Langara College Promotes Rethink Scholarship Contest With Video

These past few weeks one name in the previous post about the Grammy Award nominees and winners has been tweeted and blogged about quite intensively. Rethink Communications – credited as the communication agency responsible for the pretty impressive Splitting Adam album cover – have created a very popular ad promoting the Rethink Scholarship at Langara 2010 Call for Entries. Last week BestAds.com selected the video as its best TV ad of the week, and it was lauded in The Globe And Mail.
The Canadian newspaper may ring a bell with type aficionados – three years ago it was redesigned by Editorial Design Director David Pratt and Assistant Art Director David Woodside, using custom typefaces by Nick Shinn. The serif leg of the type system is now commercially available as Pratt.

Langara College in Vancouver, Canada, and Rethink Communications are once again offering an $18,000 scholarship to aspiring art directors and designers. The lucky winner will receive full tuition to Langara College’s two-year full-time Communication and Ideation (CID) program as well as a 3-month internship at Rethink Communications. This Vancouver-based agency specialises in big ideas for online, design, and advertising. It handles strategy, creative, and production for clients locally, regionally, and nationally. And uses Adrian Frutiger’s Vectora on its website. Ian Grais from Rethink explains:

We’ve partnered with Langara College to offer one scholarship per year for their new Communication and Ideation program. It’s a great way to get free tuition to one of BC’s best design and art direction programs. There’s always a demand for talented people to create new and inspired design.

Creative individuals are invited to submit a black hard cover sketchbook showcasing their creativity. The winner will be selected by members of Rethink and Langara College, and will be judged according to the following criteria: clarity, relevance, fresh thinking, as well as quality of ideas, craft, and execution. All books must be submitted by June 1, 2010.

We are pleased to be able to offer this opportunity as we feel it addresses our aim in assisting aspiring designers to achieve even more through their education. It also supports our mission of stronger relationships with the design and advertising industry,

says Shelley Gruendler, Program Coordinator of the CID program. This program is a modern holistic educational approach to the graphic design, art direction, advertising, and creative industries. Langara College provides University-transfer, Career, and Continuing Studies programs and courses to more than 19,000 students annually.

Rethink Scholarship at Langara 2010 Call for Entries from Rory O'Sullivan and Simon Bruyn on Vimeo.

Doubling as an inspirational piece, Rethink has developed a video as a call for submissions. Produced by Rory O’Sullivan and Simon Bruyn, the video was posted various sites. It is an exploratory journey through an artist’s black sketchbook, with original music provided by Chris Serravalle, a Langara Electronic Music Production graduate. The obvious low budget production is surprising and bustles with creativity. It’s wonderfully appropriate, as it quite literally shows the students what can be done with limited resources and unlimited imagination.

The makers have made the most of the simplest of graphic devices – the black book with blank pages – pushing the possibilities of the medium to the max. Unlike last year’s video that used stop motion – see the bottom of this post –, this year’s piece simply is an accelerated recording of a person physically turning and manipulating the pages. Amongst others it incorporates inventive pop-up techniques, and unexpected experiments with lighting. The book is entirely hand crafted, featuring some beautiful hand renditions of type. I particularly like the perfect marriage between the content and how it is visualised, often quite literally.

There are also a number of print ads for the Rethink Scholarship. Although they share the same aesthetic and look very nice, the still images are understandable lacking in the awesomeness department when compared to the cracking video.

Rethink Scholarship at Langara 2009 Call for Entries

Tags: Canada, education, hand drawn, Langara College, television, video