Entertainment Daily Salutes CSUF College of the Arts

Cal State Fullerton's College of the Arts has been awarded $10,000 from the Hollywood Reporter, in recognition of the college's commitment to and support of advancing entertainment art and advertising education.

The award, also presented to co-recipient UCLA, inaugurates the entertainment trade daily's addition of two student categories to its annual Key Art Awards, which honor the accomplishments of art directors, designers, illustrators, photographers and copywriters responsible for developing the art used in motion-picture marketing and promotion.

Open only to full-time students in California, the competition features movie poster and movie trailer categories. Six cash prizes totaling $22,000 will be awarded at the 31st annual Key Art Awards June 28. The entries will be on display tonight at a reception hosted by the Hollywood Reporter from 7-9 at the Hollywood History Museum, 1660 N. Highland Ave.

When the winners are announced next month, half of each prize will be presented to the winning student and half to the student's campus.

Among those serving on the awards' advisory board is CSUF alumnus Jeffrey Bacon, president of IdeaSpa Design & Marketing. Bacon is a former partner and creative director of the design division of Cimarron/Bacon/O'Brien, a Hollywood-based audio-visual and design group that specialized in the entertainment industry.

Plans for the award funds, says Jerry Samuelson, dean of the College of the Arts, will include "a publication about our involvement in entertainment art - something that will highlight some of our alumni - our connections to the entertainment industry and what we have going on in our program. We're very proud of the alumni who have graduated and have gone on to great success in entertainment art."

Samuelson and Robert Rosen, dean of UCLA's School of Theater, Film and Television, were enlisted to review the contest's guidelines and help promote the competition to various schools that offer components of an entertainment advertising program.

The more than 100 entries from 22 schools are being judged by entertainment-industry veterans - representatives from all the major movie studios and creative agencies that studios commission to develop marketing materials.

Inclusion of a student contest has been a goal for Bacon over the last three years. Subsequently, Hollywood Reporter publisher and editor-in-chief Robert Dowling stepped up to establish the Ken Art Awards collegiate fund on behalf of the publication by setting aside $25 from the entry fee collected for each Key Arts submission.

That Cal State Fullerton was easily affirmed as one of the recipients of the inaugural award by the advisory board, says Bacon, is "a credit to CSUF, that these executives realized the talent that has come out of the university. It was not a hard sell."

Media Contacts: Jerry Samuelson, College of the Arts, at (714) 278-3256
Gail Matsunaga, Public Affairs, at (714) 278-4851 or gmatsunaga@fullerton.edu