Eye Yoga from Media Design School wins Google Student Axis

Media Design School ad students Jay Kim and Malik Ben Brahim took out the Google Student Axis at Axis night in Auckland last week for Eye Yoga YouTube break. 

Last year, Google NZ agency lead Reuben Halper briefed students from AUT, Otago Uni and MDS to use a series of Google six-second bumper ads to advertise a brand at a NZ agency. Mim and Brahim’s winning idea for OPSM was based on the understanding that watching hours of video on YouTube puts too much strain on the eyes.

So, they came up with an idea to make bumper ads useful: by getting people to exercise their eyes every 20 minutes with a variety of different eye yoga movements. All of which means, the more time you spend on YouTube, the more workouts you get.

“The judges were Google’s Reuben Halper, Haydn Kerr from DDB, Thomas Darlow from Colenso, and Arnya Karaitiana from Special.”

MDS CD Kate Humphries said: “Hearty hugs to the other Student Axis finalists on the night (all of them from Media Design School) – Kelley Isles & Ipshita Ipshita for Trust Us (Kleenex); and Holly Sutton Williams & Simon Stuart for showing absolutely everybody else up by having not one, but two of their ideas selected in the final four – Art Directed by Professionals (Resene) and Kathman-do (Kathmandu).

“And whilst we’re metaphorically chinking champagne glasses this morning with our 2017 grads, we’d also like to pat the backs of all those previous MDS graduates who between them last night had their names etched on the Grand Axis, a Grand Prix, 6 Golds, 8 Silvers and so many bronzes and finalists that we kind of lost count (mainly because the glasses we chinked last night were not metaphorical).

“Big respect to Rueben for the sponsoring, the brief, the judging and our table last night; to Natasha Galloway from the Communication Council for facilitating the whole Student Axis process; and  to our other judges (Haydn Kerr from DDB, Thomas Darlow from Colenso, and Arnya Karaitiana from Special) who, along with Reuben, put themselves through two rounds of judging to select the final four finalists.”