VIRTU and student's contest of POPAI RUSSIA.

Fourth year in a row our company has acted as co-organizer of POPAI STUDENT DESIGN AWARDS 2017.

The organization of the contest becomes commonplace: many questions are easier to solve having an experience. However this year contest was not simple for us.

For the first time in these years two competitive briefs have been prepared: from Mondelez - to design a display for chewing gum Dirol, and from PUIG - to design a stand for three brands: Antonio Banderas, Benetton and Shakira. VIRTU chairman Vladimir Itkin solved two problems at once: attracted the attention of representatives not only of industrial and environmental design but also of furniture design specialists. 

The briefs seemed to be very difficult: in the first case in addition to creative skills it was necessary to show certain engineer ones, and the second brief suggested solving a complex task of combining three different brands in one display. Another test for finalists was using of new materials: earlier corrugated board was the main material, and this year students used PET and cellular cardboard additionally.

Totally 55 projects were prepared by students from five universities of Moscow and St. Petersburg. Jury selected twelve best works for final stage of the contest: six for each of the briefs.

Some finalists have designed innovative displays and it was difficult to produce real models using a limited set of materials, especially to do it hand-made. But all students coped with all difficulties. 

Great help in producing the models was provided by our specialists: engineers helped to eliminate some mistakes made by students during the design process, guys from assembling teams gave advices and provided real help etc.

The awards ceremony took place in the Central House of Arts on April, 14, and eight students became prize winners of the contest in different versions.

The second year in a row we created the booklet of the contest together with RedinDesign and LBL Marketing Production: during the joint work the successful slogan was born - "Time for your ideas".

We also thank the experts of Mondelez and PUIG for providing briefs, assistance in organizing the contest and preparing special prizes for the award ceremony.

All the prize-winning displays can be viewed on the website of POPAI RUSSIA AWARDS contest

Seven months of preparation and implementation POPAI STUDENT DESIGN AWARDS 2017 have finished well, and the result can be added to numerous VIRTU awards of recent POPAI RUSSIA AWARDS.