Friday's Package Workshop with Allyson Lack

The Nancy Clarvit Design Week 2010 concluded with a daylong package design workshop with Allyson Lack. Students designed a new package for Paddywax candles; the assignment was taken from one of Allyson's real-world creative briefs.

In total, there were more than 250 attendees to the week's events, a huge success for the first-ever Nancy Clarvit Design Week! Each event offered freebies for the attendees; from copies of Communication Arts' 50th Design Annual to Pixar posters and pens to paper samples to Paddywax candles, most students did not leave the week empty-handed. The University of Maryland Department of Art and Design Concentration faculty are indebted to these generous supporters as well as all of talented presenters, the company supporters. Finally, we send our heartfelt thanks to Nancy Clarvit for helping us make this happen.

Thursday's Events

Marc Thorpe, a UMD alum, architect and industrial designer, kicked off our Thursday events with a presentation about this multi-disciplinary work. Marc's proud father is Professor James Thorpe, below right, who introduced his son with a touching tale about the time Marc first became interested in design.


Thursday night concluded with an inspiring keynote by Allyson Lack, another UMD alum. Along with design, Allyson studied business and marketing while at UMD and she served as a great example of the potential for the Design and Innovation in Marketing Fellows program. Allyson found her calling for design in Prof. Thorpe's ARTT100 class and narrated how she benefited greatly from her knowledgeable, enthusiastic design teachers.

Wednesday's Events

Wednesday Tom Desmond and Kurt Waldo, above, shared paper beautiful goodies and need-to-know knowledge with our students.

Tuesday's Events

Tuesday's “lunch & learn” speaker was the talented Ted Lopez. One of the most impressive aspects of Ted's presentation was that he and the creative team at Eason Associates turned potentially dull, dry and boring publications—such as those for the Council of Insurance Agents & Brokers and the National Association of Convenience Stores— into lively, beautiful, smart and engaging designs. Ted iterated a mantra one of this teachers had passed on to him: “What's more exciting than risk?” He also told students: “Don't sell yourself short. You guys can kick ass if you want to!”


After his presentation, Ted worked with the students in Prof. Lozner's class with their magazine design assignments, offering his insight and suggestions to their projects.

Monday's Events

Our inaugural Nancy Clarvit Design Week has seen our Design Studio packed with students, plenty of pizza and lots of great design. Francheska Guerrero’s presentation type design was inspiring. The amount of work that goes into designing a single typeface can be overwhelming. Francheska showed us that she, like many other typeface designers, has the discipline to create functional and beautiful (and sometimes quirky) typefaces, such as Miss Sassy. Her presentation was a great kickoff to the week's events.


After Francheska's presentation, students tried their hand at creating logotypes through modifications of classic typefaces and explorations of new letterforms.



Later Monday afternoon, Professor Ruth Lozner's students showed off the presentations they made for Target and General Motors in two separate case studies. Plenty of research as well as stunning design and thoughtful suggestions and recommendations made their winning presentations so successful. Team members for the GM presentation were: Tiffany Lin, Brianne Macy, Ashlee Sasscer, and Cassie Stuper. Beth Summers, Kelly Lai, and Cassie Stuper made up the Target team.


From left: Kelly Lai, Brianne Macy, Cassie Stuper, Tiffany Lin, Prof. Ruth Lozner and Beth Summers.