Spring 2011 Outreach Cover Design Winners Announced!

Congratulations to GCOM students Karen Adams and Rich Palmer, winners of our Outreach Cover Design Contest for the Spring 2011 Semester. We had about 70 entries total, and Karen's composition was chosen for the Davis Center, and Rich's was chosen for the West Sacramento Center.

Rich relocated from Connecticut in the summer of 2008 and is currently a second semester, Music , Audio Production Major at the Sacramento City College Branch. He is an aspiring music engineer with the hopes of one day owning a Post Production and Multi Media Facility. Rich has a wide variety of interests such as graphic design, video editing, photography and music production.

Karen recently launched a small graphic design and communications business from her home in Davis. Her new pursuits build upon a 20-year journalism career that took her from newspapers in Southern California to the Washington Post and finally the Sacramento Bee. In 2006, she began taking classes at SCCʼs Graphic Communications Department, which gave her the skills and confidence to reshape her career. She can be reached through www.coffeebreakdesign.net, a website she created as a class project.

Robyn Waxman lecture -- Monday, Nov. 15

Hey students!

GCOM professor Robyn Waxman is doing a lecture for ADAC titled "The Next Generation of Design -- The F.A.R.M Story".

This lecture will be Monday, November 15 from 6-8 p.m. at AIA Central Valley Building, 1400 S Street, Sacramento.

Lecture description:
The Millennials (ages 18–30) are technologically savvy, participatory, positive, reluctant to criticize, and experiential. They have respect for the law and for authority, yet demand transparency and feel entitled. Many Millennials are interested in participating in sustainability movements, but... only in a manner that nurtures these sub-cultural nuances.

Design is experiencing a paradigm shift. Designers are experimenting with more interactive ways of engaging participatory culture and democratizing making. The methods in which design engages the world is expanding. My work seeks to examine the role of the next generation of designers in catalyzing their generation’s social and environmental movements.

The F.A.R.M story will serve as one way to rethink traditional activist mediums (the poster and the protest) and the role of the design activist, in an effort to more fully engage the next generation of design.

Q&A will follow after the lecture. Refreshments will be provided.

Admission is free for all ADAC members, $5 for the general public, $3 for non-member students.

If you are interested in joining ADAC, please come to the lecture and you can sign up for membership on the spot. Student membership is $29 yearly.

Hope to see you there!

Student Newspaper Designers Win First Place!

GCOM students, along with Journalism and Photography students at the Express student newspaper, won 8 top awards from the Journalism Association of Community Colleges NorCal conference this week.

The cover design work of student Victor Quintana, Casey Mar, and David Kitchell won First Place for Front Page Layout.

Mar also won a First Place for Advertisement design, and Kitchell also won a Third Place for Photo Illustration. GCOM student Lori Llanillo won a Second Place for Illustration and a Third place for Informational Graphic.

Both the print and Web versions of the Express shared General Excellence awards in their category, and the Journalism and Photography students won seven more awards, including two First Places.

Great work students!!

ADAC Kickoff Event: November 1

Hello?!

We’re here. Where are you?

What is the state of design in Sacramento?
How can we come together to make a stronger community?

We have some ideas. We want to hear yours.

Join us for an evening and lets see what we can come up with together. It’s time you became involved in a serious endeavor to connect, strengthen and promote design in this city.

This is a volunteer run organization. An organization rich in history and unique in accomplishment. The design community needs you to step up and help maintain this legacy as we forge into the future determined to make an impact.

We will be outlining a renewed vision for ADAC, present plans for the coming year, and provide you an opportunity to speak with us and each other about what we can accomplish together.

Refreshments will be provided.

Admission is free and all are welcome.

Hello!? 11/1/10
Monday 6-8:30 p.m.

AIA Central Valley Building
1400 S Street, Sacramento

Email president@adac.org for more information.

You can also visit http://adac.org for more info.

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. Using Photoshop, Illustrator and/or Modo, create a cover concept or illustration for one of the outreach location's Spring 2011 class schedule and submit it for consideration by Friday, October 29.

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.

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

Vote for the new SCC logo (designed by the GCOM 490 class)

Attention students! You will be receiving a link via your iMail account today to an SCC Logo Survey. You will have until next Wednesday to give your feedback and choose the logo concept that you feel would best represent the school.

Though there is an official Sacramento City College (the scratchy logo below), there is no consistent use of the logo on any of the school's collateral. (The school's web site uses a different SCC logo on it's home page).


GCOM 490 was commissioned by President Jeffery to concept new logos for the Sacramento City College. They were designed and developed by current and former GCOM students Charles Henderson, Christie Garcia and Lori Llanillo. The GCOM 490 class will pick the project in the spring to begin work on phase two of the project that will include the design of collateral pieces and brand photography.

Here is a sneak peek at the logos on the survey.

Former GCOM 490 Student Update: Priscilla Garcia

Happy summer everyone!

Here's a quick update from one of GCOM's former star students. You may recognize her from her GCOM 330 tutoring days or when she was the GCOM Club's president. But Priscilla Garcia shares what she's doing now and how taking GCOM 490: The Graphic Communication Learning Studio helped her land a killer job at the Sacramento News & Review.

GCOM 490 will be offered this fall Mondays and Wednesdays from 1–3pm. Sign up today!

Name: Priscilla Garcia
Semesters enrolled in GCOM 490: Fall 2008 throught Fall 2009
Current professional status/occupation: Designer at the News & Review
Best thing about being a graphic designer: If you're going to spend 40 hours a week working, you might as well be doing what you love, and I love graphic design.
Lessons from GCOM 490: You don't get real-world experience in the other GCOM classes but GCOM 490 allowed me to experience the full process of working with a client, and also other designers and photographers. It's one thing to communicate graphically, but a professional designer must be able to communicate with their client, their photographer, and their collaborators. Plus, you can't turn in projects late like any other assignment. Working with clients helped me learn how to manage my time and set realistic deadlines.

I didn't feel confident with my portfolio. But taking GCOM 490 gave me to the opportunity to work on full-scale real-world projects and studio photography.

GCOM 490 taught me the importance of networking, it's not just what you know, its who you know! In my 3 semesters in 490 I met so many local professionals from different industries and through this class I was able to get an internship at SN&R. Before the summer was over, I was hired as an employee, not just because I was capable of the job, but because I was a motivated GCOM 490 student with professional references from my teachers.

Other GCOM classes/instructors that really propelled you: Missy's Graphic design production class helped me understand basic principals of design and the creative process