The American Advertising Federation Birmingham Awards, also known as the ADDYs, honored students from the University of Alabama at Birmingham for their work at a ceremony held Friday, Feb. 26.
The students are from the College of Arts and Sciences’ Department of Art and Art History and Digital Media. More than two dozen students were honored with Gold and Silver Student ADDY awards for their individual and team projects. Digital Media was awarded Best of Show. The Digital Media Fellows program is a paid student program in which students from a variety of disciplines work in teams to produce media content for clients.
UAB Digital Media and Bloom Studio, a student graphic design studio in the Department of Art and Art History, partnered to serve as the agency of record for the 2016 Birmingham ADDY awards. Student and media fellow Stephen Stark created the design. Since then, students of Bloom and Digital Media fellows have worked collaboratively to produce all the collateral materials for the event, including the winner’s book, website and animations for the live event.
Digital Media fellows were honored with Best of Show for a yearlong project called KNOW DOPE, a heroin prevention and awareness campaign funded by the United States Department of Justice and U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance for the Northern District of Alabama. Vance is the client and attended the ADDYs with the students.
Students involved in KNOW DOPE produced six public service announcements along with a 10-minute documentary that will be shown in area schools when law enforcement representatives participate in outreach programs. UAB students also created the name of the campaign, along with the logo, says Rosie O’Beirne, director of Digital Media and Innovative Learning.
“One of the main aims of the campaign was to appeal to a younger audience, while recognizing that heroin might be replaced by other drugs in the future,” O’Beirne said. “Digital assets were tested with middle and high school audiences, who are the main target audiences, and have provided a very positive response. Rollout of the campaign is planned throughout this spring.”
Digital Media brings together some of the university’s most talented students from a variety of majors to work on a team, she says.
“Winning ‘Best of Show’ is a direct reflection of the strong creative programs we have here at UAB in graphic design, music technology and media studies,” O’Beirne said.
So much of the work is engaged practice with the Birmingham community, which is made possible through partnerships with the university and a generation of students who want to make a difference in the world, says Department of Art and Art History Chair Lauren Lake, MFA.
The Project Lab logo by DAAH student Lisa Nguyen represents a partnership between the UAB School of Engineering, the Collat School of Business and the DAAH in which multidisciplinary student teams collaborate to create engineered and designed products, as well as business strategies for clients. The March Quilts logo by DAAH student Jonathan Niega represents the department’s partnership with Bib & Tucker Sew-Op and the Birmingham Museum of Art, celebrating the Selma to Montgomery march during the civil rights movement.
“This work is part of our community involvement. These students are involved in designs that transform the way we think about social issues. This year is unique in the number of winning projects that are community-engaged works. This is a pillar for the university, the college, and our department’s strategic goals and plans,” Lake said.
Silver ADDY student winners:
- Annual Report or Brochure category: Shiro Kuramata brochure by DAAH student Jonathan Niega and Ingo Maurer brochure by DAAH student Tori Absher
- Logo Design category: The March Quilts by Niega; Project Lab by DAAH student Lisa Nguyen
- Single category: Puppets in the Process by DAAH student Heather Garner
- Campaign category: Cahaba River Society C.L.E.A.N. Program by DAAH students Garner, Nyugen, Niega and Stephen Stark; and Young Faces of Birmingham by DAAH student Amber Gomez
- Sound Design category: “Uncomfortable?” by UAB Digital Media students Zach Walker and James Cody, Music Technology majors in the CAS Department of Music
Gold ADDY student winners:
- Packaging category: Sheep Tails by Absher
- Integrated Consumer Campaign: KNOW DOPE by Digital Media fellows Matthew Henton, Jeanette Vasquez, Walker, Samantha Richardson, Sarah Buckelew, Anissa Latham-Brown, Brodie Foster, Niega, Matt Drummond, Cody, Tyler Harris, Kayla McLaughlin, Raizel Coiman, Ben Jones, Razaq Kadri, Tierra Andrews, Jeremy Nelson, Stark, Garner and Heather Robinson
- Animation or Special Effects category: “Bad Medicine” by students Richardson, Robinson and Stark
- Sound Design category: “Bad Medicine” by UAB Digital Media student Walker
- Single category: UNESCO World Heritage Site Carlsbad Caverns by DAAH student Anna-Kate Marcrum