Book review

Thinking Outside The Book

Students from Leeds College of Art were invited to submit their ideas for this year’s Student Book Awards. As it’s the 4th consecutive year the awards have been running, the brief asked the students to come up with something completely different. Julie Storey, Managing Director of the company said it didn’t necessarily need to be a press campaign and there were absolutely no restrictions. This really seemed to get the student’s creative juices flowing. The judges were Pete Camponi and Rick Ward top-level creative directors from Gratterpalm and Al Wightman who is MD of successful digital agency AWA. On the awards evening they were joined by Dave Bell who returned to give his feedback to the students and their campaigns. Pete Camponi said, “I am so impressed by the level of work that I would present them as they are to my clients”. Dave Bell added that some of the entries demonstrated a really high level of creative thinking. The winners on the night were Josh Donald and Amy Denny-Guerin who worked together to create a unique viral called, ‘I don’t like Mondays’. The team at the Book were so excited about the campaign that it has already been put on the web through social media sites including Twitter, FaceBook and YouTube. Second place was awarded to Charlotte Groves and in third place were Natalie Yem and Emma Highland. As the standard of entries was so good that commendations were given to 3 other pieces of work. Julie Storey said, “It’s always a pleasure to work with the students at Leeds College of Art. This year we’ve been really inspired by the work and it’s reassuring to know that there is some great talent set to join the industry over the next few years”. David Anderson who heads the course said, “In this modern age of technology, there are lots of ways of getting the message out to the media. Advertising is so much more than an advert in a newspaper on a billboard and learning about advertising on the BA Hons/Foundation Degree Advertising course means that the students are going to find out about all those avenues and a lot more.”