Offset Printing

Sternberg Foundation chooses winner for the best book title illustration

Thursday 29. October 2020 - The Sternberg Foundation, named after the former long-standing CEO of Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG, has awarded this years prize for successful design in the printing industry. The task was to design a book cover for an anthology on the subject of A Friday in The Future, with an eye to sustainability and a vision of the future.

This year’s prizewinner is graphic designer Deborah Moldawski, a graduate of the Hochschule für Gestaltung in Offenbach, who also holds a bachelor’s degree in art history and ethnology from the Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main. In addition to her creative work, which focuses on illustration and animation, her interests include the examination of global art and cultural history. With her book cover design, she wants to present a positive vision of the future for man’s interaction with nature. “At the moment, the relationship of mankind to nature is suffering from the exploitative behaviour of man, but the increasingly loud movement towards sustainability gives hope for a future with a respectful approach to the environment,” said the prizewinner at the award ceremony, which was held online due to Corona.
The illustrations focus on technology and sustainable change
Rainer Hundsdörfer, CEO of Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG, praised the prizewinner’s work: “The illustration should depict a symbiosis between man and nature, in which man sees himself as an equal partner of nature and acts in harmony with the environment. Deborah Moldawski created a hybrid creature of a human being and a tree, with the brain simultaneously representing a treetop. She designed the font of the title in the form of clouds, which are blown out by the hybrid being. The clouds are metaphorically meant to represent clean air and symbolise a peaceful lightness between man and nature.
Together with Dr. Markus Heering, Managing Director of the VDMA Printing and Paper Technology Association and Prof. Dr. Rupert Felder, Head of Global HR at Heidelberg, Rainer Hundsdörfer presented two recognition awards to Anne Krieger and Anna Beil. Anne Krieger studied at the Hochschule für Gestaltung in Offenbach and works as a freelance graphic designer. In her design, a main motif is divided into many small details. Shapes from technology and outer space can be recognised. Anna Beil also studied at the Offenbach Academy of Design and works both in Offenbach and in Berlin. On her design you can see a diffuse group of people at a protest. The sun is shining in a friendly and threatening way at the same time, so that the plants were also kept in red.
Dr. Heering: “The prize awarded was intended to encourage a creative approach to the product of a book title as well as the given theme and to take up the manifold potentials of paper and print”.
The prize was open to students of graphic design, visual communication or communication design at state-recognised universities of applied sciences, art colleges, universities or academies in Germany. The prize money totalled 6,000 euros.