Courtney Bott of FIT designed the top vote-getter in the Kia/Ad Age contest

Like most college seniors, Courtney Bott's days are a whirlwind of classes, working to pay her tuition and bills, and interviews for her first post-college job.

But this week, her resume got a nice boost: Bott was named the winner of Kia's Driving Creativity national advertising design contest, hosted by Ad Age Studio 30. The prize includes $10,000 for her tuition, a profile in Ad Age, a globally known marketing publication, and a paid trip to Cannes, France, for the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.

Bott was one of six finalists in the contest, in which entrants had to design an ad for the Kia Stinger, the automaker's newest sports sedan that it touts as comparable to the Audi A5 Sportback, the BMW Gran Coupe and the Lexus GS 300.

It's an achievement to be proud of, but winning the Kia ad contest — Bott's ad will be displayed as part of Kia's advertising campaign — is a dream finish to her senior year. Ad Age, which has been around since 1930, reaches 58,000 print subscribers and has more than 4.2 million page views per month — a heady amount of exposure for someone seeking a job after graduation. She hopes to become an art director in the future.

Bott knew at a young age that design was a field that called to her. "Even in elementary school, I just wanted to be in the art room," she says. "So I would ask to be the art helper." By the time she reached high school, Bott took "every art class possible. … I just didn't know how to make it lucrative." Eventually, after exploring graphic design and computer-aided design classes, Bott began to formulate her career goals. She first pursued a communication design associate's degree at FIT, which "gives you a pretty broad look into the whole design field." And when the time came to choose her concentration, Bott felt "advertising was really where my heart was."

https://patch.com/new-jersey/berkeley-nj/bayville-womans-creativity-wins-10k-kia-ad-contest
https://adage.com/article/creativity/winner-driving-creativity/315954/