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The Adobe Design Achievement Awards recently announced a call for entries for 2012. In this video, Julie Campagna chats with several people who are involved with this competition that recognizes the incredible work of students and faculty from around the globe. Transcript.
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JULIE Campagna: Hi, I'm Julie Campagna, managing editor of Inspire Magazine. Today we're at Adobe San Francisco. We're in the lobby, we're showcasing the Adobe Design Achievement Awards.
Recently, Adobe announced the call for this year's competition. So in this video, we're going to go behind the scenes and talk to a couple of the organizers as well as people who have been involved with the contest past and present. So come on, let's go.
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JULIE: You're in charge of the Adobe Design Achievement Awards. Tell me what they're about.
CLAIRE ERWIN: The Adobe Design Achievement Awards is a program that Adobe hosts. It honors the best in student designers, filmmakers, interactive artists on an international scale.
JULIE: Tell me, how do you find judges?
CLAIRE: Adobe has an industry partner, who is Icograda. Icograda oversees the judging, and they also oversee and endorse the entire judging process for the Design Achievement Awards. The judging panel changes every year. So it's not the same judges that are looking at the students' work. It's a new panel of fresh, well-known, international judges that look at the work.
JULIE: So this is a competition. What do the winners win?
CLAIRE: All of our finalists win a trip to wherever the awards ceremony is going to be held. If they are a winner, they receive Master Collection. They receive a $3,000 check. They also receive a mentorship through Icograda with an industry professional in their area.
Then, of course, they all receive ongoing recognition for the rest of their career -- they are an Adobe Design Achievement Award winner.
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JULIE: John, you're very passionate about this competition. Tell me why.
JON PERERA: The Adobe Design Achievement Awards is all about shining the light on student innovation. So we get a chance to sit back and say, "What's the next generation doing? What are they doing with video? What are they doing with print? What are they doing with design?" So it's all about unleashing their creativity and inspiration.
When we talk to competitors and say, "Why did you participate?" They say, "What drives me is the idea that design is about changing the world, and through media, and through video."
Well, the Adobe Design Achievement Awards provides that venue for them to talk about things like the environment, how to connect, how to address societal problems. The ADAA shines the light on that and those students and their passion to do those types of things.
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JULIE: Erik, you've been a judge, you've been on the board, you're also a designer, and you're on the faculty of the California College of Arts. What do you look for in the student entries?
ERIK: Well, as a judge -- specifically for a competition like ADAA's -- creativity and techniques. That is because the students, who are young creators, tend to come out with unbridled imagination, and creativity, and fearlessness. But there's something about the winning entries, that they seem to have a life of their own. They seem to stay with you. They don't want to go away.
JULIE: So what do you think is most important about this design competition?
ERIK: It's crucial for the students, I think, to participate if they really want to rise up to the top. Also, I think it's a very important mission from the point of view of the designers in the real world, because it gives them a perspective on what's happening in school today -- not when they went to school, but today - and that is changing every year.
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JULIE: Jonnie, you won an Adobe Design Achievement Award in 2008. Tell me a bit about the project you submitted.
JONNIE HALLMAN: The project I submitted is DestroyFlickr. DestroyFlickr is a better experience, viewing-wise, for Flickr. It lets you view photos very large, it lets you page through in contact sheet form very quickly and select ones, or download a whole page, or see different contact's photos very easily.
JULIE: What was the best part about winning the award?
JONNIE: The best part of winning the award was actually showing that my application development was worth it. Just to know that somebody likes my software and shows me that it's a direction that I should pursue, it just was a huge difference for me. Now I'm actually making applications full-time as my career.
JULIE: Well thanks, Jonnie. We'll let you get back to your design job. If you want to learn more about the Adobe Design Achievement Awards, visit adobeawards.com. I hope you enjoyed this edition of Inspire Magazine.
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