Design Slam, an annual AIGA student design event and digital competition, was held at the Rocky Mountain College of Art & Design on Friday, October 23. This evening event featured students from around the state – as well as out of state – ready to compete. Schools in attendance were Rocky Mountain College of Art & Design, Fort Lewis College, Art Institute of Colorado, Metro State University Of Denver, Wichita State University, University of Colorado Denver, University of Northern Colorado, Front Range Community College, Arapahoe Community College and Aims Community College. From these ten schools a crowd of supporting educators, featured sponsors and and anxious students awaited the challenge.

Imagine Iron Chef for designers. A stage was in the Mary Harris Auditorium composed of four large screens connected to working computer stations. Sixteen students were selected at random, as panel of judges gave four timed challenges to see who would prevail at the end of each round. As these twenty-minute rounds commenced, students from respective schools would cheer, encourage and shout out recommendations to students as they compete digitally. “Command Z!” “Use purple!” “Why are you using that typeface?” Topics from the judges included identity, packaging and poster design for problem solving.

At the end of it it all, only one student could prevail and become the Grand Champion of Design Slam. Emily Shirtz, junior Communication Design major at Fort Lewis College walked away with victory, bragging rights and an annual subscription of Adobe Creative Cloud.

A thank you to all the design students who came to the event, students that competed, the event organizers and all Rocky Mountain College of Art & Design. A special thank you to our judges: Kelsey Fagan of Spin Creative, David Finkelstein of Karsh/Hagan and Seth Haller, student recipient of the 2015 Robert Taylor Scholarship.

Sharpen your skills and we’ll see you next year!

Courtesy of AIGA Awards Chair Shawn Meek.