Cast your vote! The good, the bad and the ugly adverts...

Doritos has extended the closing date for its 15 Seconds of Flavour advertising competition, with entrants now having until 21 June 2010 to submit their videos.

Doritos has made four 15-second television adverts to promote its new Collisions flavours but the ads are only half-finished. All entrants have to do is produce an innovative 15-second ending that cleverly refers to the dual nature of Doritos Collisions. After uploading their video clip to the website, they can make use of social networking tools to promote it.  Students of the Centre for Fine Art Animation and Design have submitted a number of entries. The art and design tertiary institution, based in Durban, teaches broadcast graphics, animation and advert production and editing.

Students have been encouraged to enter the Doritos competition to expose their talents. This is a good way to judge public opinion as the winners will be chosen through a public vote. Members of the public may also win their share of R20 000 in cash, merely by rating their favourite Doritos Collisions adverts submitted by South Africa's hottest young creative minds. View the adverts and cast your vote...

Apple beats Microsoft

The New York Times, May 26th 2010 reports that Apple now beats Microsoft. Apple is the world's most valuable tech company today, hitting a market cap of $227.1 billion to unseat Microsoft's $226.3 billion.
"Wall Street has called the end of an era and the beginning of the next one: The most important technology product no longer sits on your desk but rather fits in your hand...." More

Kindle from Amazon

Introducing Kindle™ Three years ago, Amazon set out to design and build an entirely new class of device—a convenient, portable reading device with the ability to wirelessly download books, blogs, magazines, and newspapers. The result is Amazon Kindle. The Kindle provides an exceptional reading experience. Thanks to electronic paper, a revolutionary new display technology, you’ll find reading Kindle’s screen is as sharp and natural as reading ink on paper—and nothing like the strain and glare of a computer screen. Kindle is also easy on the fingertips. It never becomes hot, and is designed for ambidextrous use so both “lefties” and “righties” can read comfortably at any angle for long periods of time.  Read more....

Poster Competition with Fur Free and YDE

Click to the COMPETITION page for  information on a poster competition sponsored by YDE to the value of R5000.00. 

 

The Young Artist Programme (Winter Vacation 2010)

The programme is an opportunity for youngsters between the ages of 10 to 18 years, to experience the atmosphere of college life and to express themselves creatively. Now in its tenth year, The Young Artist Programme provides young artists the chance to explore media and concepts not generally ...offered at school level. Students will be encouraged to develop their own way of seeing the world and to express this vision through a specific medium. Classes are kept small for individual attention, allowing students to work closely with the creative
instructors.

The Young Artist Programme will be run on the CFAD campus from the 12th to the 23rd June 2010. 

The Public Exhibition will be held at CFAD on 3rd July 2010.

Call Sasha 031 3052480 for registration details or www.cfad.co.za for more info. 

Vacancy: Graphic Designer

Wanted urgently. Full time position: Graphic Designer / DTP Operator for magazine layout and design. Chatsworth, Durban area. Contact Nishen of NT Designs Tel: 0835866790 

Comic, Illustrative and Book Arts

Founded in 2009, CCIBA is an interdisciplinary research, teaching and service institute based in the Department of Visual Arts at Stellenbosch University. The Centre is involved in the development, promotion and teaching of the various dimensions of Comic art, Illustration and Book Art. The Centre reports to the Board of the University’s Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences.

The Centre aims to extend and consolidate the work undertaken by a number of parallel and related initiatives that have taken place over the last five years: the Comics Brew Festival of International Comic Art; the TransAtlant-ink exhibition and the Young Cartoonist Project; the Stellenbosch University Department of Visual Arts programme and MPhil in Comic Art and Illustration; the establishment at the University of Stellenbosch Library of a Special Collection of Comic Art; the Durban Cartoon Project; and the Igubu Comics Project in Cape Town. Visit the website for more info and Calendar of activities: 

http://www.cciba.sun.ac.za/ 

Vacancy: Graphic Designer

Vacancy: graphic designer with coral draw, Photoshop and powerpoint experience for a contract position based in JHB.  The salary is R15 000.  If you are interested please send me your CV.

Tracy Wright
Parvana Strategic Resourcing
Phone: +27 21 761-3400
Fax: +27 21 761-3121
Email: tracy@parvana.co.uk

Profile of Nanda Soobben

A leading figure in South African arts and journalism; political cartoonist, Nanda Soobben has made a significant contribution to our society by using his artistic skill to make us smile. At the same time his editorial cartoons force us to consider the profound suffering and injustices that have marked our history as a nation. Nanda Soobben is an alumnus of the Durban University Of Technology, having completed his first qualification – a Diploma in Graphic Design – at the ML Sultan Technical College. In 2010 the Durban University of Technology conferred a doctorate on Soobben for his outstanding achievements and contributions.

Soobben has a rare and important gift: being able too engage his audience in a process of reflecting critically on society while making fun of our political leaders and ordinary citizens. Soobben has used his pen and ink more powerfully than the sword in bringing about change and transformation, and he has never hesitated to challenge the authorities in his personal mission to seek out and expose the truth. His book, Witness to a Decade! is a collection of editorial cartoons that is a critical look at South Africa's first ten years of democracy.

He won the 2009 Vodacom Journalist of the Year in the Kwazulu-Natal Cartoon Category. Soobben is an internationally acclaimed cartoonist and has had his socio-political statements, cartoons and illustrations published in newspapers such as the Post, Independent on Saturday, Daily News and the Sunday Tribune. His cartoons are also syndicated to major international newspapers and websites.

Previous honours include three international awards in 2007 alone. These comprised of a Special Congressional Recognition Award at the World Affairs Council, an Amnesty International Award for “showing leadership through his work”.

In 2008, he was awarded a Silver Tusk by the University of Technology Convocation. In 2009 he won the Heritage Award, sponsored by the Department of Arts and Culture.

Nanda Soobben’s career spans the era of the liberation struggle, and then the advent of democracy – he drew his first cartoon of Nelson Mandela when he was 22 and Mandela was still in prison. The cartoon centered on the dispute about who the country’s real president was – PW Botha of FW De Klerk? In the cartoon, Margaret Thatcher asks, “Why not Mandela?” Nelson Mandela has a collection of Soobben’s Mandela Cartoons that was presented to him as a birthday gift by movie entrepreneur Anant Singh.

The late South African academic and leading activist, Fatima Meer, wrote the following in the Preface to Soobben’s second book: “Nanda Soobben is the first cartoonist emerging from the previously disadvantaged communities of the apartheid era. His works is in itself a measure of our achievements as a democracy in the last decade”.

As a high profile “black” political cartoonist, Nanda Soobben worked throughout the years of apartheid under the watchful eye of the South African censors. His cartoons appeared in the alternative press, where he had to be very subtle to get his message across. Though he held a qualification in Graphic Design, he was unable to find a job because these were reserved as “whites only” positions. Instead, he worked as a sign writer in Durban. Finally, in 1980 he began as a cartoonist with Post Natal. Soobben has lived in Brazil and the United States and studied at the Parsons School of Design in New York and the San Francisco Art Institute.

 Soobben painted a series of watercolours for a groundbreaking exhibition called “Cato Manor – People Were Living There!”. This series of paintings told the story of forced removals and the Group Areas Act and how this impacted on the people of this once non racial part of Durban. Soobben made a presentation at the World Affairs Council in San Francisco entitled “My life as a black Political Cartoonist in Apartheid South Africa”. He also painted the mural for Eco 92 in Rio de Janeiro and a peace mural in New York, which was the subject of a documentary on ABC Television.

When he returned to South Africa after Mandela’s release he began his long – running cartoon, “The Otherside”, for The Natal Witness. In the 1990s Nanda Soobben produced cartoons for the Independent on Saturday.

South African journalist and business executive Kaizer Nyatsumba writes of Soobben: “To be counted among (apartheid’s) innumerable sins is the fact not only that hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of our darker hued South Africans’ innate talents lay undiscovered, but there is also ignoble fact that there are many others whose talents were not allowed to be displayed before a bigger audience and to flourish”.

In 1994 he founded the Centre for Fine Art Animation and Design in Durban.

About the Centre for Fine Art Animation and Design

The Centre for Fine Art, Animation and Design (CFAD) is a tertiary institution that offers training in Fine Art, Animation (2D and 3D) and Graphic Design.  The CFAD was established in 1994 by world-renowned cartoonist, illustrator and journalist Nanda Soobben.  Prior to the establishment of the CFAD various individuals approached Nanda Soobben with the desire to learn his skills.  It was from this need in the community that the institution was born. In recognition of his contribution to South African society and for establishing this institution, Nanda Soobben received the San Francisco Leadership Award. The Centre for Fine Art, Animation and Design has developed an integrated fine art, graphic design and animation diploma that equip artists with marketable skills.  In the past many fine art graduates found it difficult to secure jobs, however graduates of CFAD have found it easier to secure employment in the local printing, advertising and media industry.  Several successful graduates are now employed internationally.

Nanda Soobben, Krish Moodley, Academic Head of CFAD, and a team of dedicated artists and designers have developed the institution into a leading Centre of Design excellence in Durban.  Today, students from as far a field as the United States, Japan, India, Botswana and Zimbabwe are registered at the institution. As part of its commitment to quality education the institution is registered with the Department of Education, South African Qualifications Authority and the Council on Higher Education as a Private Higher Education Institution.

Students have found an enjoyable, creative and productive environment at the CFAD, where all the lecturers and support staff are established artists in their own fields. CFAD is a leader in the field of animation, where the latest technology is used to teach students how to produce traditional animation and broadcast quality animation.

Helvetica the Video

Helvetica is a feature-length independent film about typography, graphic design and global visual culture. It looks at the proliferation of one typeface (which celebrated its 50th birthday in 2007) as part of a larger conversation about the way type affects our lives. The film is an exploration of urban spaces in major cities and the type that inhabits them, and a fluid discussion with renowned designers
about their work, the creative process, and the choices and aesthetics behind their use of type. Helvetica encompasses the worlds of design, advertising, psychology, and communication, and invites us to take a second look at the thousands of words we see every day. Interviewees in Helvetica include some of the most illustrious and innovative names in the design world,

To read more or to purchase the video go to the Amazon Store

STOP MALARIA NOW! - Film Contest

You want to know how malaria affects people’s life in Africa and want to share this knowledge with others? You are between 18 and 25 years old? You are creative and motivated to work with an international film team?

STOP MALARIA NOW! - Film Contest