Prestigious design award goes to Lisa Aenstoots
New alumna honoured by the Art Directors Club (ADC)
A jury of experts at the Art Directors Club (ADC) has decided to award design student Lisa Aestoots with the prestigious ADC Award for her bachelor’s thesis. Ms. Aestoots, who graduated from the Information and Communication Design programme in the Faculty of Communication and Environment in Kamp-Lintfort, impressed the jury with her powerful photographs and imagery based on the struggle with eating disorders.
Kleve/Kamp-Lintfort, June 15, 2015: Lisa Aenstoots, recent graduate of the Information and Communication Design undergraduate programme in Kamp-Lintfort, focused in her bachelor’s thesis on the topic “Anorexia Nervosa”, an eating disorder which affects over 70 million people worldwide. “I wanted to use my thesis to draw attention to the seriousness of psychological disorders and give those affected the feeling that they’re being heard and understood. I also wanted to give an impression of victims’ thoughts and feelings to an audience that isn’t normally exposed to this disorder”, explains Ms. Aestoots.
The bachelor’s thesis, entitled “ANA”, was inspired by haunting quotes from those struggling with the disorder, quotes like “I think my illness is like a mosaic” or “I wanted to be light as a feather and disappear silently”. “When speaking about their disorder, victims often personified it and presented it in a very ambivalent way. For them, the disorder isn’t just some foe, but rather a kind of friend as well, particularly in the early stages”, explains Ms. Aenstoots further.
Using a powerful set of photos, her bachelor’s thesis reflected the relationship of tension that exists between how a victim perceives themselves and how they are perceived by others. Using a projector, Ms. Aenstoots created different layers within photographs, which were then projected onto the bodies of her protagonists. The result is that the feelings and emotions, normally hidden within those struggling with anorexia, are instead visualised on the outside. The early stages of the disorder are depicted by a growing fire. The photo series then continues with the personification of the disease, examining the bleak moments before transitioning to a positive ending with a jump into a healthy future. “What impresses me the most is the originality and complexity of this work, straddling the border between art and communication design. Lisa didn’t reduce the people she’s focusing on to clichés; she started a dialogue through composition”, notes Christoph Zielke, Professor of Media Design at Rhine-Waal University of Applied Sciences, who supervised the thesis.
In addition to the Red Dot, the ADC Award is one of the most renowned awards of the creative industry in the German-speaking portion of Europe, and both awards are presented annually at the ADC Festival, the industry’s single largest event.