News & Events
City Tech Student’s Winning Ad Campaign
Displayed in 170 Queens Buildings
Lithuanian-born Natallia Tsynkevich, a communication design senior at New York City College of Technology (City Tech), has won a high-profile advertising campaign competition sponsored by East River Development Alliance (ERDA).
Tsynkevich, 25, a senior majoring in communication design at City Tech, is having her winning campaign seen in all 170 buildings of the Queensbridge, Ravenswood and Astoria housing projects, and the posters are also expected to be mounted in city bus shelters.
Originally, ERDA--a New York City-funded agency based in Long Island City offering a variety of social services to the tens of thousands of residents in the three housing project--asked City Tech Professor John McVicker to create the campaign because of his experience as vice president and senior art director/producer at global ad agency Saatchi & Saatchi. But he saw it as an excellent opportunity for his Advertising Design Projects II students, and opened it up to them.
“The challenge was that the campaign wasn’t for a box of cereal or a recognizable service, like FedEx,” notes McVicker. “The ‘product’ wasn’t famous or glamorous; just a non-profit agency offering services to help people in a community--a tough assignment.”
ERDA Executive Director Debra-Ellen Glickstein came to campus to explain the campaign’s purpose: to promote the agency’s mortgage counseling, SAT/college admissions preparation, vocational training, computer courses, daycare and youth program services. For six weeks, the 18 students conceived strategies, did thumbnail sketches, created concepts for copy and images, received progress reviews, and visited the projects to photograph and interview residents.
Tsynkevich’s winning posters depict nondescript brick project buildings with one window on each revealing a colorful vista – a rainbow, a blue sky with white clouds, a bright orange sunrise (symbolizing a new beginning) and a brilliant star in the night sky. “It’s a real test of talent to come up with something inspiring in this client category,” McVicker observes. “You need to bring an element of magic to the problem, and that’s what Natallia did.”
Explains Tsynkevich, “I got the idea because I realized that behind the projects’ uniform brick walls are people who are actually all different; they have their own thoughts, dreams and ideas for the future. I decided to symbolize this with open windows to show that everyone has hope, dreams and opportunity.” Her winning ad campaign was recently exhibited at City Tech’s Grace Gallery Student Show.
Tsynkevich’s work was selected because, says McVicker, “She successfully gives people a sense of what ERDA’s about: hope and opportunity.” He has unique insight into the effectiveness of her message that life in the projects needn’t be a dead end--his mother lived at Queensbridge when she first arrived from Italy.
Born in Lithuania, Tsynkevich understands how to make the most of opportunities. As a teenager in Vitebsk, Belarus (in the former Soviet Union), she attended high school from 8 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., then art school from 4 to 6 p.m. Her university-educated parents were always supportive and she was able to go to Missouri as an exchange student.
When the time came for her to go to college, she enrolled in the Humanitarian Economical Institute in Minsk (Belarus’ capital), majoring in political science, since it required studying English. “I wanted art,” she says, “but unfortunately they didn’t offer art and language.” At 19, she returned to the U.S., working first as a nanny and then a secretary. She began studying full time at City Tech in 2003.
Attending a U.S. college has its advantages, she found. “City Tech lets you choose your own schedule, you meet more people, and that’s how you begin networking; it starts in school. With time you realize what a big plus that is.”
At City Tech, Tsynkevich has studied advertising, typography, photography, and print production at City Tech. She also interned in the Metropolitan Transit Authority’s Imagineering and Multimedia Production Unit, learning video camera reporting, digital photography, photo retouching and editing.
Getting this far has been a struggle; Tsynkevich was granted political asylum fairly swiftly, but for her mother it took longer. “Right after 9/11 the situation became tough for people who wanted to come to the U.S. It makes it harder when you don’t see your family for a long time; I haven’t seen my father and sister for five years.”
When her father and sister arrive this spring, Tsynkevich’s career will be well underway. ERDA has hired her to create logos, flyers, brochures, invitations and more posters. She plans to go to graduate school for a master’s degree and then pursue an ad agency job.
“The competition was a great start,” says McVicker. “It gets Natallia out of the Catch-22 all graduates face: trying to get hired without experience. She’s not afraid of hard work and has amazing talent. Nothing would surprise me when it comes to Natallia!”
3/17/06
