CulverCurrents National publication cites Alumni designer Scott Adams of Scott Adams Design Associates has won two national design awards for his work with Culver Alumni Magazine. Adams was recognized by Graphic Design USA (GDUSA.com), a national magazine, for his work on the Summer 2013 issue.
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Scott Adams Design Associates is in its 14th year with offices in New York City and Columbus, Ohio. The firm specializes in a wide range of strategic design projects. In addition to the Academies, its clients include Embassy Suites, Nationwide, Kenyon College, Ohio State University, and renowned maritime painter John Stobart. For five decades Graphic Design USA has sponsored competitions to spotlight areas of excellence and opportunity for creative professionals. GDUSA’s American Graphic Design
Necessity isn’t the only mother of invention. Sleep deprivation plays a pretty good part, too. At least, that’s what sparked a unique idea for Susannah Bowles Neville ’91.
spot girls
Adams won American Graphic Design Awards™ for the cover and feature spreads for the health and wellness stories in that issue, as well as for his spread on the “B-Spot Girls,” four alumnae involved in an online business venture. According to an October 2014 announcement by GDUSA, “Of the roughly 9,000 entries, just a small percentage of design projects were selected as winners … The performance is, in a nutshell, exceptional and multiple wins rarer still.”
By Kathe Brunton
Shining their Light on Beauty Products A reunion weekend meeting results in a joint business venture 32
A resident of Grosse Pointe, Michigan, Neville, along with Culver alumnae — Michelle Moncrief W’86, ’92 (Fort Worth, Texas), Sarah Bernstein Tennyson ’92 (West Dundee, Illinois), and Shannon Bush Rudnicki SS’90 (Loveland, Ohio) — are partners in a new web-based business venture called b spot girls. The idea germinated about four years ago following the birth of Neville’s second child — and plenty of sleepless nights. “I remember looking in the mirror and thinking, ‘Oh, no, I need an eye cream,’” Neville said. “So I went online to see what type I should buy.” What she found, instead, was an absolute overload of products and information scattered across hundreds of beauty review websites. “I couldn’t figure out which one to buy. I thought, ‘This is crazy!’” she said. “Later, I wondered, ‘What would be helpful to women like me who want to buy a beauty product but not spend money on something that’s not going to work?’”
Moncrief suggested the name b spot girls, “because it’s kind of catchy,” and contacted a friend about creating the website. “All this happened within minutes while we were sitting there having dinner together,” she said. “Frankly, it sounded like fun,” Tennyson added. “Susannah had given me a book years ago called “Don’t Go to the Cosmetics Counter Without Me.” When she brought up this idea, I immediately flashed back to that book. I told her, ‘You are bringing that book to life in a much more modern twenty-first century way.’” A short but task-filled four months later, bspotgirls.com launched on the Web. “I don’t know what we thought, that there would be fireworks or something when we went live,” Neville laughed. But at their respective computers, each tracked the steadily
growing number of visi“We all learned tors to the site. about team building and “We just wanted to hit 500,” Neville leadership from a young age said. By day two, they had reached at Culver. We know how to work it. “There was a sense of relief. together as a team and how to comAnd we got municate. We stick to our agendas good feedback in those and schedules, and we are orgafirst days. We replied to all of nized. The biggest thing for me is them because we wanted that we are working together to people to know we were reading reach a common goal.” their comments.”
During the May 2012 Culver reunion, Neville found herself at the Culver Marina with Moncrief, Tennyson, and Rudnicki. She started talking about her idea. Right away, the response was fast and additional ideas dominoed.
— Shannon Bush Rudnicki W’88
Moncrief recalled, “Susannah told us how she 2013took off had been researching theSummer BB creams, which a year ago in America. She was trying to find different reviews but could never find what she wanted. She said, ‘I’m thinking about starting a company called Beauty Spot where women test products and write reviews.’ We all came on board immediately. There was no question.”
SuMMER 2013
Today, b spot girls is a beauty product review website unlike anything else out there in cyberspace. Each month, the four women select eight products that they incorporate into their daily routine. At the end of the testing period, the women write individual reviews, which are published on the website along with a one- to five-star rating. “On many of the review websites that I visited, I could tell the product was used maybe once or twice. The whole idea for b spot girls is to use the products long enough to see real results or to be able to determine if it’s not worth the money,” Neville said.
CuLvER ALuMNI MAGAzINE
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The Summer 2013 edition garnered two design awards for Culver Alumni Magazine and Scott Adams Design Associates from Graphic Design USA magazine.
competition is open to design firms, ad agencies, corporations, non-profits, and more. It honors outstanding work of all kinds and across all media.
PATHWAYS TO A HEALTHY CULVER Health & Wellness Programs Have Employees and Students Ahead of the Pack
Student Notes In September, the Culver Chapter of the Cum Laude Honorary Society extended invitations to seniors Clare Cunningham (Richmond, Ky.) and Freda Hu (Chicago) in recognition of their outstanding academic achievements, scholarship, leadership, and character. Additional invitations will be extended through the school year and nominated members will be formally inducted into the society at the Commencement Convocation in May 2015.
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The 1st Lt. Andrew K. Stern Scholarship and Rowing Award for 2014-15 is shared by seniors Krista Trefren (Hotchkiss, Colo.) and Katrina Willis (Rolling Prairie, Ind.). The scholarship is given annually to the senior on the rowing team who best exemplifies the traits that Stern exhibited: “Dedication, Honesty, Joyfulness, Respect, and Integrity,” according to the criteria. Trefren and Willis will be co-captains this spring and are four-year members of the rowing team. A former Culver rower, Stern ’98 also captained the University of Tennessee rowing team. He was killed while serving with the Marines in Iraq on
Sept. 16, 2004. He is the only alumnus to die in the Global War on Terrorism.
•••• The Academies claimed four of the six students named National Merit Semifinalists in its geographic region. Culver’s qualifying students are Clare Cunningham (Richmond, Ky.), Kathryn McDougal (Sierra Madre, Calif.), Marlaina Parker (Marietta, Ga.), and Karen Zhu (Chesterfield, Mo.). Nationwide, 156 students from 41 boarding schools were named as semifinalists.
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