Cincinnati Students Win Big at PAVE Gala

Students from the University of Cincinnati’s College of Design, Architecture, Art and Planning (DAAP) won six awards in the 2012 PAVE Student Design Competition, and were honored in New York during the A.R.E. Retail Design Collective’s PAVE Gala.

For the store design challenge, students designed a 1250-square-foot Bonobos pop-up shop for New York’s Meatpacking District, while visual merchandising challenge participants drafted a window display and entry merchandiser for the same space.

Students pored over the project details, brainstorming concepts and fleshing out ideas for the menswear brand, which has a strong online presence, but just two brick-and-mortar retail locations.

Katie Baron, who took the $5000 first place prize in the store design category, says her fun, comic-strip inspired store design was fueled by the creative freedom of Bonobos’ lack of a brick-and-mortar presence.

“Because Bonobos was an online store with only a couple guide shops sprinkled throughout the U.S., my options were open in creating a physical branding strategy,” she says.

Baron says she was inspired by a Bonobos coupon promo called “The Band of Brothers Discount,” which honors men doing good deeds in their communities: “I decided to call these men heroes and design everything from a hero/comic concept from the space planning to wall and floor graphics, and fixture designs to a custom Bonobos coupon coaster set.”

Other DAAP winners in the store design category include Danielle Fraley (second place), Lauren Burns (honorable mention), Holly Smith (honorable mention) and Katie Wittes (honorable mention). Like Baron, Lucie Calise also nabbed a first place award and $5000 scholarship. She competed in the visual merchandising category.

Projects were judged on a 100-point scale by five criteria: design concept, space solution, interior/architectural design, branding, and quality and professional presentation of work.

DAAP earned a $3000 award for students placing in the top three in each category. The competition was sponsored by B + N Industries (Burlingame, Calif.) with special thanks to Bonobos.