The Triangle

Issue date: 6/2/06 Section: Entertainment

Media Credit: Mary Zuczek

For the past 35 years, there has been a competition run by The Hollywood Reporter to honor exceptional achievements in motion picture marketing. It is basically an Academy Awards of marketing. This competition is known as the Key Art Awards, and only recently has there been a student version of the competition, in fact it only became open to students four years ago and even then it was only open to students within California and New York. This year marks the first year that the competition is available to students from areas outside those two states. This years competition was quite rigorous yielding 288 entries from 29 schools, including Drexel's own Antoinette Westphal College of Media Arts and Design. In fact, AWCoMAD was the only school to yield more than one finalist. Stephen Viola is a finalist for his trailer and Marcella Zuczek for her poster design.

Both students have been granted this amazing opportunity thanks to the success of their designs. They are each one of three finalists in their genres, which gives them a worst-case scenario of winning $1000 and a best-case scenario of winning $7500 for first place. The awards will be handed out in a ceremony held at the Kodak Theatre in Los Angeles, June 16.

I had a chance to sit down with Marcy Zuczek about her poster's success. She told me that everyone in her graphic design class submitted two posters to the competition. She did not expect to have hers selected, but then again, she didn't really understand what it was that the competition entailed, so it was hard to know what to expect.

Zuczek said that her poster was an attempt to do something based on the film Sideways, after she'd watched it twice. She wanted to work on imagery about drinking wine and wineries. The main idea behind the poster was trying to keep it simple and to do something her own way, so it was hard to distance herself from ideas involving things like a wine glass or bottle.

"My whole class did really well in this competition," Zuczek said. She added that there were a lot of very good posters that she felt were better than hers.

When Zuczek received the unexpected call telling her that her poster had placed, she was stunned with surprise. She and Viola will take an all-expenses-paid trip to Los Angeles, where they will present their work in front of the other participants and the biggest names in studio marketing and management executives.

"It's pretty amazing that this audience of Hollywood movers and shakers will learn of the accomplishments of our students," said Allen Sabinson, dean of AWCoMAD. "And, of course, no other university yielded more than one finalist."

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