Syracuse University creative advertising students and professors recently won 55 awards from the Graphis New Talent Annual competition.

The winners, all part of the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, made SU the second-highest awarded school in the competition’s advertising section.

SU had previously won 36 awards in 2017 and 15 awards in 2016, but this year marks the school’s best showing in the international graphic design competition.

“My professor was fantastic. She never said to us how to fix problems, but instead she pushed us to create our own creative project,” said junior Nicole Framm, the winner of one of only eight platinum awards, the competition’s top honor.

This is the third year in a row that a Newhouse student has received a platinum award. Framm said she came up with her ad, a campaign against child soldiers, because of her deep love for children, childhood and her willingness to create something meaningful that could grab the audience.

Kevin O’Neill, a professor of practice at Newhouse, worked with Newhouse assistant professor Mel White through a series of projects outside of class. They created print and digital ad portfolios to give students ideas about how to create advertisements.

“The secret is to help students understand how to create an effective ad based on human behavior in order that everyone can relate with it,” said White, who has worked in the advertising field for 26 years.

When the students win a high number of awards, Graphis honors the instructors as well, O’Neill said.

“When our students demonstrate that they are superiors, it means that we are on the right track with them,” he said.

White said she believes visual solution advertising, or ads that include visual, concept and words all together, are the most successful in the Graphis competition. She said the Tide and M&Ms campaigns from the 2018 Super Bowl were the most successful because they combined visuals and words.

Ting Peng, a senior advertising major and winner of three gold awards at Graphis 2018, said inspiration can come from anywhere. Peng, a former advertising designer for The Daily Orange, won awards for her work on advertisements for Playstation VR, Samsonite and Moleskine.

Students often bring ideas to professors for criticism, and White said she’s the professor who handles feedback for the creative process. She chooses the ideas she believes are worth pursuing.

This competition is a chance for students to “gain those golden stars on their resume,” O’Neill said.

“It encourages me to do more. At the beginning of the program I asked myself what could distinguish me from the others in the class,” Peng said. “This victory gives me the confidence to say that I have some intel in the creative advertising world.”

Published on February 11, 2018 at 10:06 pm

Contact Pietro: pbaragio@syr.edu