Wolfmother poster and album art by Keith Burnson

Last week, the second round of Artistik Envy - the online reality show about ten International Academy of Art and Design students competing to be named the best - focused on a 70s revival challenge. Two of the previous contestants Corey Garlow and Jerrodoemie Winters, were eliminated. (That’s not, in my opinion, to say they were the weakest competitors - I thought there were a couple of others who could just as easily have been cut. And, in fact, two weeks ago I voted for Corey - but apparently not everybody felt the same way. If you check out the site now, it looks as if another round of cuts have already been made, claiming Jovani Coleman and Rick Timpe as the latest designers to be auf’ed.)

I was not wowed by this week’s round of presentations - frankly, I thought people would really bring their game after the first installment. Two things I see a lot of: really literal interpretations of the challenge, both this week and last (e.g., so that some of the designs simply replicate or quote from the 70s without synthesizing anything new to say about the decade or relating it to the present), and poor typography choices.

Still, I think the show is a stroke of marketing brilliance. I would love to see a version of Artistik Envy that pitted students from different schools against each other. And to engage the business community a bit more (and perhaps encourage business leaders to take design more seriously and hire talented locals), I would love to see at least of the judges be a business executive with relatively little design experience.

Just in case you are dying to know, my votes this week would have gone to Keith Burnson (whose album cover and poster design are pictured above) and Kristi Lamons.