Colorful entry wins 2009 contest

2009 Cooper River Bridge Run Poster

Jessica Crouch

The third time's a charm.

Whether you think that's a cliche or not, it certainly holds true for the winner of the Charleston Running Club's 17th annual Cooper River Bridge Run design contest, which determines the design of the Bridge Run's T-shirt and poster for the April 4 event.

Jessica Crouch, art director for Cognetix Advertising in West Ashley, has wanted to win the contest since moving here in the summer of 2005, shortly after graduating from Marshall University with a graphic design degree.

"I'm not a runner, but I love to paint and I love art and photography," says the 25-year-old Crouch, a native of Scott Depot, W.Va., 20 minutes south of the other Charleston.

In the first two years, she submitted watercolor paintings for the design and didn't get picked.

But she remained undeterred. She recalls watching the Bridge Run on TV last year and thinking how great it would be for all the runners and walkers to have a T-shirt with her design on it.

"It gave me the drive to enter it again," she says.

This summer, partly at the suggestion of her father, she decided to submit a computer-generated graphic design using a photograph she took of a stunning Charleston sunset last October. She imposed a black silhouette of the Ravenel Bridge onto the sunset and used the sunset's bright colors in the lettering.

Out of a near record 86 designs (95 were submitted in 1996), Crouch's design took this year's top prize, which includes a $1,000 award, 24 T-shirts and 50 posters

Michael Desrosiers, a Bridge Run assistant race director and design contest coordinator, says the design was chosen in one of the quickest judgings he has experienced. The judges liked that the "colors popped" and that the silhouette was dramatic, he says.

"We always get some nice art, but some of it doesn't have energy. The Bridge Run is an event that involves energy, and the colors in the sky did it for this one," says Desrosiers, adding that this is the first year that more than half of the designs submitted were computer-generated.

On Tuesday, Crouch admitted that having her design picked is an honor that has not completely sunk in, but that she suspected it would by Wednesday's unveiling ceremony.

Locals might be more familiar with her work than they realize. She won the 2008 Flowertown Festival design contest — with a watercolor — and entered the Charleston Food + Wine design contest as well.

By next April, though, her design will live for years to come on the backs of 45,000 people.