(August 20, 2008) While Olympic athletes were competing in Beijing, leading design students from around the world gathered in New York City last week to collect their own awards and hear how an illustrator helped set the stage for this year's Olympic games. The celebration took place at the 2008 Adobe Design Achievement Awards which brought in an impressive 2,775 entries in the interactive, video & motion and traditional media categories.

Xerox Corporation's Bob Wagner, vice president of creative services business and premier partners program, was on hand at the event presenting the award for Print Design Multi-Page in the Print Communications category.

"Xerox has a commitment to creative arts education as demonstrated through the sponsorship of the Adobe Design Achievement Awards and other similar events," said Wagner. "This year's event was particularly exciting because for the first time Adobe was able to award two prizes in the Print Communications category. Given the overwhelming amount of entries in this category, Adobe created two awards, one for Print Design Multi-Page and the other for Print Design Single Page."

In addition to his role as award presenter, the following morning Wagner facilitated a presentation by Olympic illustrator Mark T. Smith to the winners. Smith, having participated in the promotion of the 2008 Olympic Summer Games in Beijing, spoke about his recent painting titledOlympic Dragon, created for the U.S. Olympic Committee as part of the committee's promotional efforts to raise funds for American teams participating in this summer's games.

"It's an inspiration to see so much talent coming from today's design schools," said Smith. "The winners of this year's awards truly found a way to differentiate themselves and stand out in a crowd of very impressive illustrators."

This marks Xerox's third consecutive year as the official print communications sponsor of the Adobe Design Achievement Awards. As part of the sponsorship, Xerox arranged for 14 members of its Premier Partners program, a global digital print network, from 12 different countries to print the call-for-entry posters that were distributed in eight different languages to design schools around the world.

For more information and to see a full list of this year's winners, visit http://www.adaaentry.com/adaalive.html.