JJ Eng wins the prestigious 2024 Graphis New Talent Award Honorable Mention for "Decipher - Spoken Word Festival" Typography and Design
Congratulations, JJ!
JJ Eng, a 2025 graduate from the IDEA School of Design at Capilano University, has been awarded an Honorable Mention at the 2024 Graphis New Talent Awards for their typography and design project, “Decipher - Spoken Word Festival.” The project, which involved creating a brand identity for a music festival, included posters, social media posts with motion design, and an interactive augmented reality experience. Inspired by redacted and fridge magnet poetry, the design features a modular font and abstracted slam poetry scorecards, capturing the spirit of a young, discerning audience.
JJ is one of six IDEA School of Design students recognized at the 2024 Graphis New Talent Awards, which celebrate the innovative work of students and emerging creative leaders worldwide. Other winners include Natasha Lee, Ethan Woronko, Anais Bayle, Tiffany Zhong, Cassie Valenzuela Poon, and Celina Zhong, who received honours in categories like typography, advertising, and branding.
The Graphis New Talent Award is an international platform that showcases groundbreaking ideas and fresh perspectives from students, promoting exceptional talent in design, advertising, photography, and illustration. Winners are featured in Graphis' hardcover Annuals and online archives, ensuring their work is preserved and celebrated for future reference.
Check out this award-winning student project!
Assignment
The creative brief was to create the brand identity and system for a music festival of our choosing. The deliverables were posters and social media posts that included motion design, and an interactive augmented reality experience. The duration of this project was ten days.
Approach
The visual concept for Decipher, a spoken word festival for 18-35 year olds, uses the resourcefulness of redacted and fridge magnet poetry as inspiration. What the novice word jester and poet laureate have in common is that they share the same words. How they combine them is what makes a line memorable and the poet skilled. To mimic this process, Decipher's letterforms use shapes inspired by the punchy rhythms and energies of how we talk to create a modular font. We know our audience loves to dig deeper into a poem for that “aha!” moment. So we nested Decipher in a crowd of abstracted slam poetry scorecards as a nod to our discerning viewers. And like at the end of a performance with all eyes at the judges scorecards, they reveal the event details. This poster's mouthy shapes, unfussy grid, and jaunty colours encapsulates the spirit of our target audience.
Award: Honorable Mention
Categories: Typography, Design
Professors: Christina Lee Kim Koon and Elyssa Schmid
School: Capilano University
Student: JJ Eng
Country: Canada
6 IDEA School of Design New Talent Students for 2024
Cassie Valenzuela Poon Logo, Design for; Orbit Centre—Honorable Mention
JJ EngTypography, Design; Decipher Music Fest—Honorable Mention
Ethan Woronko, Anais Bayle and Tiffany Zhong Education, Advertising; Untwist the Truth—Silver
Anais Bayle Branding, Design; Hue Seasonal Eating—Silver
Natasha Lee Branding, Design; Commit—Silver
Celina Zhong Branding, Design; Soya restaurant—Silver
About Graphis
Graphis New Talent Award is an international award show that highlights the visionary work of students and tomorrow's creative leaders, showcasing fresh perspectives and groundbreaking ideas.
Graphis is committed to presenting and promoting the work of exceptional talent in Design, Advertising, Photography and Art/Illustration. In addition to the Platinum, Gold, and Silver winners, Graphis also embraces rising talent, all of whom have an equal Archive presentation. In our hardcover Annuals, Platinum and Gold winners receive full-page exposure, and Silver and Merit Winners are also visually presented. Up to 500 entries from each competition are included in the online archive for future reference, where everyone gets the same presentation. Today, the Graphis tradition continues, presenting award-winning work from 1944 to the present in digital and print.
About IDEA School of Design at Capilano University
IDEA School of Design offers two career-oriented programs for the next generation of creative professionals.
The Bachelor Of Design In Visual Communication is a four-year undergraduate degree with a variety of career outcomes in the creative field. Students can specialize in branding, Illustration or interactive design in upper years.
The Interaction Design Diploma is a two-year program with career outcomes in the field of digital product design and user experience. The focus is on creativity, design thinking, and problem-solving.
