e-card 2010 – Our College Card has the Hallmark of Quality!
Our annual e-card competition is always a festive highlight and a chance for our students to work with top designers from the UK’s leading greeting card publisher, Hallmark.
The prestige of this professional connection should not be underestimated as Hallmark, which was founded back in 1910, invented the gift wrap industry in 1917 and has been at the forefront of innovations in greetings ever since. The company now publishes in more than thirty languages and distributes its products to more than a hundred countries. In addition to traditional greetings cards, Hallmark’s output includes gift wrap, gift bags, crackers, stationery, e-greetings and 3D gifts products with new technology constantly developing the industry. In Britain alone 2.2 billion cards are sent each year costing £1.07 billion. With more than 3000 UK employees, including more than 150 creatives, Hallmark boasts the largest creative resource in the industry.
Students from our BA (Hons) Graphic Design Illustration & Digital Media course were asked to create a compelling festive e-
card which would serve as the Bradford College official e-greeting to be sent to contacts throughout the world; be shown on the Big Screen in the city’s Centenary Square to pass our message to shoppers and revellers; and this year in a further step towards professionalism, stand alongside Hallmark’s own e-cards.
All the students accessed Hallmark’s Christmas Look Book to choose colour trends and get the feel for successful commercial products as well as watching show reels of company e-cards and other inspiring animation. To be briefed and have their work critiqued by Jo Marchbank, Hallmark’s Creative Director, and designers Tom Gill and Joe Maguire, was a terrific preparation for a career in a commercial studio; but this year Tom and Joe promised to spend further time working with the winners so that their cards could feature on Hallmark’s website too. For one lucky winner there was also the chance to spend two weeks on placement at the company, allowing them to gain invaluable experience and have a chance to impress the employer of their dreams!
Victoria Foggin was selected as the placement winner for her stop frame animation. You can read why and watch her fantastic card here
You can read about the selection of the official College e-card
You can play our official College e-card, created by Dan and Steve here
You can read about and watch the runner up card here
Jo Marchbank was delighted with the quality of all the work which she reckoned had “lots of variation and some really good story telling.” This wealth of ideas had made selection of prize winners difficult and all the final entries attracted praise. The fabulous dancing polar bear and reindeers of Matt Lamont, the snowman of Rachel Morris and the humour of Tom Hinchliffe’s cards which featured his own especially composed music were all very highly commended.
You can see Rachel's card here
Course Tutor, Paul Holmes, expressed his delight at all the completed entries and he noted that the students had been working on three other live briefs simultaneously and suggested that having to keep all the plates spinning was testing but realistic practice for working in a commercial studio environment.
The cards will be playing regularly on Bradford's Big Screen in Bradford from 14th until 31st December.