Creative students showed off their design skills in a competition organised by one of the country’s largest paper merchants.

Graphic Design students from the University for the Creative Arts (UCA) in Epsom won a string of awards in an annual design contest organised by PaperCo, which saw students from four universities set a series of design briefs for major companies including Virgin. 

The UCA students swept the board in the Henderson Global Investors award, which asked them to create a unique promotional product that could be sent by post.

Rhea Gaughan and Laura Nevill won the gold award, Louise Green won silver and Christian Baranowicz and Daniel Jarvis took home the bronze.

UCA students also won second and third placed prizes in Virgin’s task to produce a new corporate brochure (Rachel Connolly and Neaue Ragip; Paul Phillips and Agata Rybicka) and PaperCo’s challenge to produce an animation about the company’s packaging range (Syeda Rowshanara Begum and Shangomola Edunjobi; Alice Liu and Angela Sharma).

Sallyanne Theodosiou, senior lecturer in graphic design at UCA, said: "We’re thrilled that our students won so many awards in this year’s PaperCo competition.

"The students benefit greatly from working on briefs for large brands while at university and it’s great to see them get the recognition they deserve."