Lisa Cobb
Published: April 28 2004
The artwork is detailed, imaginative, and compelling. According to Brenda Bischoff, director of Pensacola Earth Day, that is exactly what the 10-member Pensacola Earth Day Committee was looking for when they approached PJC’s Graphic Design Instructor Mark Hopkins for a student ad campaign for Earth Day.
“We wanted the artwork to catch the attention of the community,” Bischoff said.
It was PJC student Daniel Miller’s artwork that, in the end, caught the attention of the committee.
In need of designs for various means of advertisement, Bischoff approached Hopkins with the idea of his students competing for an ad campaign. Hopkins willingly accepted. “I usually have my students work up an ad campaign for fictitious organizations. This was an incredible opportunity for these students to be recognized in a huge way,” Hopkins said.
The campaign consisted of five different categories of design: a logo, a T-shirt, a billboard, a poster, and a Weekender layout for the Pensacola News Journal. Out of the 29 students competing, the winner would be judged on the entire package and not just one aspect of the project.
“We originally wanted something to reflect Pensacola and the beach, with lots of blues and greens,” Bischoff said. “However, the committee absolutely loved Daniel’s logo, and we were absolutely blown away by his poster.”
Miller formatted his design for the poster to look like a movie poster.
“People always look at movie posters, so I copied that idea,” Miller said.
On his winning poster, the words “Nothing is worth more than this day” float in space above the photo of the earth. Written in seven different languages on the face of the earth is “Earth Day.” Each language represented is written using a different font.
“I tried to match each language with a font that I felt represented that language,” Miller said.
Miller, who has been winning awards for his artwork since middle school, will be graduating from PJC with a multimedia degree in May. His plans eventually are to attend Savannah College of Art and Design for a masters in graphic design and with a goal to become a graphic design instructor at the college level.
In about a six-week period, the students worked on one aspect of the project each week. With the completion of each design, the Earth Day Committee would visit the visual arts department and critique the completed work. The final decision was made with each student’s campaign viewed individually. Bischoff said that it was a process of elimination, which took about three hours to complete.
“(It was) a very, very hard decision,” Bischoff said. “Our eternal gratitude goes to the PJC visual arts department. This project has been wonderful exposure for the students; however, it has been wonderful for us as well. This project has been a great example of community effort for Earth Day.”