Rhine-Waal student wins award in nation-wide poster design competition of the Frankfurt Book Fair
Student Katja Kandora takes 2nd place in the 2015 Competition for Young Designers, which included 299 submissions from 22 universities across Germany.
Kleve/Kamp-Lintfort, July 13, 2015: This year’s Competition for Young Designers of the Frankfurt Book Fair was dedicated to welcoming Indonesia, the fair’s 2015 Guest of Honour, through creative and unique poster designs. Young designers from all over Germany contributed a variety of ideas to the competition, such as a young woman engrossed in a book that depicts a traditional Indonesian mask on the cover, or a young man enjoying a book as his feet dangle lazily in the water. From among the submissions, an expert jury selected the ten best for display through July 16, 2015 in an exhibit at the Museum Angewandte Kunst [Museum of Applied Arts] in Frankfurt.
Katja Kandora, who studies in the Information and Communication Design programme of the Faculty of Communication and Environment in Kamp-Lintfort, took 2nd place and won a €1,000 prize for her submission “Indonesia Sketched”. The jury explained that it was particulary impressed with how the many small sketches dotting her design were able to “stir childhood memories”. Ms Kandora developed the poster as part of a course led by Christoph Zielke, Professor for Media Design, in the Information and Communication Design programme of Rhine-Waal University of Applied Sciences.
Since 2006, the annual Competition for Young Designers has been organised by the Frankfurt Book Fair in cooperation with the city of Frankfurt. The aim of the competition is to design a unique and heartfelt welcome for the book fair’s annual Guest of Honour. Although the 2014 design competition was only open to four universities in the Frankfurt area, the 2015 competition was expanded to include designers and universities throughout Germany. “We were happy to see so many submissions because it was proof that we made the right decision in opening this year’s competition to designers from all over Germany”, said Markus Gogolin, Head of Marketing and Communication Germany-Austria-Switzerland for the Frankfurt Book Fair and member of the jury.
A total of 22 universities participated in this year’s design competition. The jury – which was consisted of representatives of the Frankfurt Book Fair, the organisational committee of the 2015 Guest of Honour Indonesia, the Museum Angewandte Kunst, the Cultural Council of the city of Frankfurt and the German Designer Club (DDC) – was tasked with selecting the ten best posters from a pool of 299 submissions. “Reviewing so many submissions proved to be quite the challenge. We were more than happy to accept that challenge, however, particularly due to the quality of the submissions”, noted the jury. “We selected the three winning designs because each one speaks to the viewer on a personal level.”
The top three designers were also awarded with monetary prizes and the 10 best designs will be made available as postcards.
The competition winners and their submissions:
1st Place (€1,500 award): “The Reader” [Die Leserin]
Submitted by: Stefanie Benz, Johanna Dahlem, Niat Hadgu and Juliane Zieher (Mannheim University of Applied Sciences)
Reason for selection: “The design captures the reader behind her book/mask in a private moment and shows her being ‘devoured’ by the book’s content.”
2nd Place (€1,000 award): “Indonesia Sketched” [Indonesien skizziert]
Submitted by: Katja Kandora (Rhine-Waal University of Applied Sciences)
Reason for Selection: “This poster’s design is dotted with many tiny sketches which stir childhood memories.”
3rd Place (€500 award): “Typographic Islands” [Typografische Inseln]
Submitted by: Anna Jansen (Hamburg University of Applied Sciences)
Reason for selection: “This poster reflects the colourful culture of Indonesia and motivates the viewer to take a trip through the Land of 17,000 Islands.”