The first-place student design team with executives from Scotts LawnService

In a recent collaboration with ScottsMiracleGro Company a group of CCAD students competed to design an interior focal point for the company’s corporate offices.

The objective of the project was to design an artistic covering for 22 stone pillars that are a part of Scotts’ interior structure. The coverings needed to reflect the ScottsMiracleGro Company brand and also provide a wayfinding tool for employees and visitors.

Assistant professors Dawson Kellogg and Julie Abijanac (CCAD 1992) led the project involving the Studio Professions class.

Each student presented a concept to the professors. The original 37 designs were then narrowed down to 15.

Tiffany Peoples, the vice president of global innovation at Scotts, evaluated these 15 designs and selected the top six designs to move on to the next round.

The top six designers each became the artistic director of a team that they selected to work on a final design and presentation.

The final round of judging included Peoples and Jim Lyski, the chief marketing officer of Scotts. Each student group presented its designs and ideas to the judges in an open presentation. Peoples and Lyski then chose and ranked the top three designs.

First prize went to a design entitled Elements of Nature created by Fine Arts juniors Devin Broadnax and Chris Pack; Advertising & Graphic Design senior Maggie Malloy; Advertising & Graphic Design junior Richard Coyne; and Fine Arts sophomore Yunji Choi.

“We loved the detail in this group; we look at these designs every day so we wanted them to be generally appealing, but have a sense of detail to keep them fresh,” said Lyski.

First place design being presented to Scotts executives

Second place went to Drawn from the Roots. This design concept was created by Fine Arts sophomores Jamie Turner, Emily Ruff, and Allie Raines; Fine Arts juniors Emily Cook and Alexandria Goeltzenleuchter; and Advertising & Graphic Design junior Ashley Lyon.

The third place design, Hands of Appreciation, was created by Fines Arts sophomores Kyle Franklin, Gabrielle Hirth, and Angela Ryu; Illustration seniors Alyssa Gottlieb and Hannah Mu; and Fine Arts junior Yezen Abusharkh.

Scotts is one of several community clients that CCAD has recently provided significant creative services for including, Easton Town Center, The Central Ohio Transit Authority, the Governor’s office, and Nationwide Insurance.

Students working at the phonathon.

By  Kyle Franklin, Advertising & Graphic Design and Media Studies Freshman

If every student got to experience what I did through the phonathon, they could learn so much about our school. It fits in right between taking a class and doing an internship: because you’re talking to alumni, they’re providing you with something personal about this school, and because they’ve found a lot of success in their careers, they give you tons of advice. Here’s what I learned:

1. I made the right choice in coming here. Hearing about the alumni’s success and stories from being a student hit really close to home for me. Someday I will find the same success—and I’ll get to have the same amount of fun along the way.
2. You can never know enough about what classes to take and what professors to take them with. The alumni offered me so much advice about their majors, down to recommending classes and teachers. So I’d sit their writing down a bunch of things—pretty much everything they said. (Side note: I got three internship offers!)
3. The hard work pays off. A lot of them said that they have people who apply for jobs who don’t know how to work the Adobe programs, and their portfolios are just, uggh. I spoke with one alumna who does a lot of hiring at Limited Brands, and she said she can always tell when someone is a CCAD student because there is a certain work ethic and talent level that is so identifiable.
4. Giving back means paying it forward. A lot of our alumni received scholarships while they were here, so that’s why they give back. They even said that they couldn’t have done what they had without the scholarship they received. I’m the same way, so that’s why I’ll give back once I graduate.
5. We’re a part of one great big, growing family. Some people go to college strictly to get an education, but here it feels a lot more personal, like you and CCAD chose each other. I don’t know one student here who isn’t passionate about what they do, and when I talked to the alumni they were exactly the same way. It’s pretty cool to know that there are thousands of people in the world who have the same experience I do.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The student callers’ efforts paid off in a big way: in 2010, giving from alumni who graduated within the last 10 years increased by more than 1,000 percent.