Student Talent Reigns as 5 Earn Top Spots in National Competition for GEICO Safety Poster & Video Contest

WASHINGTON--GEICO is pleased to announce the winners of this year’s Safety Poster & Video Contest.

“drive safely. This year’s winner in the computer-generated poster category is”

In the poster contest category the winners are:

• Matthew Schneider of Florida who is this year’s winner in the elementary school category for his three-dimensional piece encouraging kids to “buckle up.”
• Min Joo Kim of Virginia who is this year’s winner in the middle school category. Min was chosen for her exceptional piece reminding drivers of the dangers of texting while driving.
• Eugene Parfilko of New Jersey who is this year’s winner for the high school category. Judges were extremely impressed with Eugene’s life-like images encouraging people to “drive safely.

This year’s winner in the computer-generated poster category is:

• Maya Gouw of North Carolina who is the winner in the computer-generated art category who successfully illustrated the importance of not texting while driving.

This year’s winner for the video portion of the contest is:

• Ryan Butler of Connecticut who is the winner for the video category of the contest. Ryan was this year’s video contest winner because of his emotional video encouraging students to wear their seatbelts.

This year’s grand-prize poster contest winners were awarded with $500 in prize money, and in addition, a donation of $500 was also made to their schools’ art program. This year’s computer generated winner was also awarded with $500 and the video award winner earned $100.

“Students never cease to amaze me year after year with this contest,” said Tony Nicely, chairman of GEICO. “These students found ways to use their talent while also illustrating an important message about vehicle safety. We couldn’t have asked for better artwork.”

Every year, hundreds of students enter the contest for the chance to win a grand prize and this year was no different. The judges were impressed with the quality of artwork students submitted and had a tough time choosing just 5 grand-prize winners.

This year, students had the choice to create their poster around three safety themes: the importance of wearing a seatbelt, the dangers of distracted driving and the importance of not texting while driving.

Serving as judges for this year’s competition were Alexandra Holliday of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, Laurel Sims from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety and Chris Noel of Particle, a graphic design firm.

You can find each of this year’s winners’ artwork on the GEICO Safety Poster & Video Contest website at Geico Safety Contest. All the regional winners are also on the site.