Hampton senior earns first place in Advertising, Design at national competition

Senior Daniel Dickson received first place in the advertising and design category at the SkillsUSA national competition in June held specifically for career and technical education facilities, according to Heather Brown, the advertising and design instructor at A.W. Beattie Career Center in McCandless and Dickson's teacher.

A first-year student at Beattie, Dickson was responsible for completing an advertising campaign in the competition.

He's actually one of nine students from Beattie that made it to the SkillsUSA national competition held this year in Louisville, Ky., said Brown. Students first compete in a “wide variety of field specific and leadership contests” in their local district. Then those qualifying students, if any, get to compete at a state-level.

Students, or team of students, who make it to the gold level at state are able to compete in the national SkillsUSA, such as Dickson.

“We have been particularly blessed this year with a group of students who are both strong in their respective fields, but are also dedicated to going above and beyond the traditional classroom curriculum to compete in these contests,” Brown said.

Brown said Dickson and his fellow competitors were asked to design an original logo and advertisement, following the design process from conceptual thumbnails to a final digital composition in Adobe Illustrator, in roughly six hours. They were then given a knowledge test written to industry standards, she said.

Dickson said though he did not know what they would give him to work on prior to the event, he did a lot of skills preparation before he left for SkillsUSA.

“I was feeling pretty confident because I did feel prepped,” said Dickson, 18, of Allison Park.

This allowed him to focus on time management during the competition, which enabled him to go back and make edits after he was done.

They were given a “space” theme

Brown said most seniors in her classes have been working at their field for two or three years, while this was Dickson's first year.

“Danny didn't come to the advertising design until he was a senior, but has excelled at absorbing every bit of design knowledge that he can,” she said.

She said Dickson won scholarship money which will come in handy as he plans to attend Savannah College of Art & Design in Georgia this fall to study graphic design.

He said Beattie was a good choice.

“Beattie was the best thing that came out of this year. It really gave me background of what I was interested in,” he said.

Natalie Beneviat is a Tribune-Review contributor.