Congratulations to Malary Snow, a Media Arts student and winner of College of Western Idaho’s (CWI) 2019 Connections Project logo contest! Her logo submission was chosen out of nearly 50 entries and earned her the $100 prize. Snow’s design was chosen for its simplicity, creativity, and clear representation of interconnectedness. The new logo will be featured in all upcoming Connections Project marketing for 2019.
Snow learned about the logo contest through her Digital Design and Publishing instructor, Lindsey Wallgren, who offered extra credit to his students for participating. Taking inspiration from the Connections Project slogan “Connect, Educate, Inspire”, she developed a logo with a modern feeling, while remaining cohesive with previous Connections Project logos and marketing.
“I enter a lot of contests and am never really hopeful, so it means a lot that they picked my simple design and saw potential in it.”, Snow commented.
Once her design was chosen, Snow was given the opportunity to work with CWI’s Communications and Marketing team to further develop the logo. This included adding color, changing the placement of text, and exploring different orientations for the image. Upon reflection of this collaborative experience, Snow stated, “It’s really important for anyone who is interested in design and marketing to be open to suggestion and other people’s ideas.” Snow is grateful for how this experience will contribute to her goals as a visual artist.
Karen Brown, Assistant Professor of Art History and Humanities, helped to develop the Connections Project logo design into a student competition two years ago. Brown shared that this method of choosing a logo “provides a way for students to gain experience and understanding of how marketing works at the College, in addition to some of the complexities of designing a logo and presenting it to the public”.
The logo selection process begins when student submissions are sent through an anonymous jurying process. The jurors consist of members of the Connections Project team including staff, faculty, and students. Once members have chosen their top three or four entries, these votes are pooled together to determine the finalists. The Connections Project team then collaborates with Communications and Marketing to choose the most viable image.
The Connections Project logo contest provides the opportunity for students, like Snow, to shepherd their design from the initial stages, to a product that will appear on ephemeral objects such as the webpage, as well more permanent ones like posters, programs, and t-shirts. Keep an eye out for future updates regarding this year’s Connections Project which will be held at the Nampa Campus Academic Building on April 25, 2019. This event is free and open to the public.
