The DSVC’s Annual Dallas Show celebrates the best and most innovative work from around the metroplex each year. Check out the winners of this year’s event, which hopefully will inspire you to enter your best work in next year’s competition.

And the Winners Are…

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Something Like Golf

The DC Stipp 10th Annual Golf Tournament was a great success. The tournament was held May 2nd at Grand Oaks Golf Club in Grand Prairie after being held for several years at Twin Wells. The switch to the tree-lined course brought out a full field for the first time in several years. The participants were greeted with great weather and a full day of something that included golf clubs, golf clothes, and lots of golf language but not much real golf. This was highlighted by free drinks at what seemed like every other hole.

Many thanks to Olmsted Kirk, Sanderson Hawkins, David Carter and Rovillo Reitmayer for providing the tasty mojitos and on-course margaritas. I’m pretty sure we all managed to forget a few strokes due to your hospitality at the Oasis holes. Apparently the guys at the Graphics Group are spending a great deal of time putting in the halls at the shop as they won the tournament easily, so congratulations to them.

The real winners, though, are the students who will be getting a good portion of the more than $8,000 raised at the tournament. We have a great group of sustaining members and club members who make this event a fun day and a great success every year. The golf committee would like to thank the Stipp family for coming out and participating every year and allowing us to have DC as the icon for the tournament. This year was a great success, and we look to build on it and have an even better tournament in 2009. We’d like to extend a special thanks that Ray Radcliff was kind enough to sponsor the post-tournament Margaritas for the 3rd year in a row. Cheers and thanks, Ray!

This month’s Fresh Face is a globe-trotting, entrée-creating art director. We’re talking to Angela MonDragon and we’re rolling our R’s.

DSVC Hello, Angela. I like your name. Dragons are cool.

Angela It’s actually not pronounced Dragon like the mythical lizard. It’s a Spanish name, you’ve got to roll the R.

DSVC Well that’s even better. I love rolling my R’s. Where did you go to school and what did you study there?

Angela I graduated from Texas State University. I studied communication design and photography. I also studied abroad in Italy focusing on art and photography, with some time for a few culinary classes as well.

DSVC Culinary classes in Italy? Wow. I assume you have a love of cooking then?

Angela It’s my secret desire to host my own cooking/travel show on the Food Network.

DSVC What would it be called? May I suggest something with the words “delicious” and “extravaganza” in the title?

Angela It’d be called Food=Life. Of course it would have some awesome logo probably using the equal sign to morph food into life in a stylized ambigram.

DSVC Yeah, that’s probably better than what I had in mind. Tell me more about Food=Life.

Angela The synopsis is that enjoying food is all about experiencing and enjoying all different walks of life. Through my love of food and my fascination with people across the globe, I would introduce viewers to some interesting characters, cultures, and a world culinary splendor. Then I would come back to show you how to experience the same in your own kitchen.

DSVC I’m getting a really good vibe about that show. Have you ever designed (segue alert!) your own entrée?

Angela I accidentally invented a fabulous creamy cake pudding once. I was trying to make a Tres Leches cake, and I got the measurements wrong and added way too much sweet milk so the cake didn’t hold up at all. We had to eat it out of bowls like ice cream, but we finished every last bit of it. It was delicious!

DSVC That does sound delicious. Speaking of design (after all, this is a design magazine), where are you working now and what do you do there?

Angela I’m an art director at latitude/The Richards Group.

DSVC Very cool. Tell me more about latitude.

Angela I love my job at latitude. With our big brother The Richards Group right next door, it has presented me some wonderful opportunities to work on an advertising team over there as well, and learn a lot about that side of the business. I spend a lot of my time working on the Red Lobster account.

DSVC Hold on. Stop the presses. Did you just say you work on Red Lobster?

Angela I’m on the team that has concepted and art directed everything you see in restaurant.

DSVC Wow. It’s all so nautical. And delicious. And awesome. I had no idea when we started this interview, but it turns out I’m a big fan of your work. How did you first get into design?

Angela When I was younger, I had no idea what graphic design or art direction was as a career. I just always loved to draw. I have sketchbooks full of Disney characters and my own comic strips that I used to draw as a kid. It wasn’t until I went to college orientation that I discovered this field and fell in love with it.

DSVC I made up a comic strip character named Ninjor when I was a kid. He was a ninja and he had a flat-top haircut. Yeah…so what influences you as designer?

Angela I love vintage package design. All of the ornate type and raw materials are so beautiful to me. I’m also continuously inspired by what’s coming off the runways in the fashion industry. Some of those clothes are more like works of art rather than clothing, but the fabulous shapes they make when the models move, and the gorgeous color palettes that present themselves each season, definitely inspire me.

DSVC So fashion, fine dining, design, and travel. This has been the most refined Fresh Face ever. And yes, I rolled the R in refined. Thanks, Angela!

Derek Rundgren (darundgren@yahoo.com) is a copywriter at Javelin Direct. The R’s in his name are best left unrolled.

At about 5:10, if I’ve been paying attention to the time near the end of the workday, I’m usually merging onto 287 from 7th Street right at the edge of downtown Fort Worth, ready to drive the 35 minute trek to the house I just bought last summer in Oak Cliff. My thoughts on the ride home lately traverse between wondering who’s going to get kicked off of Top Chef this week and trying to figure out how to get more sidejobs/freelance gigs over the next year to ensure an open bar at the wedding.

This is in stark contrast to the job I held before last fall. My daily trek from home to the office garage was less than a mile, and I didn’t think of anything but work during that drive, nor during my free time. Outside of work, I talked about work. I had dreams about work. I was married to work. From September 2001 to August 2007, work was how my friends and family knew me. I had struck gold with that job, and for 6 years, I lived to work.

Now, I work to live. I usually get home before 6pm. Office hours are 8:30 to 5pm. At the old place, my average home arrival was between 7:30 to 9pm (around 10-ish during “the season”), and I would even bring work home. I worked every weekend. This was all by choice, though. I loved that place. The hours and the intensity had a major pay-off. In those 6 years, I amassed a gigantic portfolio, stuffed to the brim and sprinkled with various awards, in addition to gaining an amazing amount of experience I could not have gained elsewhere in the same amount of time. I started as a Junior in September ‘01 and by June 2006, I was asked to play the Creative Director. It was a Type-A Designer’s dream come true.

I lost one of my parents while the other grew more and more ill. Along with growing familial responsibilities, health issues and major changes in the lives of my best friends, I wanted more and more to have a life outside of work, which brought me to a big fat fork in my career path

But during the last years of that job, I lost one of my parents while the other grew more and more ill. Along with growing familial responsibilities, health issues and major changes in the lives of my best friends, I wanted more and more to have a life outside of work – which brought me to a big fat fork in my career path. I asked myself, if I continue the way I’m going, am I going to regret the sacrifices I make outside of work? Can I afford to keep seeing the psychiatrist? Am I driving people away by my incessant talk about annual reports, how my anti-anxiety medication makes me tired and my developing philosophies on business practices?

I came to the decision that I needed a change. Last August, I stepped down, packed the 10 or so boxes I accumulated over the last 6 years and accepted a position as the Associate Creative Director for a small Fort Worth agency. Since I made that change, the hours I work are less intensive as is the stress. The business philosophy is different. The clients are different. I am not as tense. This is what I need now. I had changed. But the new place is not necessarily better than the first. It’s just better for me, now. Without noticing (probably because of the anti-anxiety meds) I had gone from Designer Type A to Designer Type B.