With the generous support funding from future and past Executing Vice Chancellors’ of
Academic Affairs, for the past three years, the Graphic Design department has been able to
take their students on annual excursion to a graphic design conference. This year, Professor
Leslie Doyle and Dr. Kok Cheow Yeoh returned to Creative South in Columbus, Georgia with four selected students: graduating seniors, Gabriel Robinson, Noelia Radke, and Ray Kimball, as well as Junior, Kayla Lewis.

The conference is centered around creative thinking, collaboration, and exploration in the field of art and design. During the three-day conference, we heard daily talks from leaders in the design field that are there to help educate, inspire, and reimagine the way
designers work and how they can develop team culture, morale, and united ways of thinking.
Unlike any other design conference, Creative South prides itself in nurturing personal
conversations with the creative community at all levels. It’s far more than just a networking
event. The conference exposes creative and marketing professionals (both freelance and
corporate), students, and novice design enthusiasts to key speakers on the subject of branding, marketing, and design.
This year the conference was held at the Columbus George Convention & Trade Center with the theme “After Hours.” Upon entering the venue, attendees were greeted with
a late show setup resembling The Tonight Show featuring Jimmy Fallon, including Creative
South’s own house band.

The conference was packed with various creative speakers mixed with fun late show styling
theatrics with the returning conference host, Andrew Hochradel, a brand identity designer,
Adobe mentor, and side comedian whether he knows it or not. Based on the assessments from the student attendees, the favorite speaker of the trip was Made by James with James Martin, best-selling author, public speaker, educator, and creative agency partner with Lincoln DesignCo. According to graduating senior Ray Kimball, James was “…a inspiring speaker, emphasizing the need to keep going forward and defining yourself as a designer and a person, lest other define you. He had practical advice about design practices with a framework of narrating a story, establishing a connection to the client/branding, defining the position of the work, and making all three of those aspects easy and relatable. James encouraged to always be learning and growing, and to value ourselves and our work.”

Other favorites included Orlando Arocena, a Mexican-Cuban American Vector artist also
known as Mexifunk; David Tann, Founder and Creative Director for Tantrum Agency; and
lastly, Kristy Campbell, founder of Pink Pony Creative, a branding and graphic design agency.
The latter being Leslie’s personal choice as well for best speaker, not only for the
unforgettable pink palette of her presentation, but for performing as her brand in every
aspect of her portrayal on stage to her organizational skills in presenting critical and
invaluable information to the crowd.

Noelia Radke, graduating student attendee had this to say of Pink Pony Creative, “She had a dynamic demeanor and overall had a great presentation where she explained her brand as well as how to create a strong brand. I hope to one day enter a career in brand identity design so it was interesting and helpful to learn
about branding in this talk.” Leslie and Kok Cheow would like to thank Academic Affairs and the Dean of the School of Arts & Letters for their generous support in making excursion opportunities possible for our students.

Gabriel Robinson, Noelia Radke, Kayla Lewis, and Ray Kimball with Creative South founder, Mike Jones.

Gabriel, Ray, Kayla, and Noelia at the Creative South Bridge Party.

Late show styling of the Creative South conference stage featuring Andrew Hochradel conversing with one of the speakers.

The two photographs above feature the Ink Wars event at the Creative South Bridge Party. The designers are participating in a design battle around the theme of “Secrets Revealed.” Each designer had their own secret that they had an hour to draw on the provided wooden canvases. Not shown is the crowd behind them cheering them on as the countdown continues.