Honoring the Greats: Latest Poster 2023 Competition Entries

There are masters in every field that the next generation look up to and admire, and some of our newest Poster entries honor those who have changed design and art for good!

“Méliès, the Magician of Cinema” (above, left) is a poster submission by Olga Severina, a graphic designer, curator, and founder of the PosterTerritory initiative. Severina dedicated the piece to French film director and illusionist Georges Méliès, who is regarded as the pioneer of special effects in cinema. His films were among the first to use such techniques as double exposure, stop-motion, and overlapping dissolve, allowing the director to warp time, space, and reality on screen. In her poster design, Severina evokes the surrealism of George Méliès’ work through the use of image distortion, halftones, color overlays, and shapes, making a modern homage to the “wizard of cinema.”

Finnish graphic designer and Graphis Master Pekka Loiri created “Milton Glaser 100” (above, right) for BICeBé, the Bolivian Poster Bienniale to memorialize the late Milton Glaser, a renowned graphic artist, whose designs have left a lasting impact on popular visual culture, notably his “I ♥ NY” logo and his signature psychedelic posters designs for Bob Dylan and Mad Men. Loiri depicts the image of a grand cruise ship sailing through the ocean in a vibrant pallet of primary colors to represent Glaser’s significant influence as a trailblazer in the graphic design industry.

“Teach Peace” (above, left) was created by 2022 Silver winner Derwyn Goodall of Goodall Integrated Design. In response to world events surrounding the new tensions between the United States and Russia, Derwyn wanted to create a poster on the importance of teaching peace. Using the two words as the main visual on the page, the phrase “Teach Peace” stands out in large yellow font against the green background of the poster. The letters “E”, “A”, and “C” are shared between the two words to represent that both “were inextricably connected and supportive of one another.”

Lastly, “Literary Freaks” (above, right) was designed by Kobi Franco to promote the art project of the same name. Debuting in the 2021 Jerusalem Design Week, the project aimed to take the negative connotation of the word “Freak” and turn it on its head. The project address human abnormalities through a humorous interactive exhibit that uses a “generative code” based on two words (one affects the x-axis and the other the y-axis) and produces a “freaks” profile. The final result is a unique barcode that distorts the faces of the visitors photographed in the exhibition. This was the same process used in the design of the poster, where an image was created for each letter in the Latin alphabet to create an image-based alphabetical system that functions as a typeface. 

To see other Poster 2023 entries, or to submit your own work, visit us at graphis.com.