The show is presented by The One Club, an international nonprofit organization that has recognized inventive print, television, radio, outdoor and other advertising and marketing work for more than 30 years. Selected by award-winning creative directors, art directors and copywriters, this year’s 80 winning pieces were culled from a crop of approximately 17,000 entries from 55 countries.


“The winners were just given their gold, silver and bronze pencils at an awards ceremony in New York in May, and we’re the show’s first venue after New York,” said Pamela Hemzik, chair of music, art and communications at York College. “This exhibit is hot off the presses.”


After the York exhibit, the show will travel to Canada, Japan, Brazil, China, South Africa and other spots around the world. Hemzik said the show’s appeal comes from the innovative spirit it represents.


“Ideas are hard to come by, and you have to work to uncover them. What’s really great about the show is how creative and how individualistic each of the designers are,” she said.


Indeed, the advertising industry has come a long way since Mr. Palmer served up his modest ads with a lump or two of coal. While the first print advertisements consisted of little more than a few lines of text, Hemzik noted that today’s campaigns have got to work a lot harder to make an impression.


“We’re barraged with thousands of images from the advertising industry each day. There’s a certain level of immunity that we’ve developed, so that we don’t notice a lot of advertising,” Hemzik said. “Advertising has to take more risks. You see that in this exhibit. There are very strange juxtapositions of images, and typography that one just doesn’t normally come into contact with.”


And it’s not just about design and typography. “The photographs are exceptional, really stunning,” she said.


Each of the 80 pieces represents an innovative photographic or design technique. Sometimes, simple is best. Viewers will learn, for example, how one designer took a ragged blank sheet of drawing paper ripped out of a sketchbook and transformed it into an eloquent design for an ecological organization, or how a vintage circus poster inspired a very modern, well-circulated advertisement for Altoids mints.


“It’s great when the students can see advertisements they recognize,” Hemzik said, referring to the Altoids ad. “It shows the print advertising business in action.”


Of course, such newspaper, magazine, billboard and other print advertisements are only a small portion of the ads that surround us each day. Those who can hum an astonishing repertoire of television jingles from years past might want to check out this year’s television ad winners, in a Sept. 13 presentation by One Club executive director Mary Warlick.


A public-relations manager and professor of advertising who has authored a book on the subject, Warlick will offer her expert commentary as she screens this year’s television ad winners in the recital hall of York College’s Evelyn and Earle Wolf Hall. The free event begins at 7 p.m. and is open to the public.


Hemzik said she expects the exhibit as a whole to kick off her students’ school year with a rousing burst of creativity.


“Anybody can learn software. Anybody can learn how to use a brush. Anybody can learn the mechanics of design. But that doesn’t make you a good designer at all,” she said. “I think the fact that there are many Web pages out there that are not of outstanding design really speaks to that.


“We want our students to see the level of creativity and the risk-taking that good designers are willing to take, and the great leaps in creativity that the great designers make. There are some remarkably sophisticated ideas in this exhibit. I think it will be inspiring.”


“The One Show” opens at 7 p.m. Wednesday at York College Galleries on the first floor of Evelyn and Earle Wolf Hall. The galleries are open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Wednesday and noon to 5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. For directions to the college or for more information about the exhibit, visit www. ycp.edu or call 815-1528. blog comments powered by Disqus