Dunwoody College Students Win National Packaging Competition

Three pieces of marketing innovation led to a team of students from Dunwoody College of Technology Design & Graphics Technology earning two first place awards in the Annual Student Packaging Design Competition, hosted by the Association of Independent Corrugated Converters (AICC).

The competition, themed “Design to an Opportunity,” required teams to construct a three-part structural and graphic design project. Stephanie Burdorf, Charlotte LaCour, Jenna Weiler, Dan Mueller, Noah Rabinowitz, and Finn Pearson represented Dunwoody College of Technology at the event. The team rose to the top of the 27 colleges that participated with its entry, which included a standing display to market the college at events or on campus, a mailing envelope to send to prospective students, and a welcome kit for newly enrolled students.

According to the college’s website, the team combined in-house photographs, archived images from the 1920s, and the school’s centennial seal. Throughout the pieces, they used the college’s branding guidelines.

“We were judged on the creativity, marketability, design attributes, manufacturing, durability, and ease of assembly for the structure of all three projects,” said team leader Stephanie Burdorf in the Dunwoody College of Technology article. “We were also judged separately on the graphics of all three projects on how well they created a brand and tied-in with each other to give them all a similar look.”

Burdorf goes on to explain how the three portions of the entry chronologically follow the school’s enrollment steps. She says the standee rotates, providing an interactive experience and a maximized use of space for information. The envelope, she says, is a visually enticing element and doubles as a folder. The welcome kit was created to hold the various items distributed to new students on their first day of school. She says it was also purposely designed to fit into a locker, therefore increasing locker sales.

In the article, Burdorf says the team improved its skills across multiple areas of packaging.

“Not only have we all become more proficient with the Adobe and Esko programs and software, but we also all had a chance to work in a real-world setting,” she said. “We had to work as a team, follow a strict timeline, research on what was in place as well as what was needed, find materials, and work with different departments as well as industry partners.”

According to Dunwoody, this is the first time the Dunwoody Design & Graphics Technology has won a non-flexographic competition and this is its first international win. It is also the first time the program has won a competition with this many teams involved.

“Because of the timing of the competition, we are obliged to compete with first-year students, as no team member can participate after graduation, and the annual AICC deadline is in late June,” Principal Instructor and Faculty Advisor Pete Rivard said in the article. “The four-year universities with their graduate programs typically field teams with juniors, seniors, and even graduate students, each with successive years of competition experience. So this is an absolute David vs. Goliath story, if you amend the details to have David surrounded by dozens of Goliaths.”

The team also received some assistance from industry partners. Esko contributed design software, Liberty Carton-Golden Valley provided free corrugated board, Ambassador Press and The Bureau provided large format printing and CAD table time, and Dunwoody admissions and marketing staff members provided feedback on the entries.

Source: Dunwoody College of Technology.