Two Cal State Long Beach industrial design students were awarded $500 and an honorable mention at the international Planning and Visual Education 3-D Design Challenge in Las Vegas for their original store display.
Sophomore Ayako Otani and senior Kelvin Harly worked as a team to put together a design that was part of 12 finalists chosen from 190 entries submitted from around the world.
The competition was part of CSULB design professor Wesley Woelfel’s advanced 3-D computer design class, which allowed the students to work on the project on campus last semester.
This year, the Planning and Visual Education (PAVE) challenge required students to create a design for a cosmetic store display. Harly took advantage of the option of working with a partner and chose Otani, who knew more about cosmetics. They worked together to create a display for the Japanese makeup line Shu Umerea.
“The greatest advantage [of working together] was getting constant feedback,” Harly said.
According to Harly, they were inspired by the existing storefronts in Japan, which have a clean and simple design.
The cosmetic display revolves around the packaging of the makeup and presents the product in a sleek fashion.
The challenge took place at the Globalshop 2012 Conference in Las Vegas on Wednesday, and is the largest annual event for retail design in the world, Woelfel said.
The conference displayed student prototypes as well as designs from professionals, and gave the students and Woelfel a chance to view projects by big names such as Trader Joe’s, Whole Foods and Anthropology. The professional companies also saw the new ideas that students provided in the competition.
“At one point, they were all students,” Woelfel said. “They are able to see the up and coming designers and that fresh mentality.”
Other student projects came from schools around the world, including Georgia’s Savannah College of Art and Design, New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology, Seoul National University of Science and Technology in South Korea and Finland’s Kymenlaakso University of Applied Sciences.
“They got to see different perspectives from different students,” Woelfel said.