Auburn Students and Faculty Honored in UCDA Awards

The University & College Designers Association (UCDA) has an annual awards program to honor exceptional design work by communications professionals in the field of education. Each year UCDA presents awards to professionals in the categories of print, digital, illustration and photography and also holds a student competition. Two Graphic Design faculty members, Associate Professor Courtney Windham and Assistant Professor Mario Bocanegra, received awards for their design work as did over half a dozen Auburn students.

The competition was judged by a panel of 18 designers, design educators, photographers and illustrators who work in education. They evaluated 775 print and digital entries and gave out 151 awards, including Gold Awards, Silver Awards and Awards of Excellence as well as Honorable Mentions. Windham received one of only 13 Gold Awards, the competition’s highest honor, for her work as the graphic designer on the Rural Studio Identity Design and Style Guide booklet guide, an interdisciplinary collaboration between Rural Studio, the College of Architecture, Design and Construction and the College of Liberal Arts. Windham also received an Excellence Award for her 2018 Graphic Design Juried Show poster. Bocanegra won an Excellence Award for his poster promoting GDES 3220 Photo Communications, an elective course he taught at Auburn this past summer. He also won an Honorable Mention for his “Layered Landscape” Spring 2023 Showcase poster.

Several graphic design students also received awards. Windham’s student Catherine Johnson received an Honorable Mention for her Hypnois Poster and video and also won a Gold Award for the “Insomnia” website created for Assistant Professor Lee Clark’s class. Program Chair Robert Finkel’s students Anaiya Rubin and Caroline Lackey were recognized for their work in his class. Rubin won an Excellence Award for the Erudite App Design and Lackey received an Honorable Mention for Dôn Package Design. Rachel Johnson and Ashton Cameron, both students of Associate Professor Samantha Herbert, each received an Excellence Award. Johnson’s was for an Equal Justice Initiative poster and video and Cameron’s was for a Chanel No 5 poster and video. All winners’ work will be on display at UCDA’s annual conference in Santa Ana Pueblo, New Mexico, in mid-October.