2008 Woodie Awards
Finding the key to success: senior wins design competition
Annemarie Valli
Issue date: 4/24/07 Section: Mosaic
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For senior visual communications major Sarah Rosenthal, the everyday jingle jangle did more than open her apartment door above Main Street's TCBY.
Inspiration from the gleaming heap of metal shapes combined with a graphic design challenge from The New York Times fueled Rosenthal to create an image worthy enough to don the March cover of Key, an annual Times real estate magazine.
She says the winning design, a series of colorful translucent images of overlapping keys, was crafted during a winter internship with 2x4, a graphic design firm in New York City.
Rosenthal says 2x4, as well as five other artists and studios, was commissioned by the Times to come up with an idea for the Key issue for which everyone in the office had an equal shot at winning the cover.
During the brainstorming process, she says studio employees were pulling out their keychains to render some sort of inspiration.
"Part of living in New York City is security," Rosenthal says. "It's never about one key, it's about 18 keys."
After a failed first round of critiques to her proposals, she says her second round of ideas struck 2x4 employees. One of her images made it into the top five sent to the Times.
"I thought about it as a stack of keys that you could see through," Rosenthal says. "Everyone agreed that it was a striking image."
She says the critique fell on the last day of her internship, but she kept in touch with art director Glen Cummings who told her the Times had chosen her design out of the five submitted. She says while back at school, the design went through a process of modifications including color additions and slight design tweaks by Cummings and second design intern Silvia Fantauzzi, a process requested by the Times before the magazine hit the cover.
"I assumed it wasn't on the cover because he said it wasn't on the cover," Rosenthal says. "And it's The New York Times."
She says her curiosity led her to check the Times Web site to see which design had secured the front page.
"That morning I got up early, hung-over after St. Patrick's Day, and went online to the Times Web site," she says. "I typed in 'Key' in the search and a big image of the key I designed popped up and I started freaking out."
Rosenthal says she was astonished to see her image on the cover and wanted to get her hands on an actual copy.
"I grabbed my shoes, still in my PJs and ran downstairs to the newsstand," she says. "I opened the paper, flipped to the Times magazine and started jumping up and down."
But the St. Louis native says her artistic flair and interest in visual communications would have seeped through the cracks without a pre-college admissions slip-up.
"I came to Decision Day and they gave me the wrong folder," she says. "It was Erin Rosenthal instead of Sarah Erin Rosenthal."
Rosenthal, an intended communications major, says she discovered the mishap while already running late to the visual communications seminar.
She says although unfamiliar with what visual communications encompassed, she went ahead and attended the seminar because of its appealing description.
"I didn't even know graphic design existed," Rosenthal says.
Past experience as a photographer and photo editor for her high school newspaper and yearbook intrigued her visual personality, but she says she continually swayed between a creative design or writing future.
"For a while I thought I might want to be a photojournalist," Rosenthal says. "I was caught in the middle."
She says the Decision Day mix-up ultimately changed her mind, as well as her major, to visual communications.
During a trip to New York City with the visual communications department to scope out various designers, she says was immediately drawn to 2x4's style.
Rosenthal says a class assignment following the visit required students to develop a creative thank you note for the firm.
"I thought it was cliché, but appropriate, to take a piece of wood - a 2x4, and screen print 'Thank you' on it," Rosenthal says.
A quote from Andy Warhol, "Art is what you can get away with," was stenciled on the top of the block, she says.
Rosenthal says she addressed the block and took it to the post office to be stamped and shipped.
"I put eight stamps right on the piece of wood and crossed my fingers that it would get there," she says.
Rosenthal says a follow-up e-mail inquiry to the firm about an internship was initially declined by director of operations Hunter Tura, but a lingering hope grew from his interest in another portfolio project of hers, a poster that said, "Make Beats, Not War."
"He said, 'Sorry, we're not interested, we don't have enough space. But on another note, this might sound strange, but would you sell me your Beats poster?' " she says.
After some friendly nudging and suggestion from university art professor Ashley Pigford, Rosenthal says her witty e-mail response struck a beat with him.
"I e-mailed him back with, 'I'll sell it back to you for an internship,' and he wrote back, 'Touché!' " she says.
Rosenthal says his one-word response left her puzzled, but motivated her to take the next creative step at winning him over.
She says she took her father's advice and made a bold move.
"He told me, 'You shouldn't just send the poster, you should overnight it so it's on his desk the next day,' " Rosenthal says.
After interviewing with the firm during her next New York visit, she says she worked in the office for the month of January and was given the opportunity to design the graphic for the Key publication.
Although her future plans don't predict a job in the city that never sleeps, she says she soaked in every bit that her internship had to offer.
"During January, my life was graphic design," Rosenthal says. "But that's what I was there for."
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