The verdict is in: Peter Chen, Graphic Design Certificate student from California, USA, is the winner of the Urban Word NYC winter design competition!

Peter Chen's winning design—click here to see all of his final pieces

The project was ambitious: Students were asked to design a full suite of promotional and marketing materials for the 6th Annual Teen Poetry Slam, an eleven-day event produced by the New York-based non-profit organization Urban Word.

The competition unfolded in several stages. First, the 120 competition entrants were asked to design a logo and postcard. A deluge of creative entries flooded in, and five entrants with outstanding submissions were selected as finalists. Each finalist received a round of feedback from the client and Sessions Faculty members, then competed against a tight deadline to produce the winning solution. That's when the real work began.

Round Two: Back to the Drawing Board

Even with all this positive feedback, Peter still needed to go back to the drawing board and make revisions. "We wanted to see if he could shake up his design on the postcard a bit, says Weiss, "make it more bold. The Teen Poetry Slam isn't a conservative event at all—it's very in-your-face, and we wanted to make sure the postcard had that feeling."

Peter's second submission definitely achieved this goal. He enlarged the logo and image, adding diagonal elements to make the composition more dynamic. He also broke apart the logo from the image of the poet on the right, fulfilling another one of the client's requests: "We wanted the logo to stand alone and not be dependent on that image for recognition," says Jen. The integrity of Peter's logo was clear even when separated from the image. It could stand alone on the strength of the type choices Peter had made.

Round 2: a bolder, more dynamic postcard....

and he separated the logo from the illustration.

Along with the revised postcard, Peter submitted his poster and sticker designs. These showed how well he was able to translate his original vision to these other pieces. "The finalists are all at a level of craft where they are able to create a cohesive look between pieces," says Sessions Faculty member Nomi Altabef. "Peter did this and also added ingenuity to his new pieces, using the extra space of the poster to include thumbnail images mapping the location of each slam event." That especially caught the client's eye. "Not only was it informative, says Jen, "but the way it looked really reinforced the NYC vibe, which is so important to the event and to the organization as a whole."

The sticker presented another unique challenge, because the client wanted the sticker to serve two functions: to convey the branding of the Teen Poetry Slam and, more importantly, to represent the Urban Word NYC organization as a whole. The Urban Word NYC logo had to be prominently featured. Fortunately Peter had done his homework and made sure that his work fit with the already-established look of Urban Word NYC as shown on the client's Web site.

Round Three: Some Client Concerns

In the course of making many vast improvements, the changes also raised some new concerns with the client. "He added the wire fence, which was this great diagonal that made the composition work really well, but we were worried that the fence made it look like the poet was on some kind of military base," comments Jen. Compounding that concern were some problems with the image: "In the image of the poet he used, there was no microphone, no evidence that this was an image of a spoken-word performance—it just looked like an angry youth with his fist in the air."

These two elements took the design too far from its goal: communicating the idea of a competitive poetry event. Jen explained, "As an urban youth organization, we really have to be sensitive to this—it's crucial that we make it clear we're an organization that promotes creativity and community through performance. We didn't want it just to look like he was shouting; it had to be clear that he was performing."

Round Four: Back to the Drawing Board (again!)

Peter was presented with the client's concerns and asked to make more revisions, and for a moment he felt completely swamped. "I understood what the client was saying, and I had even wondered about those same issues, but felt like I was going to have to redo my whole design, and I just didn't know how I could possibly begin again after I'd come so far." Working under extreme time pressure—only one day to submit the revisions—Peter showed problem-solving skills that will take him far in his career. "He came back with such strong solutions, we were really impressed," says Jen Weiss. Rather than scrap the image, he simply added a microphone to it, and swapped the wire fence for an image of the Brooklyn Bridge. "I tried to keep the same diagonal element, says Peter, "but go for something that was more quintessential New York." Bingo—it came together exactly as the client hoped, and elevated the design to a much higher level of communication.

Here is the complete suite of products—a few minor text changes, and then they go to print!

What does Peter have to look forward to now? Four more hectic days of finalizing the designs before the work goes to print. And then, of course, there will be the excitement every designer treasures: seeing his work in printed form. "Thank you for choosing me!" Peter told the client. "I'm so excited to work with you on the Teen Poetry Slam. Having previously worked with urban youth, this project has special meaning to me."

We will be posting photos of the final pieces once printed, so check back to this page. For now, congratulations to Peter Chen!