November 18, 2015

Three of our Graphic Design students received awards at the prestigious COLLAB Student Design Competition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art this week. For more than twenty years, the annual competition has been a wonderful opportunity for Philadelphia college students to meet global design leaders, and to produce their own designs inspired by the work of an internationally recognized designer who is being honored with the Collab Design Excellence Award. 2015 competitors were challenged to design an object inspired by the work of Bruce Mau, one of the most influential design thinkers of his generation. Mau is internationally recognized for his innovations in graphic design, from visual identities to brand systems, books, and packaging.

For this year’s design challenge, “Selfie,” students designed their own personal brand identity program. Our congratulations to Graphic Design students Marisa Watanabe, who received Second Place; Brad DeLeone, who received Third Place; and Jeremy Snyder, who received honorable mention. Their projects, along with 40 other select entries—including those by Graphic Design students Morgan Gelfand and Katie Troy—are on exhibition in the Philadelphia Museum of Art (Main Building), from November 18 through 20. All five Drexel student projects are eligible for the People’s Choice Award, which will be announced on November 20.

Second Place winner Marisa Watanabe’s brand identity, Measured Design, is imbued with the aesthetics of meticulous and mathematically oriented approaches to solutions, illustrated with notations of proportion, scale and structural elements.

Third Place recipient Brad DeLeone’s design, Imagination Run Wild, centers on playfulness and whimsy, reflected by fairytale illustrations and balanced by marks of contemporary personal style.

Play, Change, Adapt, Jeremy Snyder’s identity branding, is based on his love of working with materials by hand and centers on interchangeability and adaptability, lending itself to a variety of mediums.  

Morgan Gelfand’s Gray Matters design utilizes an interpretive illustration of the artist’s brain, and Katie Troy’s design, Small Stature, Big Ideas, balances her height with her humor through photography and typography.

This year’s judges included Alan Jacobson, Founder of Ex:it Design Strategy and J2 Design Partnership; Alina Wheeler, author of Designing Brand Identity and design coach; Jedd Davis, Chief Operating Officer at Publicis Heath Media; Josh Goldblum, Bluecadet’s Founder and Chief Executive Officer; Ken Carbone, Co-Founder of Carbone Smolan Agency in New York City.