The September road show campaign for this year's thinkahead awards, conceptualised by think member agency Mortimer Harvey, centred around the notion of talented scouts, where think would literally be scouting design schools all over the country in search of up and coming design talent. Twenty two design institutions were visited in Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal and the Western Cape, and four other colleges from the Free State and Eastern Cape regions were involved. The talent search resulted in 187 students from 25 institutions submitting their carefully crafted portfolios for the consideration of the judging panel.
"This year showed a record amount of entries, with over 1000 projects consisting of around 4000 images in total", notes Veejay Archary, chairperson of the 2006 judging panel.
"The high number of entries we received indicates that the educators are progressively giving more support to this awards scheme as they recognise the importance of its purpose, namely, to bridge the gap between what the industry is looking for in a new designer and what the institutions are teaching their students."
The 50% increase in entries was also due to the excitement generated by the countrywide road show, which brought with it a new entry system devised by Mortimer Harvey's expanding interactive department.
"In previous years, students were required to submit their work on disk, which required forethought and planning. The web entry system, however, allowed for students to upload their work directly from their university or home, up to a few hours before the deadline. It was a time and cost-saving process which appealed to a student generation brought up on computers and the Internet."
The highlight of the Sappi thinkahead awards, though, is ultimately the ceremony itself, where students, lecturers and design professionals get to mingle and marvel at the winners' creations. The venue chosen to honour the winning students this year was trendy club 'The Palms' in Sandton, where the awards were celebrated in style on 28 November 2006, with South African comedian John Vlismas compéring the event.
Winning students were awarded both for individual pieces of outstanding design and for their portfolios. For individual pieces of work entered into categories ranging from Promotional Marketing to Craft to Digital, students received a Merit award or a Silver award.
The top winners of the evening, though, were those who received accolades for their outstanding portfolios. Five students received finalist awards for their creative and professional work, while the two gold winners for best portfolio were Jan Solms from the University of Stellenbosch and Sunét Willemse from North-West University.
The highest accolade of the evening, the Platinum award, was given to Craig Seagreen, a student at the Durban University of Technology.
Sponsored prizes included an Apple mini Mac from e.c. Mac, Adobe software from Adobe systems, books from Affinity Publishing and The Loerie Awards, tickets to 2007 Design Indaba, and one-year think memberships. L&K Print was the print sponsor of the event and road show elements.
For the second time since the inception of the thinkahead awards, think also honoured the lecturers and schools for guiding the students in their creations. A list of the top five schools, based on the awards received by the students, was compiled. Durban University of Technology took the top honours for 2006, closely followed by North-West University, the University of Pretoria, the University of Stellenbosch and Vega School of Brand Communications Johannesburg.
Commenting on the submitted work, Archary expressed the judging panel's recommendation that design students need to be given more conceptual, relevant projects by their institutions, as the entries generally exhibited a lack of well-developed logos, corporate identities and packaging.
"Students need to remember that design is ultimately a commercial enterprise and a service business, where the demands of a client take precedence over personal preference. They should thus be taught how to channel their creative ideas into relevant executions. This is one of the reasons why think initiated the Sappi thinkahead awards scheme; namely to enhance communication between the design industry and design schools," explained Archary.
However, although solid identity work may have been lacking in some of the entrants' portfolios, Archary points out that the judging panel was very impressed with the fact that many of the winning entries this year showed a gratifying focus on craft and illustration, "It shows that students are returning to the original, tried-and-tested methods of design and are not solely reliant on technology to create their designs for them. This bodes well for the future of design in our country, where creativity and the idea is still key."
