Industrial design and graphic design students will be up to their elbows in trash today and tomorrow at their annual Designing Green event in order to promote the use of recycled materials in design.
Teams of 12 students, half from each major, will be competing to create an abstract sculpture depicting surprising facts about trash and recycling.
Sculptures will be presented tomorrow to a panel of three judges.
Prizes will be awarded to the best communication, best use of materials and most fun sculptures.
The event will kick off today when each team competing will be given a fact about recycling.
Auburn recycling will then dump trash on Wallace Lawn and students will sort through old water bottles, Coke cans and newspapers to find the perfect used goods for their sculptures.
Then it is up to the team to create a sculpture that creatively represents the alarming facts given about recycling.
“We are trying to make (the competition) really open and creative,” said Louisa Stowers, an industrial design graduate student and treasurer of the Auburn chapter of Industrial Design Society of America.
Industrial design students have been competing in Designing Green competitions for a number of years.
However, this year graphic design students are being thrown into the mix of the design event.
The president of Auburn’s chapter of Industrial Design Society of America and senior industrial design student Coral Belanche said collaborating with graphic design students will help to bring a new twist to the event.
“I’m really excited about it, it is the first year to collaborate graphic design into it, and they can bring their creative skills,” Belanche said.
Landra Meagher, the secretary of Auburn’s chapter of Industrial Design Society of America and junior industrial design student, said she thought the collaboration between the graphic and industrial design majors would be good for the event.
“I think it will give it a new outlook,” Meagher said. “It will definitely be cool to work with them.”
Brigette Lesch, a senior graphic design student and president of Auburn’s chapter of American Institute for Graphic Arts, said the interaction between the two majors will help students learn from each other.
Lesch also said graphic design students were excited about the event.
Graphic design students, who complete most of their work on computers, will be able to put their fine arts abilities to use to design a creative sculpture.
“It will be fun for us not to use computers,” Lesch said.
“Going Green” has become a slogan around the United States, and the Designing Green event is meant to teach students about how that can be applied to their work as designers in their future careers.
“It shows us what we can do as designers,” Lesch said.
Meagher said she believes it will help the student body as a whole, not just industrial and graphic design majors.
“It shows us how important it is to use recycled goods,” Meagher said.
The Auburn student body is invited to come to Wallace Lawn to view the completed sculptures tomorrow at 1 p.m.
The designs will be judged by an industrial design professor, a graphic design professor and Dean of Students Johnny Green.
