Change the world

22/11/2022

Reasons to be Proud - #R2bP: Two students from Mandela University’s Graphic Design Programme in the School of Visual and Performing Arts took top honours in international design competition. 
The students won the first and second prize for designing a logo for the international organisation “Indigenous People, Traditional Ecological Knowledge, and Climate Change: The Iconic Underwater Cultural Heritage of Stone Tidal Weirs”. 
 
The organisation operates under the United Nation Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development (2021-2030). 
 
Coastal and Marine researcher Dr Magda Minguzzi from the University’s School of Architecture is the South African member of this organisation as a result of her ground-breaking research on Indigenous fish traps in the Eastern Cape. 
 
The lead university for the project is Japan’s Tokyo University of Marine Science and Technology, joined by Mandela University and the Universities of Guam (USA), Warsaw (Poland) and the Philippines, Chikushi Jogakuen (Japan), Mokpo National University (South Korea) and Trinity College (Ireland). 
 
Dr Minguzzi involved the Graphic Design Programme Leader Nii Botchway and his 16 second-year students in a logo competition for the organisation. The lecturers felt it would be a good opportunity for their students to be exposed to an international pool of experts and a real client and to reflect and have a better understanding of the indigenous heritage sites. 
 
“We saw this collaboration with the other international institutions as a good occasion for innovation and internationalisation at Mandela University to address grand societal challenges and promote sustainable futures. In fact, the study of the sustainable principles of the fish traps located along the coast, all around the globe, are of immense importance and we have some of those heritage sites in our backyard. It is of immense importance to highlight the theme and to create awareness among the students” Dr Minguzzi said. 
 
The logos, which the students submitted, were sent for a blind selection to the eight members of the different universities involved and Ferron Booysen’s and Mihle Magibisela’s designs were selected in first and second place respectively. They both won graphic design books, relevant for their profession and a further contribution to their education.  
 
Dr Paul Montgomery of Trinity College said: “The quality in all the entries for this competition was remarkable from the perspective of variations of environmental interpretation and interaction of humans with the marine environment. The range of imagery drew upon traditional iconography melded with modern motif's that embodied the place of humans as an entity within the environment in which the ocean and marine life are the major actors of energy.”
 
 
From left, Senior Lecturer from the School of Architecture Dr Magda Minguzzi, Graphic Design Programme Leader, Nii Botchway, first prize winner Ferron Booysen and Mihle Magibisela, who won the second prize.
 
 

Contact information
Mr Nii Commey Botchway
Lecturer - Art & Design Introductory Studies
Tel: 5043951
nii.botchway@mandela.ac.za