By Marissa McCall, Staff Writer
This past Saturday, Jan. 27, a select group of St. Bonaventure’s American Advertising Federation (AAF) creative team traveled to The University of Buffalo for the 2018 BrandHack competition.
BrandHack is a competition run by the American Advertising Federation Buffalo, where teams of four or five must create a branded campaign for a local non-profit organization. Professional creative directors and St. Bonaventure alumnus, Andrew Bevevino, ‘16, ran the competition and each team was given a professional designer to assist with both the copy and art direction of the campaign. Students are given no prior information regarding the client prior to the day of the competition.
This year, the client was The Foundry, a non-profit based in Buffalo, which offers affordable rental space, mentoring, business classes, workshops and connections to local support businesses in the community.
The day’s task was to create a branded poster and a set of four icons that correspond with a woodshop, tech, textile and metal shop lab The Foundry offers.
Haley Schrenk, a senior journalism major, Diana McElfresh, a senior journalism and English double major, Emmy Kolbe, a senior journalism major, and myself, a senior journalism major, had five hours to create a set of icons, a poster, and copy to put on the poster. Chelsea Turton, a designer at Luminus Agency, was assigned to our team to assist us with our copy and art direction.
We were given a specific brand guide that detailed what colors to use, current logos and examples of what kind of art direction The Foundry was looking for.
After the five hours were up, we presented our campaign to a panel of judges, which included creative directors from the creative agencies Quinlan and 19 Ideas, a representative from The Foundry, and the other participants.
We competed against three teams: University at Buffalo, Hilbert College and Daemen College. Each team had students who study art, design, computer science, or advertising at their school.
St. Bonaventure placed as the runner up and each of us received a $10 gift card to Amazon. The first place team received a trophy in the shape of a rocket. St. Bonaventure may not have the resources the other schools might have, but we do have the best of the best and a hunger for success.
