Day 12. Thursday 3.18am. Still trying to crack this brief I got from CUBED Communications to design the front cover of next year’s diary. This is my big opportunity. Must not fall aslee…

The University of Ballarat provides students with experiences and education to help them succeed in the real world. So to give them a taste of what it’s like to work in the industry, we gave them a live brief – design next year’s student diary cover.

To succeed, they needed to produce a design that would ‘wow’ a panel of esteemed judges, namely CUBED Creative Director Dave Scott, Valerie Runyan and Jeannie King from the University, as well as their lecturer, Gavin Nash.

Tough gig.

Especially since it had a set of real mandatory elements like brand guidelines to stick to.

No pie in the sky, do-whatever-I-like designs here.

Twenty-three designs were submitted to the judges.

But it was Kathryn Weightman, a second year student studying a Bachelor of Visual Arts (Graphic Design/Multi-Media) whose design made the biggest impression with the judges and came out on top. With a wood grain concept using knots to represent students who are surrounded by the bigger entity of a tree, Kathryn communicated how a diverse community has come together as one at the University.

For Kathryn, it’s proof that if you want to ‘Learn to succeed’ in the real world, the University of Ballarat is the place to go.

Tags: design, kathryn weightman, student diary, university of ballarat