The GCOM Student Design Awards are coming.

Save your final GCOM projects from this semester for the Student Design Awards next semester.

The 2010 GCOM Student Design Awards will recognize the best student work of the 09-10 school
year.

The competition is open to GCOM@SCC students who were or are enrolled in one or more GCOM classes during the Fall 2009 and/or Spring 2010 semesters.

Entries will be judged by local art directors and designers and entries that win gold or silver awards will be display at Brainstorm: the GCOM Student Showcase in May 2010.

Check out the some of the work from last year's Student Design Awards here. Check back for more.

GCOM students win 5 awards

The Sacramento City College Express newspaper — both print and Web versions — garnered an impressive 15 awards at the Journalism Association of Community Colleges NorCal regional conference held in San Jose Nov. 7, 2009.

Page designers, GCOM students who lay out the Express pages and design graphics as part of Don Button’s GCOM 319 course, won top awards. Designer Bill Smith won two second place awards for Informational Graphics and Inside Page Layout, and two Honorable Mention for Inside Page Layout and Photo Illustration. GCOM student Thanh Nguyen won an Honorable Mention for Photo Illustration. The entire design staff also shared an Honorable Mention for Front Page Layout.

On the editorial side, Journalism and Photography students won a total of 9 awards. The most prestigious, was General Excellence in Online Journalism for the SacCityExpress.com web site.

Congrats to everyone!

GCOM faculty speaking at PechaKucha

Profs Robyn Waxman, Don Button, and Aaron Winters will be speaking this Saturday at a the final night of a 3-night PechaKucha marathon. November 7, 8:20pm at the MARRS Building at 20th & J.

What is PechaKucha? Good Question. Drawing its name from the Japanese term for the sound of "chit chat", it rests on a presentation format that is based on a simple idea: 20 images x 20 seconds. It's a format that makes presentations concise, and keeps things moving at a rapid pace.

Robyn will be presenting her FARM Master's Thesis project, Don will be telling the history of public skateparks in Sac, and Aaron will be doing something cool featuring his own work.

And it's FREE,

For all the info on the 3-night event, go here and click on the dates on the right: http://pecha-kucha.org/night/sacramento/newsletters/990

GCOM and PHOTO Club students on Good Day Sacramento

GCOM Clubber Lori Llanillo and Kevin Fiscus from the PHOTO Club were featured on Good Day Sacramento yesterday. They are creating Got Milk? ads featuring Julissa Ortiz, Tina Macua and Mark S. Allen of the show for their joint projects in the GCOM/PHOTO 490 class.

Just another reason to join the class next semester ... you get recognized!

See the video here and see the photos on the Good Day Blog here.

Outreach Cover photos for West Sac

If you are creating a design for the West Sacramento Outreach schedule cover, it has now been decided that the cover should include a primary image of the new building.

HERE are some images of the new building you can download.

You can use these photos for reference OR you can use the large rendering as is OR adapt or stylize the rendering to fit your design.

Call for Outreach Schedule Designs

This is your chance to get a published and printed design for your portfolio. All GCOM students are welcome to submit designs.

Sacramento City College’s Davis and West Sacramento Outreach Centers need your design and artistic skills (The Downtown center is closing). Using Photoshop, Illustrator and/or Modo, create a cover concept or illustration for one of the outreach location's Spring 2010 class schedule and submit it for consideration by Friday, October 30.

Each cover needs to follow a specific theme. All the important details are on THIS FLYER (click to download), which is also posted in the Design Lab and T-100 classroom.

You can also see examples of past student-designed published covers HERE.

For West Sacramento, HERE are some images of the new building you can download.

You can use these for reference, use the large rendering as is, or adapt the rendering to your design.

Any questions about this can be directed to Don at buttond@scc.losrios.edu or Tom at cappelt@scc.losrios.edu

Better Signs of Trouble?

Graphic designers’ ideas for an improved terrorism alert system. Check out this link at The New York Times website for a VERY interesting slideshow from some very notable designers. Interesting and insightful, and yes, a bit tongue-in-cheek too.

Paul Rand stated, a designer's job is to manipulate form and content...content is the idea, and form is what you do with this idea.

My thoughts: Was this really a good idea at all? The entire idea may be flawed.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/09/09/opinion/13opart.html