Art and design students have further elevated the department’s national and international profile with their recent accomplishments. Students in the department routinely submit work to prestigious competitions and exhibitions worldwide and receive numerous awards and honors. In this article, we celebrate the accomplishments of three groups of design students. One group has received a grant to implement a project aiding a local school and two others have submitted winning entries to competitions.
Kaitlan Martin, Shelby Whitlock and Kelly Watts won a $10,000 implementation grant through the School: by Design mentoring initiative for their project, “Sow,” for Bailey Alternative High School in Springfield, Mo. They completed the project as an assignment for DES430, Advanced Graphics, taught by Professor Cedomir Kostovic. Bailey Alternative High School serves 180 students a year, many of whom have experienced academic or personal problems in traditional school settings. As part of the “Sow” project, Martin, Whitlock and Watts mentored Bailey students in design software and principles, helping them design packaging and promotion for produce from the recently-renovated greenhouse on the Bailey campus. Christine Chiu and Ken Turner, Master Gardeners of Greene County 2012 board members, served as consultants for the project. Elizabeth Nickel, a teacher at Bailey, also assisted with coordination efforts.
Design Ignites Change offers grants to creative professionals, colleges and universities for design and architecture projects that address pressing social issues. School: by Design is one of its recent mentoring initiatives created to support collaboration between college students and underserved high school students to execute social projects.
Design Ignites Change is a program of Worldstudio, a marketing and design firm that creates and implements programs to help corporations and foundations support social responsibility. The Worldstudio Foundation, which receives a portion of the company’s annual profits, began the Design Ignites Change program to support professional and college designers and architects. The Adobe Foundation, which offers additional support for the program, has also provided copies of Adobe design software to Bailey students.
Three additional design students have submitted winning entries to the 2012 Society of Illustrators competition. Submissions by Kristin Fleming (“Jumping Pig“), Aimee Pong (“Social Media“), and Kyle Rutherford (“Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.“) have been selected as winners. Fleming and Rutherford were instructed by Kostovic and Pong was instructed by Jesse Nivens. A jury of design and illustration professionals will award scholarships to select winners at the end of March, and all winning entries will be published in a full-color book to be released in May by the Society of Illustrators.
As of 2012, art and design students have submitted six winning entries to the annual Society of Illustrators Scholarship Awards competition. In 2009, students Jane Colvin and Ashford Stamper submitted winning entries, and in 2010, work from design student Judge Bockman was represented in the competition.
Finally, five students in Professor Cedomir Kostovic’s Image Design class (DES 332) were featured in an international poster exhibition, Design Against Fur, sponsored by the Fur Free Alliance. Eric Barnes received the exhibition’s People’s Choice Award by popular online vote; Victoria Lozano, Alex Richards, Evan Wright, and Aimee Pong all received honors. Read more about their accomplishments on the College of Arts and Letters website.
Congratulations to our excellent art and design students, faculty and staff!