VIU's Joe Thoong in 'laser mode' at WorldSkills in Kazan, Russia, where he placed fifth out of 35 competitors in the graphic design category. (WorldSkills)

By Alex Rawnsley

VECTORED FOR SUCCESS

VIU graphic design student among world’s best at global competition

Sep 1, 2019 | 2:15 AM

NANAIMO — A Vancouver Island University student returned home after representing Canada at a world vocational skills championship in Kazan, Russia.

Joe Thoong placed fifth in the graphic design category at WorldSkills, Aug. 22-27. The global competition pits individuals in a wide range of disciplines, including carpentry, cyber security and baking.

Thoong’s score of 735 (of a possible 800) had him just off the podium, but well ahead of expectations.

“My objective in previous competitions was always to win a gold medal, and if I’d win silver I felt defeated,” Thoong told NanaimoNewsNOW. “With this competition, my trainer and I agreed to just do our best and leave everything out there and say that regardless of results I can be happy with the work.”

The rigorous competition spread over four days involved competitors craming weeks or even months worth of work into a finite time.

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Thoong’s projects included a corporate identity for a Russian company, packaging for a Mongolian health product, a logo and car wrap for a fruit company in Dubai and web graphics for International Women’s Day.

“You have six hours. At the beginning of the project you’re briefed on who your client will be, what you’re designing and then you have the rest of the time to get the project done in a very short amount of time.”

Thoong said in addition to a huge time crunch, a huge part of the design challenge is making a layout work for people of different cultural and ethnic backgrounds.

“You have to take into consideration an international audience as opposed to just your own Canadian experience as to what red might represent.”

Competitors are judged on a series of technical elements, or ‘measurement marking’. Scores also include more subjective scores based on the judges opinion of the final design.

“It’s about 50-50 on measurement and judgement. Measurement marking is very technical, very techie print media requirements we need to learn for these competitions. The judges will also look at the design and give their opinion on the font, the imagery, the illustrations.”

Originally from Courtenay, Thoong now studies graphic design at Nanaimo’s VIU campus. He used his time there to prepare for WorldSkills.

“For the past year, I’d been doing monthly practice competitions. More recently I’d been doing weekly practice competitions where I have six hours to do an entire project that I could have face in the competition.”

Thoong aims to finish a Bachelor of design in graphic design from VIU and then pursue graphic design as a career with a design agency.

Longer term goals include a career as an art or creative director.

alex.rawnsley@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @alexrawnsley