POPAI STUDENT DESIGN AWARDS 2021 NOMINEES.

The 9th POPAI STUDENT DESIGN AWARDS among students of design universities for the best design of POS has been held recently. And it has been the 8th time for VIRTU to be responsible for all issues related to the contest.

This year brief on the design of Kotex Natural corrugated stands was provided by Kimberly-Clark.

The students’ contest usually takes almost a year. We present it in universities showing many cases from all over the world to uncover various designers’ techniques since students have often no notion what the POS industry is. Due to the pandemic we have to adjust to it and sometimes the presentations are arranged online. 

After that till the end of March, participants sent to the contest 146 designs in total. Then representatives of the POPAI and Kimberly-Clark selected the best of them for the final stage.

One of the main objectives of the POPAI STUDENT DESIGN AWARDS is to produce full-sized prototypes based on the designs. All the finalists produce prototypes by their own. It usually takes them two days on one of VIRTU’s production sites. The second year in a row the pandemic has driven us to change our plans down to independent production by the finalists of models at a scale of 1:3. Eventually were 13 entries exposed for the jury to assess them in the Moscow exhibition hall AMBER PLAZA from June, 30 to July, 2. Tutors and students from universities often visit the contest as a part of educational program. This year we met representatives of the Moscow Art and Industry Academy named after S.G. Stroganov and their tutor Ekaterina Kuznetsova. The president of VIRTU Vladimir Itkin swaped opinions with them of all models produced for the contest. On the students’ opinions it was very important to see POS displays with their own eyes since the perceptions of them on paper and “live” differ each other.

All the designs of this year turned out to be extremely close to each other in terms of the skills level and there was difficult to distinguish the best ones. This was proved by that eight designs of students from three universities were announced nominees according to the versions of the jury, Kimberly-Clark and our company: the Moscow Art and Industry Academy named after S.G. Stroganov, the Saint Petersburg Stieglitz State Academy of Art and the Kosygin State University of Russia. 

On September, 2 all awards holders are going to be announced. Now we uncover the nominated designs.

As usual the excellent newspaper of the students’ contest was issued by the REDIN agency and we’re grateful to them! This collaboration has been going on for several years, and each time the REDIN agency team succeeds in coming up with something new comparing the previous one.