RIT Students Take Top Honors in International Publication Contest

RIT’s student chapter of the Technical Association of the Graphic Arts (known as TAGA) won the best overall publication award at the 2009 TAGA conference, an international competition held March 15-17 in New Orleans. RIT competed against universities from the United States and France. RIT also earned the Attendees Choice award that is selected by industry professionals.

RIT produced a technical journal on the premise of accessibility targeted for both graphic arts professionals and those unfamiliar with the industry. Graduate and undergraduate students wrote the content. Within the technical papers are highlighted terms that are defined and translated into German, French, Spanish and Chinese. The highlighted terms were then compiled into a glossary. In keeping with the accessibility theme, students also incorporated an International Standard Book Number, a 13-digit number that uniquely identifies books published internationally.

Students used the variable data printing process method to produce a customized page at the beginning of each of the 350 copies of the publication.

“This page changed throughout the 350 copies we had printed to indicate the copy number, and for select copies we also included a personalized message with a company logo,” says Alexander Mouganis, third-year graphic media student and secretary of RIT’s TAGA student chapter. “Typically a function like this can be created in a software program, however; members of our TAGA pre-media department took on the challenge of writing an open source JavaScript that would create the desired effect.”

RIT’s TAGA chapter is made up of students from RIT’s College of Imaging Arts and Sciences majoring in photography, graphic design, graphic media, new media publishing and visual media.

NOTE: Rochester Institute of Technology is internationally recognized for academic leadership in computing, engineering, imaging technology, and fine and applied arts, in addition to unparalleled support services for students with hearing loss. Nearly 16,500 full- and part-time students are enrolled in more than 200 career-oriented and professional programs at RIT, and its cooperative education program is one of the oldest and largest in the nation.

For two decades, U.S. News & World Report has ranked RIT among the nation’s leading comprehensive universities. RIT is featured in The Princeton Review’s 2009 edition of The Best 368 Colleges and in Barron’s Best Buys in Education. The Chronicle of Higher Education recognizes RIT as a “Great College to Work For.”