Powerful Posters: Platinum and Gold Winners From Posters 2022 Awards Annual

We’re back with more distinguished winners from our Poster 2022 Book! Each of these amazing pieces comes with its own special meaning, which we are so excited to share.

We’d first like to discuss “La Strada” (above, left) by Woody Pirtle of the USA. This piece was specially made to celebrate Federico Fellini’s 100th birthday. Pirtle chose to focus on one of Fellini’s most famous works, 1954’s La Strada. The design of the poster features a tire with a red nose and a pair of lips in the center of it. The tire is meant to symbolize the road (or la strada), being a connection to the title of Fellini’s film, while the red nose and lips are indicative of the makeup look of the main female actress in the film, Giulietta Masina. Pirtle reports that the poster was well-received, and is a great way to remember a director and his wonderful film.

“Your Decision Counts” (above, right) is a poster designed by Damian Strigens of Hanson Dodge for Roush CleanTech, an American company. It was designed to drive awareness and sales for a new 7.3L clean energy engine for school buses. The poster utilizes a few images of important school supplies and changes their color schemes to look like a school bus, which was done to show the ways in which schools could save money if they were to choose the 7.3L engine. With the money they save, schools can afford more of the supplies their students and teachers so desperately need. The poster relies heavily on garnering an emotional response from transportation directors of schools.

This was one of the first creative-led campaigns for Roush CleanTech, and it really paid off! It resulted in highly positive feedback from internal stakeholders, but unfortunately, the production timeline of the 7.3L engine was halted due to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the campaign itself was a success, and both Strigens and Roush CleanTech are excited to share this product and campaign with customers soon.

“Mandate” (above, left), by Vitaly Stavitsky of Russia, was created as a promotion for the play of the same name. Stavitsky used a combination of the infamous faces of Tsar Nicolas II, Karl Marx, and Vladimir Lenin to create an image of “the new man of the era”. The use of these faces to create a face of the future shows how one relies on the past to influence what is to come. This specific mixture of features was also quite fitting for this play, as it tells the story of a family amidst Stalin’s reign who attempt to marry into a group of tsarists. The poster was a success and attracted a lot of attention for both the play and the theater it was performed at, the Na Litienom. 

Ivette Valenzuela’s poster “Hope in People” (above, right) was created for the Emirates International Poster Festival (EIPF) Dubai Design Week in 2020. She was inspired to create an image that used a variety of colors to create a face, creating a reminder that our society and world are made up of all kinds of people from different cultures and backgrounds. Valenzuela does a great job of emphasizing this, as the poster promotes and communicates the hope that exists in the world, along with a symbol of the future we all share as people. Valenzuela’s work invites us to look at life in its simplest and most beautiful form: we are the future, and we must share the world.

To see more award-winning posters, visit graphis.com. While you’re there, feel free to check out the Poster 2022 Awards annual!