New Talent: Portfolio Center Doles Out Gold Award-Winning Students

Portfolio Center has done an excellent job of fostering award-winning work

Honing a student’s skills takes considerable patience and talent. It’s a give-and-go relationship, one in which trust is exchanged between both parties. The professor must believe that their advice and guidance is being absorbed while the student must give themselves up to the process of being mentored. And it seems that the Portfolio Center has figured out how to catalyze that relationship to an award-winning degree.

Professors Michael West and Scott Lowden have helped student Britney Kidd to create a tantalizing series of photographic works entitled Laundry Lounge (ABOVE). Using artificial light and an anachronistic aesthetic, Kidd and her professors created a mesmerizing combination of contemporary and retro visualizations that speak to a bygone Americana.

Professor Hank Richardson and student Madison DeFilippis’ Chair of Hope (ABOVE, LEFT) is a similarly mesmerizing design, one that is tinged with personalized history. DeFilippis‘ design is one that is inspired by her recent loss of her father, one that she envisioned would ultimately “make even the most hopeless cynic have a little bit of hope and light in their heart.”

Hank Richardson continues his mentorship with student Anna Riethman in her work, An Imperfect Chair (ABOVE, RIGHT). Incorporating both Design History and Modernism, Richardson and Riethman created a slanted chair that examined Riethman’s “ongoing struggle with striving for unattainable perfection.” The asymmetrical design is one that is as wondrous as it is innovative.

Be sure to submit your work to Graphis’ Annual New Talent Competition before the looming October 9 deadline! Winners will have the opportunity to see their work published on our website, blog, newsletter, and social media platforms.