Many thanks…

Last night’s event with Cameron Moll, “Good Designers vs. Great Designers”, hosted by Valencia’s Graphic Design Group, was remarkable. We opened our doors up to everyone and it was nice to see many of our students, faculty, alumni, as well as students from other schools in the area. Cameron gave a great presentation which included some great pointers on what separates a good designer from a great designer as well as insight into his “Wicked Worn” look and tips for freelancing. All in all I’d have to say that he offered one of the most impressive presentations we’ve seen at Valencia.

Now that the event has ended I certainly have a number of people to thank for helping make this event such a success. So here goes my many thanks…

• First and foremost, I’d like to extend our gratitude to Cameron Moll, who sacrificed his time to speak to our students. I know you’re a very busy person, so we are honored that you agreed to take time out of yor schedule to speak to our students. Again, your presentation was awesome and we couldn’t have asked for a more inspiring, motivational speaker. Cameron mentioned he’ll make his slides available soon so keep checking back on his site.
• Thanks to our Program Director, Barbara Peterson, who offered a lot of guidance to ensure this event was a success. She was also key in helping getting the refreshments ordered. Luckily the little scare we had the day prior to the event was worked out so that we could have refreshments available, again thanks Barbara for helping get that worked out.
• Thanks to Professor, Kristy Pennino, who was there when we felt the pressure of the possibility of this event exceeding 100 people. She wasted no time getting the Performing Arts Center reserved, which by the way was the ONLY night the PAC was available for the remainder of the semester.
• Thanks again to our event sponsors, Create Magazine, AIGA, and Ad2 for their continued support, which definitely helped make this event more of a success.
• Thanks to Jason Ellison, the current President of our Graphic Design Group, who helped manage students in their poster competition, he designed promotional collateral for the event, and played a big role in the planning of the event. Thanks also to Garrett Burtoft, the Vice President of GDG, who helped Jason throughout the planning process.
• We also owe Eddie Misicka and John Sousa a lot of gratitude for donating theme park tickets to Cameron. Eddie offered Cameron tickets to Universal Studios and John donated Sea World tickets. I am certain the Moll Family appreciates your generousity.
• Thanks to Daissy Linares for designing the event poster, she even made a second version.
• Thanks to all the members of the Graphic Design Group who were involved in planning and setting up for the event.
• If you missed the event, we were fortunate enough to have the support of Rob McCaffrey and some of his digital media students who recorded a video of the event. Rob, I can’t thank you enough for taking time out of your schedule to do this. Rob’s students will be working on editing the video and I hope to have it available online soon, so keep checking back, we’ll post something online once it becomes available. If any of you know much about podcasting or have any resources to share about getting video online I’d LOVE to hear from you, so post a comment if you have some advice. The video is estimated to be about 90 minutes.
• Thanks to GianCarlo Brand who’s went out of his way to offer photography support. Expect to see some of his shots soon in our flickr account.
• Thanks to Ann LaPietra and her staff who made things happen at the PAC. We appreciate you guys coming in on the weekend and ensuring the PAC was prepared for the event. Running the PAC, Ann gets to see a lot of speakers – she mentioned to Cameron that his presentation was one of the best she’s seen.
• And thanks to Cynthia Adams who has been working diligently on an article to be featured in our Valencia Source newspaper about our program and the Cameron Moll event. Expect to see it in an upcoming issue of the Source, so go check it out!

And last but not least – a big THANKS goes out to all of you who attended. We hope you all enjoyed the event. If you attended the event we’d love to hear your feedback.