Remembering CADC’s Original
Executive Director, Liz Talbot
Leaving a legacy of optimism, perseverance, courage and elegance, the CADC’s original Executive Director, Liz Talbot, passed away on December 12, 2009, after a long battle with cancer. Her daughters, Monica and Gwendolyn, and her husband, Paul Fischer, were at her side.
“Liz was the person who got me involved in the Club. She was always full of enthusiasm and helped to grow the Club,” said former president Michael Toti. ”She was a tremendous asset to the Club in its early days,” said former president Roxanne Bailey.
Liz grew up in Redding. She graduated from Joel Barlow High School and Manhattanville College, after which she worked at Vogue Magazine. Upon moving to Avon, she became a well-known photography stylist and became our first Executive Director. Subsequently, she developed a career in real estate, becoming a “Unique and Unusual Homes” specialist, before joining the corporate relocation industry as the President and CEO of The Talbot Group, launched in 2001 on the infamous September 11th. She transitioned into relocation upon the birth of her second daughter, attracted by what she thought (and later learned else wise) were “steadier hours.”
Liz was a lifetime member of Leadership Greater Hartford, and a member of WPO, WBENC, ERC, CUPA, and HRACC. She was a founding member of a Giving Circle in Hartford, volunteers with My Sisters Place and sat on the boards of the Cobb Montessori School and Junior Achievement. She was nominated both as Entrepreneur of the Year by NAWBO-CT and Remarkable Woman of the Year by the Hartford Business Journal. Her company has twice won the coveted Business Champions Award by the MetroHartford Alliance.
Liz was also a self-described collector of art. She loved to play classical piano, go to the theater and the opera, and surround herself with art works of all types.
Liz exemplified her company’s tagline, “Extraordinary. Every day.” She will be greatly missed.
Event Wrap-up: Back to Cool
The CADC’s Back to Cool events provided Connecticut’s creative community a chance to share a piece of recent work and catch up with their peers after the lazy days of summer.
The BTC North event, held at Hartford Fine Arts & Framing in East Hartford, had a fun crowd, good food and plenty of beer and wine to sustain guests for the night. Troy Monroe showed a game packaging by CO:LAB, designed for Hasbro, and Constanza Gowen-Segovia, also from CO:LAB, brought a board of photos from the Water for India Campaign done while at her time at the University of Hartford. The project, part of Design for Global Change, won third place in the AIGA ReDesign Awards ‘09, in the category of Student Social Responsibility.
Parker Hu, a designer who has also worked on Water for India, had this to say about the evening: “I really enjoyed talking to people at the CADC Back to Cool event. It was nice to meet people I’d been hearing about.”
The BTC South event, held at the Beach Cafe in Fairfield, also had a good crowd and particularly good appetizers.
On display was a direct mail piece for Mitchells of Westport, designed by David Cushman at WSAA, and a logo designed for the Melt sandwich shop, by Tracie Valentino of traciedesigns.
Dave Robinson, Account Manager at Preferred Printing in Trumbull, brought recent pieces from Conde Nast, Time Inc., Westport Country Playhouse, and Sacred Heart University that were printed by his firm. Dave offered a perfect summary of the night, “I had a nice time at the event last night. It was a good mix of talented, interesting people.”
Back to Cool was generously sponsored by Rena DeBortoli Design, LLC and CreativeNet Workgroup.
Outthink Takes “Best in Show” at our 34th Annual Awards Show
Outthink of Essex won “Best in Show” for their video piece “Building Revel.” In addition to the Best in Show, Outthink took home two Gold, three Silver and one Excellence Award.
Out of approximately 300 entries, 107 were awarded honors — including the Richard Hess Spirit of Creativity Award, 3 Judges’ Awards, 10 Gold, 42 Silver and 53 Awards of Excellence.
At the awards ceremony held at The Mystic Marinelife Aquarium in Mystic, we presented awards to firms from around the state, including:
CO: LAB of Hartford won the Richard Hess Spirit of Creativity Award, 2 Gold, 9 Silver and 5 Excellence Awards.
AARON KOTOWSKI PHOTOGRAPHY of New Haven took home 1 Judges Awards, 1 Gold, 2 Silver and 2 Awards of Excellence.
ELIZABETH PANKE DESIGN of Southington was presented 1 Judge’s Award, 1 Gold, and 1 Silver and 1 Excellence Award.
WSAA of Westport went home with 1 Judge’s Award and 1 Silver.
KEILER & COMPANY of Farmington won 8 awards — 3 Silver and 5 Excellence.
MASCOLA GROUP took home 6 awards — 4 Silver and 2 Excellence.
We will also be presenting a check to The Mystic Aquarium in support of their ongoing Marinelife Rescue Program.
Event Wrap-Up: Hot Sauce Label
Design Competition
The CADC held their first annual Hot Sauce Design Competition where all were welcome to submit their peppery visions of what a hot sauce label should look like. The name of the Hot Sauce was “Deadline Hot Sauce.” Most creatives know how hot-under-the-collar deadlines can make them, so naturally we had our name. The judging night (and all around general hanging out + merrymaking) was held Thursday, May 14th at Agave Grill in Hartford.
The Hot Sauce Headquarters donated the hot sauces as well as the prizes, their expert opinions for judging and a lot of insight for designers on how to constantly get involved with projects like this on a regular basis. The judges were: David Ashley and Chris McCarthy of The Innovative Company LLC, and Jamie Klim of Brand Creative.
The event was also sponsored by Appleton Coated Papers, a company that has helped many designers make their spicy-art-sauces look (and probably taste) even better.
The event was a great success and everyone had a great time. A big thank you to all of the people who donated their time+energy+money to put this on and let us not forget all those who submitted their designs to be ruthlessly judged (it wasn’t that bad, but it sounds so much better). Photos of all designs + the winners are below, please check them out.
The Winners
First Place: Deb Kline
Second Place: Shannon Brenek
Third Place: Beth Ann Strong
The Complete List of Participants
Holly Atkinson + Sebastian Brengle + Shannon Brenek + Rich Ciotti + Lane Cooper + David Cushman + Rena DeBortoli + Amie Fanning + Brian Grabell + Gary Holmes + Steve Habersang + Ken Hocker + Nastassia Johnson + Ben Jura + Tomasz Kazmierczak + Deb Kline + Lee Moody + Erik Nilson + Lisa Silva + Beth Ann Strong + Michael Toti + Brian Vogel + Patrick Yario
The event was such a hit that it looks like we’ll be having a round 2 sometime next year… stay posted for updates.
Event Wrap-up:
2009 Student Conference and Scholarship Competition
The 2009 Student Conference and Scholarship Competition, hosted by the CADC for over 20 years, was held on Saturday, April 25th at the Hartford Art School. Students and faculty from Quinnipiac University, Sacred Heart University, University of Bridgeport and The Hartford Art School attended.
The event kicked off with keynote speaker, Alexander Isley. Mr. Isley spoke of the passion he holds for design and encouraged students to be enthusiastic about their work and careers. To provide further inspiration, he showed recent work for A|X Armani Exchange and The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Following Mr. Isley was Rhode Island based photographer Rick Kononis, who showed work from his online portfolio and blog. Mr. Kononis also had advice for students, stressing the importance marketing and promotion.
The morning presentations continued with Dan Ben-Kiki, Art Director for ESPN, who wowed the crowd with an amazing capabilities video. He discussed the challenges and opportunities working in an in-house art department. Next, Connecticut resident, Gerard Huerta, designer of logos and logotypes, advised the students to work hard and spoke to the staying power of design. Huerta is the designer responsible for the iconic logos of AC/DC, HBO, Swiss Army, and the Type Directors Club. Following Mr. Huerta was Karl Smizer, Principal of Smizer Perry, a Connecticut marketing communications and design firm. Mr. Smizer presented his thoughts on the key traits of successful designers as well as his firm’s recent work. The morning sessions concluded with interactive designer, Glen Kennedy’s presentation on problem solving for online communications and the hottest social media trends.
Students continued to receive career advice during the afternoon sessions. These programs, each a half hour long, gave students a chance to be in smaller, more intimate groups. Students participated in a recent graduate panel discussion moderated by Deb Kline, Creative Director for Group 4 and HAVE Faculty. The panel consisted of five former students from Central University, Paier College of Art, Inc. and the Hartford Art School. Another afternoon session was Karl Heine’s “Designing a Design Career” which had been previously shown to students at RISD, Cooper Union and Syracuse University. His presentation gave students advice for landing that first job and how to develop their own identity. Mr. Heine is the Principal of creativeplacement, a Connecticut talent placement firm. Lee Moody, Account Manager for Mohawk Paper, also in the afternoon sessions, provided information on the latest greens trends in paper manufacturing and the company’s sustainability efforts. Students who attended these sessions received goody bags filled with design related items from House Industries, Veer, New Page, creativeplacement and Mohawk Fine Papers.
Five scholarships were awarded to students, whose portfolio demonstrated exceptional ability. The winners were:
DESIGN SCHOLARSHIP
Darcy St Onge
Hartford Art School, University of Hartford
DESIGN HONORABLE MENTION
Joshua Long
Hartford Art School, University of Hartford
ILLUSTRATION SCHOLARSHIP
Abigail Zambon
University of Bridgeport
ILLUSTRATION HONORABLE MENTION
Cassandra Ondich
Hartford Art School, University of Hartford
PHOTOGRAPHY HONORABLE MENTION
Crystal Cote
Hartford Art School, University of Hartford
Event Wrap-up: Webtastic!
Close to 40 people gathered at Bentara on October 29th, to learn more about the latest web technologies from Noble Desktop instructor, Dan Rodney.
Attendees had an opportunity to mingle and sample delicious Malaysian appetizers before the presentation. Dan started his presentation off with live examples of Adoble DreamWeaver’s Spry capabilities. The audience had a particularly good laugh when he showed the Adobe Spry technology on Quark’s web site.
Throughout his presentation Dan showed off an amazing range of tricks. He started off with an exercise in Fireworks to create interactive web pages for a client review and concluded with a demonstration of Adobe’s Spry technologies. After each topic there was a chance the audience to ask questions.
Dan Rodney is an Adobe certified instructor and full time instructor at Noble Desktop, LLC in New York. Noble Desktop has been teaching courses in desktop publishing and web design since 1991. Currently offered are comprehensive day and evening classes in QuarkXPress, Adobe InDesign, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, web site creation (featuring HTML and Adobe Dreamweaver), Adobe Flash and Final Cut Pro.
CADC members are eligible for a 15% discount on Noble Desktop classes.
Special thanks to Noble Desktop for their support of this event and the CADC.
Event Wrap-up:
An Evening with Marc Alt
A large crowd welcomed Marc Alt to Bentara on November 5th to address the serious issues of sustainability and the environment that are facing us all.
Marc is a founder of AIGA Center for Sustainable Design, has been involved with The Designers Accord since its inception, as well as Greener Gadgets. His main theme was that as designers we can no longer continue to focus on creating just great looking stuff, but rather that we need to join together with other designers (industrial designers, package designers, graphic designers, architects, engineers, etc.) to make informed decisions about the “stuff” that we design for a more sustainable society. While nobody claims to have all the answers, there is a lot of information available both in publications and on the internet for those who are interested.
Some of the individuals and organizations he highlighted were informative as well as eye-opening, including Greener Gadgets, Afrigadget, Project H Design, Nike Considered, Patagonia’s Footprint Chronicles, Steelcase, The Story of Stuff, Cooper Carry, Personal Environmental Impact Report, New Retail Experience, Herman Miller Chairs, and All The Top Design News.
Special thanks to Rideshare for sponsoring this event.
Event Wrap-up:
A Modern Dog in Hartford
Robynne Raye, a co-founder of Modern Dog Design Co., recently came to the Hartford Art School to talk about the hard work — and happy accidents — that went into the making of the acclaimed Seattle design group.
Since the beginnings of Modern Dog in 1987, Raye has continued to do work for entertainment and retail companies — both local and national — and counts poster, packaging and identity projects as some of her favorite work. Robynne has received recognition from every major design organization in the U.S. Her posters are represented in the permanent archives of the Louvre (Rohan Marsan wing), the Library of Congress, Hong Kong Heritage Museum, Bibliotheque Nationale de France, Museum Fur Kunst und Gewerbe, the Warsaw National Museum, and the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum among others. In March 2008, Chronicle Books published a 20 year retrospective focusing on Modern Dog’s poster work.
Her advice to students, gleaned from years of struggle and success? It’s all about balance. Look around at the world around you for inspiration, but be careful not to cross the line into stealing (and everyone knows where that is); stay true to the work, but be sure to respect what is appropriate for the client; and take risks, when you know that the reward may justify it.
Event Wrap-up: Will It Print?
Ever wonder what those crazy little Pantone handheld jobbies are for? Ever used one? Well, it turns out that they are pretty helpful and handy if you want the colors in your print job to come out as you intended. Know what the top 3 things are that can stop the Ripping process? What about how long it takes before the chips in your Pantone book start to fade? What’s the best color format to use that’s most universal and will work anywhere you’re printing?
All these things and more, were covered by the great team of presenters at Will it Print? held at Agave restaurant in Hartford, on October 9th.
Daniel Dejan, from Sappi papers, offers lectures in 17 different printing areas, and was a wealth of information. Julie Ogletree and Indiya Okam also spoke about Sappi’s line of papers. An extremely informative night, especially for those of us who depend on printing a brand’s true color across the broad spectrum of printing processes, substrates and printer locations. And who doesn’t?
Event Wrap-up: Fred & Friends
On September 25th, 2008, CADC presented Dishing Out Some Fun with Fred & Friends. A big thank you to Jason Amedolora, Design Director for Fred and Friends, for letting us into their fun and witty world.
Fred began in 2005 and their designs have been featured everywhere from Martha Stewart Living to “O” to the Today Show. Jason talked to us about what makes them tick, what inspires their ideas and how they package them to appeal to their market. They originally began as a toy company which naturally lead them to develop and pursue a unique kind of products that always produce a smile blending fun and function. Jason even shared some insight and a peek at few products they have on the development table. They design for themselves and hope that someone shares their sense of humor. Jason says, “People laugh at our stuff when they see it on the shelf, but they also buy it. Why? Because the joke’s not over.”
Thanks again to our event sponsors:
Synnott Imaging and Smizer Perry
Click the following links to see a sampling of the Fred and Friends products that were raffled away to lucky winners: Pick Your Nose, Beer Bands, Wooferang, and Snap-a-Party.
