Graphic design students collect 17 honors at national AIGA Flux Competition

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Seventeen designs by graphic design students in the Penn State Stuckeman School garnered honors at the 2020 AIGA Blue Ridge Flux Student Design Competition with one student earning a best in category award. Blake Thresher, a graduate student pursuing the master of fine arts in art degree with a concentration in graphic design in the Stuckeman School and the School of Visual Arts, earned the best in category award in the poster division with his design titled “A Marvelous Order.” The annual Flux competition recognizes exceptional design work from students across seven major categories: identity, packaging, poster, publication, social impact design, user experience/user interface (UX/UI) and video/motion graphics. Best in category and honorable mention awards are given in each in category while other selected designs receive honors. More than 750 entries were submitted by students in the 2020 competition with the creative jury recognizing 165 designs with awards and honors. Graduate student Anjana Padmakumar earned two honors for her work: one in the UX/UI category for her “Untitled” project and the other in the social impact category for her “Respiratory Cases” design, which illustrates the number of respiratory disease cases from 2005 to 2017 as a result of pollen. Padmakumar uses the design to demonstrate the increase in pollen over this time as a result of more spring days, which is ultimately caused by climate change. Fourth-year student Abigail Blend was recognized in the video/motion graphics category for her project titled “Forever USA: The 2020 USPS Crisis.” The one-minute video examines the nationwide delays in the U.S. Postal Service and its causes. New designs of existing books/publications by Rachel Smith, Victoria Millsap and Juliet DiCarlo were recognized in the publication category. In the UX/UI category, Samantha Chung earned individual honors for two of her projects, while Jacob Lawall, Lucas Sterrett and Alexander Rupp also received recognition for their individual submissions. Megan Tam picked up honors in the UX/UI and identity categories, respectively. Also in the identity category, Elinor Franklin and Taylor Kuszyk earned honors for their individual projects while Chung, Sterrett, Sarah Bodnar and Grace Southern were recognized for their group’s designs for the Pennsylvania Native Plant Society. All of the designs selected for the competition can be found on the Flux website. AIGA, the professional association for design, is the oldest and largest professional membership organization for design. For more Stuckeman School news, follow us on Twitter @StuckemanNews.