Fashion design students compete in national Diet Coke challenge

Once again, Marist fashion design students are com­peting at a national level with great success.

In June 2012, the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) and Diet Coke entered into a partnership to launch the Diet Coke Young Designers Challenge.

The goal of the design challenge was to find the identifying graphic ele­ment that best supports their current STAYEXTRAORDINARY campaign and Diet Coke's recent can redesign.

Diet Coke made a permanent pack­aging design change to their cans. The design, created by Turner Duckworth, features a section of the Diet Coke logo, cropped to prominently feature the "D" and the 'k.' The can's color scheme, red and black on a silver background remains the same.

The context was open to designers from top fashion schools, and specifically asked for "an original 'extraordinary' graphic element for a woman's t-shirt that makes a statement about Diet Coke and those who drink it."

CFDA and Diet Coke asked that the students focus more on the graphic design rather than a text design.

The top 20 designs were chosen by fans casting their votes at online.

Four Marist students made the top 20 finalists: Renee Tomic, '15; Adele Jackson, '15; Victoria Schermerhorn '15; and Brianna Sherlock, '15.

After the nationwide voting, the win­ning T-shirt design and two runners-up were selected by big names in fashion including Vince Voron, associate vice president, strategic design and integrated marketing content, Coca-Cola North America, creative experts from Target and designers Zac Posen, Cynthia Rowley and L'Wren Scott.

Tomic's design was chosen as one of the two runners-up selected by the judging panel.

"This was my very first national design contest and I was really happy and proud of all the Marist fashion design students who placed in the Diet Coke CFDA contest," Tomic said. "Even though, there were a lot of limits and guidelines we had to follow, it was still really fun creat­ing my own t-shirt design. I have all my design teachers through the years past to thank, because of them I had the skills to develop my design."

She received a $2,500 scholarship. Jackson, Schermerhorn and Sherlock as finalists will each receive $250 scholarships.