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Perth
student Bradley Ward, who was inspired by his inability to read
street signs when travelling overseas as a youngster, has won The
Australian / Dymocks Literacy Foundation Creative Challenge.
Ward's
work, featuring an indecipherable street sign, was picked by
author Bryce Courtenay and legendary advertising executive Alex
Hamill of George Patterson Partners as the most outstanding of
the 68 entires received from around Australia. Ward has won
$5000 along with a trophy for his efforts.
Ward is studying advertising at Curtin University in WA and did
not stop working on the campaign once he had entered his ad.
"I have created another two ads to extend it to a full
campaign that I have submitted as my university free choice
project," he says. "This is so thrilling. I was
waiting to see what the other finalists looked like. I did not
have the expectation that I would win."
Ward now plans to use his win to travel to Melbourne to show
agencies his portfolio. "It was certainly a fun project to
work on and a great case study."
Julie
Urquhart, chief executive officer of the Dymocks Literacy
Foundation, praises Ward's simple but powerful entry. "It
is an astonishing fact that almost 6.2 million Australians have
poor literacy skills," Urquhart says. "Bradley's ad
won from an outstanding pool of entries because it is so simple
and graphically conveyed the major impact this has on their
lives - from employment opportunities to everyday things we take
for granted, like being able to read to your kids or being able
to fill out a form."
Urquhart says such numbers prompted the bookseller to set up the
foundation, saying "open books lead to open lives".
Sharing
in the total $10,000 prize money were runners up, 28-year-old
music video director Morgan Christie, and Melbourne students
Alexia Doherty and Sarah Marshall. Christie and the team of
Doherty and Marshall each take home $2500.
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