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This year, in the grand tradition of the public
choosing an American idol and a favorite dancing star, Print opened up
voting for its 44th annual Student Cover Competition for the first time.
We uploaded the covers of three finalists—chosen by judges Miranda
Dempster, art director of Art + Auction; Andrew Horton, art
director of Business Week; and Lina Kutsovskaya, creative
director of Teen Vogue—to Print’s website, and we invited our
readers to pick the winner.
Voting was fast and furious when the
contest went live on October 23. Brandon Maddox’s design, featuring a
shirt pocket bleeding a leaky pen’s ornamental flourish was an immediate
hit, capturing first place with 57 percent of the total votes. Our
second- and third-place winners—Katty Maurey’s “cut and paste” cover of
identical twins and Blaž Porenta’s elegantly interactive gatefold of a
surfer on a wave—each garnered an impressive share of fans as
well.
Maddox’s entry was a clear
favorite among the judges. “Concept-wise, it’s perfect,” Horton said.
Dempster agreed, deeming the spiral “super-trendy” and “brilliant.”
Maddox, a student at Orlando’s Valencia Community College, painted the
swirls onto an old white T-shirt, then combined a scan of the fabric and
the image of an oxford shirt in Photoshop. The process reflects his
desire to incorporate both hand-drawn and digital elements in his
design.
Though Maddox said that he prefers to leave the meaning
of the work up to the viewer’s interpretation, he wanted to allude to
the dilemma facing students about whether to pursue a freelance career
or a more corporate route, he says. “Many artists can end up working in
an environment where they use very little creativity,” he said, “so the
buttoned-up shirt represents the corporation, and the exploding ink
represents the artist’s frustration and stifled creativity.”
Work that showed flashes of wit stood out for
the judges, while gory images seemed too obvious. “I’m declaring a
moratorium on bodily injury,” said Dempster, referring to the many
entries that showed mutilated limbs. (She did, however, enjoy Filipa
Warren Varanda Gagean’s cover depicting a tag hanging from a pierced
tongue.) Covers that showed extra effort won extra credit, particularly
those that required more than just Photoshop to create, such as Maurey’s
custom shirts for her cover models. Casting one overly precious entry
aside, Kutsovskaya said, “It’s a goody-goody’s design—something from one
of those kids that you know never break the rules.” Risks were rewarded,
including Porenta’s gatefold, which can be opened to form a 3-D cresting
wave.
In general, entries shied
away from making political statements, though Jim Knox’s creative twist
on the Iwo Jima flag-raising—toy soldiers hoisting a pencil into a
pencil sharpener—successfully evoked both the specter of war and the
role of design in a conflict-ridden world (and scored an honorable
mention).
Since covers were coming in from around the globe,
many of the students may have wanted to avoid a location-specific or
partisan interpretation of “Design Culture Youth,” choosing instead to
focus on more universal themes, familiar to art school students
everywhere: the job market, sexual frustration, and the search for
original ideas.
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