#TBT: SPD Throws It Back to 2012 Student Competition Winner Christopher Allen

In 2012 as part of our 14th Student Competition, Christopher Allen won the 1st place B.W. Honeycutt Award and TWO Honorable Mentions (as well as another Honorable Mention in 2013) for his work as a student at the University of Maryland at College Park under instructor Damien Franze (see his award-winning work below as well as in the link here). 

We had the opportunity to catch up with Chris who's currently a Brand Strategist and Designer at Brave UX. Chris has combined his mix of print and digital skills to give personality to his work. Read on to see where life has already taken him since his recent SPD Student Competition wins...

CHRIS: I'm currently a Brand Strategist & Designer at Brave UX in Washington, D.C. I work alongside a team of eight rad folks designing and building interfaces. We work out of a co-working space that's pretty neat; there's beer on tap and tons of chatter about 'hacking', 'hustling' and all things startup, which makes me exponentially more hip and creative. I spend most of my time designing applications and creating brands to accompany them. I've been learning as much as I can about the development side of things and getting more into strategy, so every day is different.

CHRIS: Man, that's a tough question to answer. I've had such a lengthy and illustrious career I don't even know where to begin! In all seriousness, I'm proud of a site we just launched at Brave called For The Badge. It's a side project that's entirely for fun, but it's one of the first things I've designed where I can really see my own personality in the work.

I'm really happy with the mix of design work I've gotten into. Most of my early experience was with editorial design and illustration (yea, magazines!), and that's still some of my favorite stuff, but I've been getting really into interface design and UX to complement my branding work.

CHRIS: I'm supremely under-qualified to give advice to anyone about pretty much anything, so I'll defer. Dan Cassaro said it really well in an interview with The Great Discontent a while ago: "Work hard at whatever you do and make it personal--don't try to please this imaginary audience that's out there because it doesn't exist...If you're doing work that you love, then other people are going to see that, and they are going to love it too. It's as simple as that."

CHRIS: You guys rock.