Department of Design

“There were puffins flying off the edge of the cliff,” says photography major Sylvia Busteed Magleby (BFA ’20), who worked feverishly to capture Múlafossur Waterfall and the Faroe Islands village of Gásadalur behind it, bathed in fading golden-hour sunlight. She carefully balanced her camera on the wooden stem of a fence to take the snap, bracing against the chilly seaside winds. “This image captures the magic of the Faroe Islands,” says Magleby. “I did not know such a beautiful place existed.” Read more at magazine.byu.edu

Lexi Nilson and two others created the book “Jane Was Here” using funds received from a Laycock Grant while students at BYU

Shreenan’s project was inspired by a 2019 visit to the Color Factory Interactive Museum in New York City

Department of Design graduate Andy Erekson released short film “Marooned” last summer

Schill — a South Carolina native — will graduate with a BFA in photography and a BA in sociocultural anthropology on April 24, 2020

Jones — a native of Midland, Michigan — will graduate with a BFA in animation on April 24, 2020

2017 BFA graduates Hannah Decker and Adam Rallison share their experiences with fundraising project Australi-Aid

Graduating photography student’s winning shot will be published in acclaimed Photo District News magazine

Thomas discusses how typefaces are beautiful storytellers

On a picturesque seaside knoll, a peaceful dragon is mowing his lawn when Vikings arrive in the bay below. Eager to greet them, the monster brings homemade cookies. But his new neighbors aren’t having it. So begins the 8-minute BYU student animation Grendel, which won gold at the 46th Annual Student Academy Awards. Here student director Kalee S. McCollaum (BA ’18) shares the backstory. How did the story of Grendel get chosen? Grendel, a twist on the Beowulf legend, was originally pitched in storyboard form by animation student Erik K. Hansen (BA ’18). As he went through the slides and added explanations to the visuals, we were all laughing and felt the idea had a good amount of heart and potential. Read the entire Q&A in BYU Magazine's Winter 2020 issue.

Raised in Moscow, Idaho, John P. Snyder (’99) was shaped by the landscape around him. “The hills of the Palouse region of Idaho are the residue of violent processes. Airborne dust from volcanoes, massive floods, and glaciation built soil that has become one of the world’s most productive agricultural areas,” notes Snyder. “I grew up looking out into the undulating hills and wondering, ‘What is out there?’” It’s a question the former BYU photographer is still trying to answer. After years of shooting images of BYU’s campus, people, and happenings (1984–99), including innumerable images published in this magazine, he moved back to Idaho in 2007 to explore the contours and preserve the spirit of his homeland. Read the entire article in BYU Magazine's Winter 2020 issue.

Robert Machoian Graham has seen four of his past films make it to Sundance. The latest marks the first time one of his full-length films has been accepted.

Designers explain the thought process behind their project “Unity & Division”

The Utah map is endowed with a significant number of scriptural monikers, some of which will be familiar to readers of the Bible while others are unique to the Book of Mormon. These are at the heart of Daniel George’s project, God to Go West. George is a professor of art at BYU who received his MFA from the Savannah College of Art and Design and his BFA from BYU-Idaho. For his project, he has photographed a score of locations in Utah that bear scriptural names given to them by early settlers from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Few of these black-and-white photographs are striking, the range of grays eschewing any sense of black so that shadows and highlights disappear or become negligible (George’s is definitely not Ansel Adams’ high-contrast vision of the West). Benefit of the doubt suggests this is not due to a lack of skill but to a purposeful strategy — a desire to emphasize the semantic rather than the aesthetic nature of George’s project. Read the full story by Shawn Rossiter at artistsofutah.org.

Florence Pestrikoff flew from her remote home in Akhiok on Alaska’s Kodiak Island to have her picture taken. Her BYU photographers came even farther—driving more than 40 hours and riding a ferry for 10. And now her image is on display 3,500 miles away in the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery. Pestrikoff is one of the last speakers of Alutiiq, an endangered language in the Aleutian Islands of Alaska, and one of 16 people photographed so far by recent BYU photography grad Jordan K. Layton (BFA ’17) and professor Paul S. Adams (BFA ’94) for their ongoing project, Vanishing Voices. Vanishing Voices began as Layton’s capstone project, inspired by his realization that hundreds of languages are disappearing in North America alone. Read more at magazine.byu.edu http://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=2&v=_1tll0J8GCY&feature=emb_logo

The BYU graphic design alum and Punchcut cofounder shared advice for an innovative career with students in the College of Fine Arts and Communications

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=2&v=_1tll0J8GCY This fall a new exhibit at the Smithsonian Museum features 46 portraits taken from photographers all across the country. But only one of the 46 pieces of art displays not one, but two artist names: Paul Adams, a BYU professor, and Jordan Layton, a former photography student. Their work will be presented in “The Outwin 2019: American Portraiture Today,” a major exhibition premiering at the National Portrait Gallery. Every three years, artists living and working in the United States are invited to submit one of their recent portraits to a panel of experts chosen by the museum. The works of this year’s 46 finalists were selected from over 2,600 entries. The BYU duo’s portrait that is accepted for display in the Smithsonian is called Florence, one of the last speakers of Alutiq. It is a piece from their project “Vanishing Voices” and will hang in the National Portrait Gallery for a year and a half before going on tour for two years. Read more at news.byu.edu

https://vimeo.com/295876694 BYU’s highly esteemed Center for Animation became even more reputable when the short film “Grendel,” directed and produced by BYU animation students, recently won its sixth Student Academy Award. This year, the Student Academy Awards competition received a total of 1,615 entries from 255 domestic and 105 international colleges and universities. Only 16 entries received an award. Student director Kalee McCollaum and student producer Austin Rodriguez worked with approximately 40 students to make this film a reality. Thousands of hours went into the project which was supervised by professors Kelly Loosli and R. Brent Adams. The story of “Grendel” is a reverse telling of the classic Beowulf tale where Grendel, the friendly monster in the film, is joined by rowdy Viking neighbors who harass him. He slowly starts to retaliate until he realizes he’s the one who has become the monster. This realization spikes a change in character as he chooses to help save the Vikings from other creatures. Read more at news.byu.edu, sltrib.com or usatoday.com