Our Design 2023 competition closes tomorrow, and we’ve received so many good designs across multiple categories, especially in our poster category. Here are some of our last minute favorites!
Carmit Makler Haller is an award-winning designer and the owner of Carmit Design Studio based in Belmont, California, where she works in the fields of the consumer market, tech startups, and luxury real estate. Beyond her professional work, Haller’s passion lies in poster making and typography, which enables her to use her design skills to discuss cultural, social, and political topics in a strong and thought-provoking view. This is completely reflected in her poster, “What Unites Us” (above, left), which was created as a submission to the annual “What Unites Us 3″ Online Poster Exhibition.
According to the competition’s brief, “Due to the pandemic conditions we are in … it is an undeniable fact that individuals … are isolated, positively / negatively affected, polarized … It is time to get rid of all this confusion, to start a good change, to show that positive things exist or can happen in the world.” Running with this theme and looking for an answer to “What Unites Us?”, Haller’s poster’s main theme of empathy displays her talent with type and Photoshop, focusing on two pairs of hands, one white and one black, holding each other. This represents Haller’s belief that our diversity in color and race are united in our ability to empathize with one another.
“BL Nest” (above, right) is a poster created by the integrated design agency Bailey Lauerman for the University of Nebraska’s break-out room of the same name, which provides the university’s communication and journalism students a space to collaborate on group projects. The break-out room can be found in the university’s Experience Lab, which the university uses to host its new student program “The Agency”, which provides students with professional media or agency experience while serving the state by telling stories for and about Nebraska.
As one of the sponsors of the Experience Lab, Bailey Lauerman was able to design their sponsored room to match the look and feel of their agency. They provided the furniture and decorated the walls with rotating examples of work — including this poster — for creative inspiration. Deciding to use a visual play on the center’s name, it displays a nest of “BL Nest” branded pencils with the slogan, “Where great ideas are hatched.” The University of Nebraska was appreciative of the agency’s Bailey Lauerman efforts to help provide a rich and relevant learning environment for students and has since collaborated on other projects including scholarship competitions and additional learning spaces.
