The modern media landscape demands a cross-media approach, and designers are among those who have adopted that way of thinking. It's no longer enough for key visuals to work on one or two advertising media – they're embedded in all manner of advertising these days. Illustrating how that can work were the winners of the 2014 designmaker award presented at viscom, the International Trade Fair for Visual Communication.
"Teamwork is explicitly desired! Because the graphic-arts 'lone wolf' represents an outdated model in an interconnected cross-media world", says jury member Manuel Potter from Potter Promotion und Werbeagentur, an ad agency focussed on haptic advertising and corporate design. This also implies that designers must be willing to receive technical expertise from their production partners in order to achieve optimal results for each media type, thus doing justice to the designmaker motto "Design meets Feasibility". Contest participants were given the task of fulfilling a potential customer order by creating a design that's suitable for a variety of techniques from latex printing to print/cut systems to textile finishing and dye sublimation.
"With this year's motto 'color my life', we've once again given participants the freedom to maximise their creative potential. We were thrilled by the colourful and diverse submissions. Picking three winners wasn't all that easy", says viscom Director Petra Lassahn. The number of entries tripled this year. The contest itself was held for the fourth time already.
The TOP 3 concepts stood out for their compelling and varied designs, which were fully adapted to the target media. They presented excellent original brand-building approaches based on the contest's announced theme. The production data corresponded 100% with the technical production requirements.
First place: multicoloured heart rate
First place this year went to Judith Hahlgans from Berthold Reprografik, an ad agency and print shop. She won over the jury with a youthful and fresh design from the heart. Her design relates the motto "color my life" to the multicoloured heart rate of life and shows both concrete and abstract variants of the theme. The motif playfully incorporates the heart shape, the heart beat and the words "color my life". The end result: the motto comes alive.
Second place: colourful message
The second-place design is equally colourful. Nadine Einberger from Schmidt Grafik bet on clearly defined shapes and a clear statement. "Say it with colour" is the message of her design – a perfect interpretation of the motto. The jury praised the design's typographical purity and multifaceted interplay of colours.
Third place: the multifariousness of life
The third-place design wasn't any less colourful. Working as a team, Gordon Bayer, the creative owner of the Werbekombinat agency, and freelancer Tobias Saeger from DREIUNDACHTZIG, appropriated all the colours of the rainbow. Their motto – "Life is colored" – uses a vibrant array of colours to illustrate the multifaceted nature of life, from university and work to family to leisure. Various icons on a clear planar colour code signify the multifariousness of life.
Spotlight not just on the TOP 3
A particularly remarkable feature of this year's contest was that almost all participants submitted recognisable overall concepts suitable for cross-media branding.
As a result, even submissions not finishing in the TOP 3 were included in viscom's designmaker Exhibition. An interactive multi-touch table application by Firecube is set up at viscom to showcase the designs both as a group and as individual projects. This arrangement adequately honours each designer's commitment and enables visitors to get an idea of the diversity of submitted designs.
Partners and sponsors
The designmaker Award is presented jointly by Reed Exhibitions Deutschland GmbH, the organiser of viscom, Potter Werbeagentur, Karl Gröner GmbH and creativ collection Verlag GmbH. The competition receives generous support from platinum sponsor Hewlett-Packard Deutschland GmbH, silver sponsor Complott Papier Union GmbH and bronze sponsor Pantone. The jury consists of representatives from organisers, partners, sponsors and the trade magazine Werbetechnik.
In 2015, the designmaker Award will once again be awarded.
www.viscom-messe.com
