Award360° 2023

• 2023
• offset lithograph
• Three parts, each 570 x 840 mm

Award360° is an annual graphic design award organized by Design360°, a leading design-focused media brand operating from Guangzhou, China. The Award aims to promote and celebrate excellence in graphic design from all over the world, while firmly positioning itself in the Asian context. We served as jury members in 2020 and 2023, and for the 2023 Award, we also designed the visual identity.

The key element of the visual identity is based on a series of pie charts that implicitly respond to the Award360° report published in Design360° issue 100 (2022). The charts show some statistics relevant to graphic design in general and the international aspirations of Award360°. Without any supporting text, however, the charts are not meant to be read literally as statistics. On the contrary, they work as ambiguous markers to point to the larger context in which graphic designers function. Simultaneously precise and obscure, they also allude to the duality that characterizes many graphic designers’ work: “clarity for business and obscurity for pleasure” (our motto). Additionally, the colorful charts help create a festive mood.

The following is an excerpt from an interview we did with the Award organizers, where we talk a little more about the identity:

Award360°: According to the explanatory text in [your proposal], the visual identity is based on statistics and pie charts inspired by those released in the Design360° magazine. As a whole, the visual identity reflects the “larger context in which graphic designers function.” We want to know how you came up with this idea. How did you find the relation between statistics and context?

Sulki and Min: We are always fascinated by statistical graphs. We are not talking about those 3D-decorated, motion-enhanced, illustration-rich, awe-inspiring “info-graphics.” On the contrary, we are interested in how the dull, crude, and simplistic charts and graphs generated by spreadsheet applications could be used unexpectedly. They often speak of what’s going on in the world, such as how money flows and where people are heading. At the same time, they can be mystifying. A meaningful-looking piece of pie chart can look meaningful because… it looks meaningful! It’s both open to the world (as an index of factual events) and self-contained. So, to return to your question, when we saw the special feature of Design360° – a report on Award360° with a series of pie charts – we felt that our interest and yours converged. It felt like a good omen. We also thought that the pie charts could work as a rhetorical device, not necessarily for reporting but for promoting, in this case, this year’s Award360°. We wanted to create some eye-catching visuals, but we also wanted them to be meaningful – to reflect some contexts in which contemporary graphic design operates.…

Award360°: Although you’ve said that you prefer the actual meaning of the statistics unknown to the readers, we still find them very playful and interesting. Where did those statistics you used come from?

Sulki and Min: We thought the meanings don’t need to be visible: for us, it’s enough to know that there are meanings behind the otherwise simply colorful graphics. We have this mystical belief that our knowing of the hidden meanings of our work – not what we actually know – can be somehow transmitted to the audience as a positive sign. But we would not object to answering questions, so we tell them when someone asks the meaning. Anyway, we wanted to find some data obliquely related to the charts published in Design360°. For example, there is a chart about the age distribution of the past participants in the Award360°. We were curious about the same subject but in a larger context. So we did some research and found this data in Truelist blog about the age distribution of graphic designers in the world. (On the same source, we also drew data about educational backgrounds and industries hiring graphic designers.) Similarly, our chart about the popular social media networks worldwide is a response to your reports on Instagram and social media usage, and the source is Statista. The favorite colors in the world, found in YouGov, is our answer to your color usage report, and the most common fonts in Fonts in Use is to your chart on the types of fonts. There are some more general facts regarding contemporary graphic design, such as the world’s languages and writing systems, and their sources are Ethnologue and WorldAtlas, respectively.