enrollments because the classes are full. Westwood is the recipient of multiple industry awards and was named as having the most-satisfied student body in a 2010 survey by Noel-Levitz.

The second and third place winners of the competition were from graphic design school programs in Puerto Rico (John Dewey College) and Springhill, PA (Anthem Institute).

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Graphic Design News

Graphic Design Schools Challenge: Illustrations that Draw Emotion

Graphic design schools prepare students for a future career in “the arts”, but many who are still trying to decide on a major may not understand what that means.

At a period in the economy when it is more important than ever to choose the right career path, graphic design schools may offer more than one might expect in the way of flexible career choices.

Graphic designers go on to work in a seemingly limitless pool of job categories. Everything we see on television, billboards, magazine ads, and even on the walls of our favorite eateries and the subway stations in from which we travel were created by someone in “the arts”. Most of the time, those creators are graphic design graduates who made a career choice to be flexible and marketable to a variety of companies.

Everything has a label, an advertisement, and an associated image or logo these days. Graphic design school is where students learn to use the software needed to produce these forms of art and where they learn about the concepts of visual arts. It’s more than creating an image; graphic design students must learn about conveying emotions such as urgency, comfort, dismay, happiness, and an array of feeling.

From the ASPCA’s donation posters to major fashion label advertisements, a skilled graphic designer, if not several are involved in the process. Graphic design schools have to teach the tough lesson of guided imagery and emotional illustration. Most art students can illustrate their own emotions, but graphic design students have to guide the emotions of others and that is a harder task. In a recent article by Joanna Wilson at the University of Idaho in Moscow, University of Idaho professor in the college of art and architecture Greg Turner-Rahman explains it well: ““They have to think about everything that’s happening there. How does this feel? Does it express what I’m trying to say? Is it clear?”

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Graphic Design News

National Competition for Graphic Design Students Almost Over

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.

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Graphic Design News

Graphic Design Careers Still Promising for Students

The Department of Labor forecasts continued job demand for students who choose to go to graphic design school for a specific type of graphic design job.

In their report, graphic designers mostly work in specialized disciplines, with either marketing companies, print companies, or other types of publication companies.

The United States Department of Labor had good news for graphic design schools, too. Graphic designer schools should continue to fill programs according to the Department of Labor’s 2010-2011 Occupational Outlook.

The report made another point that graphic design schools should have taken note of: fewer graphic design students were actually working in design fields relating to web and computer system design, but the need for these specializations were expected to rise by last year.  Some graphic design schools started offering cross training in the last 2 years, integrating the art of graphic design with the art of web design. Other designers were expected to find opportunities in marketing and communication.

Many designers choose to be freelance agents in addition to their full time job. Graphic design schools undoubtedly touch on the topics of web design and running an independent company. Freelance graphic designers need to know business beyond client specifications and the job of design itself. Special business courses are offered at many major colleges, but some technical institutions may fail to recognize the importance of business studies during graphic design schooling.

In any case, the new report from the DoL is expected to be released at the end of March, 2012. Graphic design schools and students will be interested to know if the 13% prediction for an increase in job demand will rise or remain the same. At the time of the last report, they predicted that the need for web design that included mobile applications and other technologies would rise as well.

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Graphic Design News

Graphic Design School to Talk about Success between Art Disciplines

A graphic design school teacher from Ferris State University is set to speak to faculty at Mississippi State University in March to discuss graphic design teaching methods.

William Culpepper wants to talk to other graphic design schools and universities that teach architecture and art in order to shed light on some of the successful processes used by Ferris.

Culpepper’s lecture on the value of graphic design students coordinating with other facets of architecture will discuss the teaching theories that seem to work the best in schools like MSU’s School of Architecture. According to a website hosted by Ferris, an art and design university located in Michigan, the lectures will talk about creative works, professionalism, and will be presented to students as well.  He will also cover a project that is helping the graphic design school gain some recognition known as Graphik Intervention

“My name is starting to get out there in terms of using different media to engage the public,” Culpepper said in the school’s news report. “I think it’s important to expose students outside of Michigan to the unique nature of Ferris’ Graphic Design program, which is housed in the College of Business, and how it works so well with other academic programs.”

Graphik Intervention is a project in which groups of students in Culpepper’s graphic design classes go out and research decrepit buildings in the area. The students find out about the building’s history and involve the community in coming up with innovative solutions for the spaces. Armed with projectors, the students display photographs and other messages on the sides of the abandoned building to spark interest in revitalizing the sites. The graphic design students find out what made the site a great place to be in its history, projecting stories and information onto the walls for all of the public to see.

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Graphic Design News

Graphic Design Schools Often Help with Community Designs

A graphic design school was recently asked to submit designs for a local television program.

“Your Public Schools” is a program broadcast on LCTV in Lockport, New York and the host, Becky Albright, was asked to have a logo designed for her TV studio.

Albright decided to ask Karen Krull’s graphic design class at the Niagara Career and Technical Education Center for help. Graphic design schools often work with community organization to provide graphics for everything from art murals to television and broadcast graphics.

These types of relationships are mutually beneficial to the community and to the design school’s students. The students get to learn about real-world projects with which they may be challenged during their future careers. Working with “clients” is something that is often simulated during coursework, but graphic design schools need real life example project to really drive home the points that are taught during class.

Communities often depend on local education institutions to obtain affordable (often free) services from students who need the experience. For the students at NCTEC, this came through the request of the LCTV Executive Director for the show’s logo. The students in the graphic design program submitted thirty designs for the program to choose from.

Out of those, twelve graphic designs were chosen to be further scrutinized by LCTV’s Board of Directors. In the end, they chose a design depicting a green chalkboard with the TV show’s name written in the center in chalk-like color and font with doodled designs in each of the four corners.

Graphic design school student Rachel Lewis created the design and was quoted in a local news report commenting on her win. “I was very excited to hear that I won. I also volunteer at the LCTV studios at the Kenan Center so it was cool to be chosen to have my design appear on one of their programs,” Lewis said in the report by WGRZ News 2.

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Graphic Design News

Graphic Design Schools Partner with Gallery for Exhibits

Graphic design schools work to create new artists in every conceivable form of art.

In some cases, the schools produce online publishing gurus who are savvy to the ways of the web, but in other cases graphic design schools collaborate to produce top notch concept artists, too.

A fine example of such collaboration is Drexel’s graphic design school and a Gallery in Philadelphia that recently coordinated to create a spectacular public display. “Art Ignites Change” is now on display at the Gallery at Market East and officially opened in December.

A senior student collaborated with other students of Drexel’s graphic design school to create the exhibit which depicts the City of Philadelphia’s Mural Arts Program as a timeline originating nearly thirty years ago. Randi Dean, the senior, and more than ten other graphic design students were assigned the project as part of collaboration with the city’s program, but only one design was chosen.

Dean’s design is the one currently on display and the graphic design student said she was surprised to be chosen in a report by The Triangle, a school publication. “It was surprising and exciting to have my design chosen, but with that came the nervousness of working with real clients and satisfying their expectations,” she said in the report.

Partnering with local art officials can help graphic design colleges propel students into a new career and bring attention to the hidden talents at their institutions. It can be a winning situation for all parties involved and is a creative solution in many communities.

The City of Philadelphia Mural Arts Program often taps into the talent at the graphic design school, according to Rees who said “This is not the first time we have worked with the program. They will come to us with exhibition needs, which we can then refine into assignments for the students to complete. It is like a business opportunity.”

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Graphic Design News

Daily Posters Make Graphic Design Student Famous

A graphic design school is bragging about one of its outstanding students this year.

A student at the Academy of Art University used his passion for contemporary events to create a campaign that is getting much attention.

Johnny Selman is a student at the Academy of Art University’s graphic design school who says he “wanted to expand as a designer and grow as a communicator”. He might be accomplishing that, but he is certainly gaining the attention of BBC, a main stream media outlet that is the subject of his idea.

Each day, Selman creates a graphic design poster to illustrate a news story presented by the BBC station. The graphic designer-to-be also has a website, BBCX365, where he demonstrates his perception of the news using skills he has learned at the graphic design school. The designs found on his website are torn from the pages of BBC’s website, he says.

In a report from the Academy of Art institute, Selman says that his story choice hinges on many things. “My goal with the project is to raise awareness of global current events with the American public, so I try to choose news articles that might slip by their radar,” the graphic design student said. He added that he considers what he has reported on recently and adds variety to his thesis project.

The graphic design school reported that his posters “create striking imagery that encourages the viewer to learn more”. As it turns out, his approach might be working. Comments on his website indicate that his designs do encourage them to learn more about the news headline he features.

The graphic design school’s student is becoming famous for this project, too. Selman’s posters have been discussed in Desktop Magazine, GOOD Magazine, SF Weekly, Mission Local, Design Observer, Guardian UK, and of course, BBC News.