Ghent, Belgium – As part of the work of the Ghent Workgroup Creative Outreach Subcommittee, the GWG iconography project was announced in early March 2020. The purpose and goal of the project was to create a series of new, updated icons (pictograms) that would provide a better user experience and facilitate communication with a fresh approach to content, design and artistic coherence, and to give a new and updated look to the visual identity of the GWG website.

The project was carried out as part of the study by students of the University of Ljubljana's Faculty of Natural Sciences and Engineering, Department of Textiles, Graphic Arts and Design. Graphic and Interactive Communications programme students worked on the project for almost half a year as a part of the Information Design course and worked diligently under the mentorship of Assist. Prof. Dr. Nace Pušnik, Assist. Dr. Gregor Franken and Assoc. Prof. Dr. Raša Urbas. In addition to achieving the respective goal, the implementation of the project was an additional challenge, as the Covid-19 situation completly changed the way the project was carried out. Namely, lectures, presentations, consultations and all communication were strictly limited to the use of online tools.

Thirteen students participated in the project – Valerija Ažman, Tina Cajnkar, Maja Cerne, Maj Eržen Ambrož, Eva Klemencic, Jure Klokocovnik, Ivana Koron, Tereza Lenardic, Špela Lukman, Lara Mrhar, Maša Škrbic, Lana Šušteršic Jeršin and Nino Volf. During the implementation of the project, the students showed exceptional creativity, innovation and ingenuity. In their work they had to follow certain instructions and already established design principles, which also had to be in line with the overall corporate identity of the GWG. 

The solutions they presented were each interesting in their own way, and it was therefore very difficult to decide which solution was the most suitable.

The members of the GWG Creative Outreach Subcommittee first made a shortlist of three interesting solutions, from which they finally selected the most suitable one. The proposals of Maj Eržen Ambrož, Eva Klemencic and Špela Lukman were shortlisted and in the end the design proposal of Maj Eržen Ambrož was chosen as the most suitable solution.

The three winning students during the virtual certificate award ceremony with Prof. Dr. Nace Pušnik, Dr. Gregor Franken and Prof. Dr. Raša Urbas.

All participants in the GWG Iconography project received certificates of participation, and the three best received symbolic prizes from Enfocus BVBA and callas software GmbH.

The three best designs were awarded with a Connect You License for life given by Enfocus. Connect You creates certified PDF files from any application. For more info about Connect You, click here.

The winner was awarded with a callas pdfToolbox license offered by callas software. pdfToolbox offers powerful, dynamic and easy to integrate PDF processing, from quick visual inspection and fixing to fully unattended processing of thousands of files. More info about pdfToolbox can be found here.

We congratulate the participating students and mentors for their success and thank the Enfocus BVBA and callas software GmbH companies for their awards.