Colorado Mesa University (CMU) recently took home first, fourth and fifth place awards from the Independent Cosmetic Manufacturers and Distributors (ICMAD) Association, as a part of their 2020 Young Designers Competition (YDC).
Among the award winners were design students Ben Haver, who took first place, Austin Draving in fourth and Sage Meyer in fifth.
Haver’s designs for his company name Foci, Haver’s designs for Gel Tox, and Meyer’s designs for Shiner.
They were able to take home three out of ten awards for the national competition against some of the top design schools in the nation.
Taking place in Los Angeles, the students got the opportunity to meet CEO’s of multimillion dollar companies, lawyers and professionals who work for the Food and Drug Association (FDA).
“It was kind of interesting because everyone that was there just kind of looked like normal people, but they were owners and CEOs of multimillion dollar companies. And so it’s just kind of intimidating seeing the names on the name tags like we met the lady that was the head of the cosmetics division for the FDA,” Haver said.
Both Haver and Draving reminisced on long nights spent working on design projects. “Lot of lost sleep a lot of frustration because I really enjoyed graphic design. This is a place to do it,” Draving said.
“You can change everything. Somebody will come up to [the design] and once you say it’s finished, change this and change, that I could go back and forth. Or you can go a completely different direction, like you said, it will never end,” Haver said.
For this specific assignment of designing packages, artists had to have their designs fleshed out all the way down to ingredients, bar codes and measurement numbers. Design Professor Eli Hall pushed his students to get to their best possible final project product
“Definitely try [design] if you even have the slightest interest, because I switched from a sports management major, and I wasn’t quite sure this is what I wanted to do,” Haver said. “So even if you don’t have 100% certainty that this is what you want to do, it’s something to try and easy to get attached,” Haver said.
Draving is currently unsure about what direction he would like to go with graphic design; he is currently designing for CMU’s marketing department on campus. He is currently considering continuing to do design for a career. Haver solidified his desire to go into packaging design after receiving first at the competition.
