Students on the Bachelor’s degree programme in Information and Communication Design took part in the Frankfurt Book Fair poster competition again this year. With Philip Martin Pothfelder coming second and Henri Morschek also making the top ten, two students from the university have made it into the top ten.
Welcoming the guest of honour to Frankfurt and inviting the reading public to discover the guest country at the Book Fair – this has been the aim of the Frankfurt Book Fair since 2006 through its own annual poster competition. At the same time, it uses this initiative to support emerging designers by challenging them to create an original welcome message for the Guest of Honour.
There are no limits to the participants’ ideas. Only university classes are invited to take part. A maximum of 20 poster designs may be submitted per participating university. The colour scheme and visual style are open – so there are no limits to creative expression. The only requirement is that the logos of the Book Fair, the City of Frankfurt’s Cultural Office, the competition logo and the logo of the guest country – which this year is Norway – must be incorporated in an appropriate manner.
A total of 16 universities offering design courses, including Rhein-Waal University of Applied Sciences, took part in the competition. A five-member jury comprising representatives from the Frankfurt Book Fair, the organising committee for the 2019 Guest of Honour, the Museum of Applied Arts in Frankfurt, the City of Frankfurt’s Cultural Office and the design agency Michael Eibes Design has now selected the ten best designs. The top three entries will receive cash prizes. All ten designs are available as postcards from the Frankfurt Book Fair and will be on display at the Frankfurt Book Fair in October. The Museum of Applied Arts will exhibit them in its foyer.
The two students, Philip Martin Pothfelder and Henri Morschek, who are in their second semester of the Bachelor’s degree programme in Information and Communication Design under the supervision of Professor Christoph Zielke, Professor of Media Design at Rhein-Waal University of Applied Sciences, made it into the top ten. Pothfelder can celebrate winning second place, which comes with a prize of 1,000 euros. His poster took the German tongue-twister ‘Fischers Fritz’ as the starting point for his work: ‘Fiskeren Fritz’ is written in understated typography against a light blue background. Visually complemented by a fish, his design playfully links the familiar with the unfamiliar. The jury’s reasoning is as follows: the Dadaist-style translation of a German tongue-twister into Norwegian and the consistent design won the jury over. The visual and linguistic elements are so harmoniously combined that one is tempted to hum the awkward tongue-twister to oneself whilst trying to decipher it. Morschek’s poster depicts a fjord constructed from individual black lines. The red line reading ‘Read between the lines’ creates a subtle connection to literature.
Since first entering the poster competition in 2015, Rhein-Waal University of Applied Sciences has been successful every year. Its second-semester students consistently compete against entrants from other universities who are in higher semesters.
