Approach

Weinberg says that while working in the motion graphics department at design firm Optimus in Chicago, she often had to crank out work for clients who were on site waiting for results.

"It was one of the best jobs I ever had...It taught me to think quickly...execute in the smartest, quickest way, especially for animation--the stuff I was doing at Optimus. You have to build your project in a particular way so if the client wants to make one tiny change, it's very simple to do--so you have to think through your whole project before you build anything."

And that's exactly what she did while preparing for Cut&Paste. The participants are given their briefs--the themes they'll have to communicate visually at the event--about a week in advance. They're allowed to spend that week developing concepts and designs they'll execute during the competition--though they can't actually bring premade elements to the event; they have to reconstruct their work. Weinberg spent that week figuring out what concepts and visuals she could best produce in 15 minutes--the time limit imposed by the competition. When she decided on a design, she "practiced it many times...I was surprised that a lot of people didn't. They sort of wanted it to be more 'on the spot.'"

Here we see one of Weinberg's practice runs for a brief that called on the designers to create a dessert menu with a theme of "dreamy." We'll see later how closely she matched this on stage. For now, we can simply appreciate the humor, cleverness, and originality of her concept.

(For a pictorial overview of the tournament, see our related gallery, "Digital designers duke it out at Cut&Paste." And you can check out our introduction here.)