Otis College Design Lab Students Win Graphis New Talent Award
The Design Lab’s upcycled tote bag project was recognized with a Gold award.
Otis College’s Design Lab, the only design studio in Los Angeles that functions as a collaboration between students, staff, faculty, and external clients, has won a 2025 Graphis New Talent Gold Award in the Design/Product Design category. It’s Design Lab’s third Graphis award and first Gold (the previous awards were Silver). The New Talent Awards “highlight the visionary work of students and tomorrow’s creative leaders, showcasing fresh perspectives and groundbreaking ideas,” according to the Graphis website.
Graphis Inc. is an international publisher of books that was established in 1944 in
Switzerland to chronicle creative excellence and foster the growth of emerging talent
worldwide through its prestigious award competitions, publications, exhibitions, and
educational initiatives, helping to launch numerous design careers. The Graphis New Talent 2025 Annual, a hardcover book that features the Platinum and Gold winners, is known for showcasing
the boldest student work in design, advertising, photography, and illustration/art
from the top visual arts schools worldwide.
For an international jury to recognize Design Lab with a Gold award confers credibility on our designers and our studio.”
Six Design Lab students—Nhan Cao (’25 Product Design), Viviana Ley (’25 Product Design),
Bona Nguyen (’25 Product Design), Lily Nguyen-Wilson (’26 Product Design), Aidan Quigley
(’25 Product Design), Steven Wiryopranoto (’25 Product Design)—were recognized for
the tote bags they designed out of recycled campus pole banners.
“We live in a world that is saturated with design—it’s so hard to stand out. For an international jury to recognize Design Lab with a Gold award confers credibility on our designers and our studio. Credibility builds trust with clients, which is everything for us,” says Emily Carlson, Otis College’s Creative Director, who also runs Design Lab, hiring a cadre of student workers every semester. “For the individual students who worked on the project, being able to say that they’re an ‘award-winning designer’ before they’ve even graduated is a huge confidence boost, but it’s also something that could give them an edge in an ultra-competitive job market. This award means a lot, and I’m incredibly honored and grateful.”
About Design Lab’s Award-Winning Project
The Los Angeles Bureau of Street Lighting issues permits for over 31,000 banners a
year, many of which are replaced with new campaigns multiple times. This results in
a significant number of leftover banners that are most often produced on vinyl, a
nonbiodegradable material that is difficult to recycle but that can be reused or upcycled.
For their upcycled tote project, Design Lab student designers were tasked with developing new merchandise for the Otis College store with a focus on the connections between student-created work and the Otis community. Design Lab used old campus pole banners that had featured artwork by alum Genesis Otero (’24 BFA Animation) and refashioned them into stylish and unique tote bags. The project reflects Design Lab’s focus on sustainability, creative problem-solving, and real-world production experience.
The designers began by researching products that would be great for Otis’s store while identifying the audience’s demographic and product gaps. They met with Otis College stakeholders to define the goals and objectives for the project.
The Design Lab designers then brainstormed their ideas into sketches, and the design chosen for further exploration was the tote bag with three pockets depicting Otis’s logo, which added a functional element to the bag. During the production process, the designers learned to deal with production trade-offs and cost management, and developed unconventional methods to manufacture the tote bags, which decreased production time. They also created a step-by-step list of the most efficient production processes to deal with the thick pole banner material.
Once the tote bags were manufactured, the students created a window display for the Graphaids student store on campus, where they sold out in the first week. They even acted as creative directors on an editorial photo shoot for the tote bag line, and designed social media posts about the project.
Design Lab recently finished a second series of tote bags created from another set of pole banners that is available in the Otis College store now.
More information about Design Lab.
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