Competition Deadline Set: March 2, 2009

Yeah, it’s early. But now you can’t say we didn’t give you enough warning. We’ll post the rules here soon.

In the meantime, we’re planning a bunch of great events for the fall ... AND we even have one this summer! By popular demand, we’re putting together a summer Portfolio Review session. The date is still being determined, but look for it to happen in mid- to late-June. We’ll be announcing the exact date and details asap.

Wanna See More Award-Winning Work?

Then check out Pub43’s Magazine of the Year and Medal Winners, our professional members’ competition. All these and tons more get printed in our Publication Design Annual (this year’s is Pub43), and if you’re a student member, you’ll be mailed one for free as part of your membership (you’ll get them towards the end of the year ... make sure we have your permanent mailing address!). You can see past year’s winning work in our previous Annuals. Look for them at your local mega-bookstore, school library, Amazon and, of course, us!

Congrats to Our Winners!

Inspired by their work? Or think you can do better? Then prove it ... enter next year’s student competition and show us what you've got. We're finalizing the rules and deadline info now, but it'll pretty much be the same in regards to categories, and the deadline will be early March. So make use of that summer vacation and put your thinking cap on now. And don't forget, you can enter as many entries as you can do. Here's last year's rules to get you started. We'll upload the new competition brochure in the next month or so.

2008's First Place Winner and Winner of the Adobe Scholarship

CATEGORY Travel
DESIGNER Paul Johnson
SCHOOL Montana State University
YEAR Senior
MAJOR Graphic Design
INSTRUCTOR Jeffrey Conger
INTERNSHIP WON National Geographic Adventure

What was the biggest challenge in creating your entry?
From a design point of view, it was tough creating a comical “thrown together” travelog feel that still had enough structure to easily flow for a reader. From a content point of view, I was always walking a line between having the layout still be funny but doing so in a way that didn’t paint the state in an overly negative light.

What was your inspiration in creating your entry?
I grew up on a farm in North Dakota, so I’ve got a pretty deep connection to the area. From an outside perspective though, there really doesn’t seem to be much reason to consider it a travel destination. It’s actually true that North Dakota is the least visited state. I thought that was a unique distinction that needed to be capitalized on! So I tried to center the layout around turning that fact into a humorous selling point for recruiting college-aged visitors. So the message is: You want to come here because most people don’t. ***Winter Travel Note: It’s possible that your car will go off the road when a –30˚ ground blizzard kicks up, and you have to survive by curling up in a sleeping bag with your dog next to you for warmth, just a heads up.

Do you participate in any publication- or design-related campus activities?
Not at MSU. At Northwest College in Wyoming, the school I transfered from, a group of us designed and published a visual arts magazine featuring student photography, fine art, and design. They were sold on campus and sent out to alumni.

What are your favorite magazines?
The Atlantic and Newsweek — news fix; HOW and Print — design fix; Discover — science fix; Powder — snow fix

What do you want to do while in New York for your internship?
I want to experience as much as possible during the period of time I’m there. Hmm, that’s not very specific.

2008's Second Place Winner

CATEGORY Entertainment
DESIGNER Anthony Cruz
SCHOOL American Academy of Art
YEAR Sophomore
MAJOR Graphic Design
INSTRUCTOR Carol Luc
INTERNSHIP WON New York

What was the biggest challenge in creating your entry?
My biggest challenge was narrowing my ideas into one composition.

What was your inspiration in creating your entry?
My inspiration started from the Kanye West video “The Good Life.” While I continued to work on it, inspiration came from the 1980s style in general.

Do you participate in any publication- or design-related campus activities?
I am generally too busy with my studio work to do any publication/design-related campus activities. However, I do submit my pieces into any gallery showings the school exhibits.

What are your favorite magazines?
My favorite magazine are CMYK, PRINT, and Alarm.

What do you want to do while in New York for your internship?
While interning in New York, I hope to visit Central Park and possibly catch a Yankees game at Yankee Stadium.

2008's Third Place Winner

CATEGORY Entertainment
DESIGNER Lauren Turnier
SCHOOL Fashion Institute of Technology
YEAR Senior
MAJOR Advertising Design
INSTRUCTOR Ronald Bacsa
INTERNSHIP WON Real Simple

What was the biggest challenge in creating your entry?
I had no idea where to begin! I do not have any experience in editorial design nor have I ever had an assignment like this before. I always have had a huge interest in the publication industry and just designed from what I knew. I tried to design something a little different, something I would like to see. The deadline also served as a challenge. I only found out about the competition a week before it was due!

What was your inspiration in creating your entry?
I was mainly inspired by the copy and description of the magazine given. Once I read the copy, I was flooded with ideas and got going with conceptualizing and sketching. I also flipped through some magazines for some inspiration.

Do you participate in any publication- or design-related campus activities?
There are some offered at FIT such as yearbook, and ICON magazine, but I do not participate in them.

What are your favorite magazines?
This is tough but I’m going to go with Nylon, Real Simple, Gourmet and Good.

What do you want to do while in New York for your internship?
Well, I am from New York so I tend to take for granted all that the city has to offer. There are a lot of concerts and movie screenings in the parks during the summer that I would like to check out. Also, there are many museums and galleries I’ve been meaning to get to.

2008's First Honorable Mention

CATEGORY Entertainment
DESIGNER Jason Sfetko
SCHOOL Rochester Institute of Technology
YEAR Senior
MAJOR Graphic Design
INSTRUCTOR Chris Lyons
INTERNSHIP WON Martha Stewart Living

What was the biggest challenge in creating your entry?
Being my biggest critic.

What was your inspiration in creating your entry?
Getting my work in front of the most respected art directors in the country.

Do you participate in any publication- or design-related campus activities?
Art Director of Reporter Magazine, Rochester Institute of Technology (nation's only four-color weekly college publication)

What are your favorite magazines?
New York, Nylon, Vice, GQ, Esquire, New York Times Magazine

What do you want to do while in New York for your internship?
Get a job.

2008's Second Honorable Mention

CATEGORY Sports
DESIGNER Krzysztof Piatkowski
SCHOOL School of Visual Art
YEAR Junior
MAJOR Graphic Design
INSTRUCTOR Mitch Shostak
INTERNSHIP WON W

What was the biggest challenge in creating your entry?
The biggest challenge was to convey speed, motion, the overall extreme rush of snowboarding using type composition against sort of a static image of Shaun White.

What was your inspiration in creating your entry?
SPEED, balance and snowboarding subculture was the inspiration. I do snowboard myself, so I know how speed is critical in this sport especially when doing extreme style like Shaun White. Also the handwritten type was used to create that connection with loose lifestyle, a lot of times associated with professional snowboarders.

Do you participate in any publication- or design-related campus activities?
Design workshops with various designers.

What are your favorite magazines?
I like a lot of magazines, but the ones I read regularly are Print, How, New York. Archive is a great inspiration and of course my roommate’s Time Out New York. I like their covers.

What do you want to do while in New York for your internship?
I want to see how it is to work for a magazine, experience the editorial side of design. Most of all, to have fun I guess.

2008's Third Honorable Mention

CATEGORY Travel
DESIGNER Soo Yun Yun
SCHOOL School of Visual Art
YEAR Junior
MAJOR Graphic Design
INSTRUCTOR Mitch Shostak
INTERNSHIP WON Cosmogirl!

What was the biggest challenge in creating your entry?
It was important to create beautiful spreads for the competition. A magazine is the tool for communication with readers. So, putting correct and useful information in my second spread was the biggest challenge for my entry. I researched a lot about Tokyo’s restaurants and famous places. As a result, instead of using just dummy text, my pages are full of useful information (it is also well organized), and turned out beautiful as an opening spread.

What was your inspiration in creating your entry?
Tokyo reminded me of one of my favorite movies “Lost in Translation”(2003). I got inspiration from my favorite scene from the movie where Bob and Charlotte escape the hotel, take a taxi and hang out the whole night. I liked the sparkling neon signs on the street and colorful character taxi signs a lot. I wanted to express the flutter of emotion of nighttime sightseeing.

Do you participate in any publication- or design-related campus activities?
No, but a few of my classmates and I have separate critique time after class. The times that I spent with my classmates were helpful for this competition.

What are your favorite magazines?
I like Men’s Health and Women's Health, Martha Stewart Living, Harper’s Bazaar... there are tons of good magazines to read.

Wanna See What Won?

So you're probably thinking, "gee, I'm happy for these winners and all, but all I really want to see is their winning entries!" Well, don't you worry, we'll be posting them all online here over the course of the next few days. So keep coming back!

In the meantime, check out last year's winners:
First Place
Second Place
Third Place
First Honorable Mention
Second Honorable Mention
Third Honorable Mention
Fourth Honorable Mention

Drumroll please...

The annual SPD Student Design Competition recognizes exceptional design by students and honors them with various awards and cash prizes (as described below). Entries are created for the competition in one of 5 supplied categories (click here for this year's rules), and are judged by some of the most distinguished names in publication design (see this year's jury below).

The winners of the 2008 competition are as follows: (click on their names to see their work)
First Place and Winner of the Adobe Scholarship
in honor of B.W. Honeycutt
PAUL JOHNSON
Senior, Montana State University. Instructor: Jeffrey Conger
(Paul's prizes include $2500, the Adobe Creative Suite software and an internship at National Geographic Adventure)

Second Place
ANTHONY CRUZ
Sophomore, American Academy of Art. Instructor: Carol Luc
(Anthony's prizes include $1000, the Adobe Creative Suite software and an internship at New York)

Third Place
LAUREN TURNIER
Senior, Fashion Institute of Technology. Instructor: Ronald Bacsa
(Lauren's prizes include $500, the Adobe Creative Suite software and an internship at Real Simple)

First Honorable Mention
JASON SFETKO
Senior, Rochester Institute of Technology. Instructor: Chris Lyons
(Jason's prize is an internship at Martha Stewart Living)

Second Honorable Mention
KRZYSZTOF PIATKOWSKI
Junior, School of Visual Art. Instructor: Mitch Shostak
(Krzysztof's prize is an internship at W)

Third Honorable Mention
SOO YUN YUN
Junior, School of Visual Art. Instructor: Mitch Shostak
(Soo's prize is an internship at Cosmogirl!)

Additionally, all the winners' work will be printed in the SPD PUB 43 Design Annual.

ESTABLISHED IN 1995, the SPD Student Design Competition honors the life and work of Bruce W. Honeycutt, who died January 12, 1994 at the very young age of 40. During his career, he served as the Art Director of Details and Spy magazines, as well as on the staffs of Vanity Fair and GQ. His work has been recognized by SPD, AIGA, the Art Directors Club of New York, and by magazines such as Print, Advertising Age, and Adweek. He also taught publication design at the School of Visual Arts in New York City.

CHAIRED BY Ian Doherty (Deputy Art Director, Travel + Leisure Golf) and Robert Perino (Design Director, Fortune), this year's jury consisted of some of the best publication designers out there. To them, we extend a huge thanks: Florian Bachleda (Creative Director, FB Design/Doubledown Media); David Curcurito (Design Director, Esquire); Luke Hayman (Partner, Pentagram); Nathalie Kirsheh (Art Director, W); David McKenna (Art Director, National Geographic Adventure); and Linda Pouder (Design Director, Studio Incubate). Thanks also goes to Emily Smith.

THANKS TO the School of Visual Arts for their generous support of the competition. And we also extend our appreciation to Adobe. Throughout its partnership with SPD, Adobe is helping shape the next generation of creative professionals. Together we are building the foundation that will sustain and further artistic accomplishments within the editorial design community.

Pardon the Interruption of Service...

So, yeah, we've been kinda awol for a while, sorry about that. And unfortunately we can't blame it on final exams (or final partying) like you can. Anyhow, we're back and about to announce the winners of this year's Student Design Competition ... yes, we've promised that before, but this time it's for real. Stay tuned...