December 5, 2007 This letter serves to nominate Pete Hurdle for CNBAM’s Designer of the Year. Pete is not your typical designer. He’s not your typical anything. Sure he has a firm grasp of design principles, is infinitely creative and makes PhotoShop scream for RAM. He’s also hardworking, never late for deadline and spends many of his afternoons giving peers and younger, just-starting designers one-on-one lessons. What makes Pete atypical is that he makes sure what needs to get done, gets done, no matter what. He started at UNC Charlotte’s Student Media program as a sophomore, taking the position of production assistant in Media Marketing’s ad production department. Up until then, Pete had only worked in MSPaint and Word; he was not familiar with the Macintosh platform and had never used anything in the Adobe Creative Suite. Within two weeks he was making camera-ready ads. Good ones. By the following semester, he was showing me tips and tricks with PhotoShop — and I’ve been using that program to make a living since edition 1.0. The next year, Pete was promoted to Creative Director. When the Media Marketing department was suddenly short a director, Pete stepped up to the plate and filled that position. He did not enjoy the sales and circulation managing aspect of the job but that did not hold him back from doing it well. Pete wasn’t in it for his own gratification. He was in it because the job needed doing. He has since served as design editor of UNC Charlotte’s literary-arts magazine, Sanskrit, and then stepped back into the role of Creative Director. The University Times has won numerous ad design awards the past four years; Pete Hurdle created a disproportionate number of those prizewinners. He has even earned Student Media’s highest honor of Employee of the Year (academic year 2005-2006). Student Media uses a concept theme to communicate the year’s goals or mission. Pete has thought up and developed Student Media’s themes for three of the past four years. In addition, Pete has written, filmed and edited videos that are shown at Student Media’s end-of-year awards banquet for the past four years. These videos serve as entertainment at the banquet and they are also are used for recruiting. They are very well done; one of them is jaw-droppingly good (and funny). Typically, there are few students who devote four years and thousands of hours to programs that require as much commitment as Student Media. It’s even less likely to have a student volunteer for difficult challenges and shoulder jobs they don’t particularly like. Downright rare is a student who will do all that with excellence, who will push their ability until the end product is outstanding. Pete is even more unusual because he does all this with great humility. Should one point out to Pete what an exceptional designer, artist, manager and person he is, his typical response will be nothing more than a chuckle. Winning recognition as designer of the year is something Pete Hurdle has spent his college years earning. I seriously doubt you’ll find anyone more deserving, more talented or more well rounded. But with or without this honor, Pete will continue to stretch himself and strive for nothing short of excellence. Because that’s just typical of Pete.
Respectfully submitted,
LouAnn Lamb Graphics Production Coordinator, Student Media Publications Marketing and Graphics Coordinator, Student Affairs UNC Charlotte