A long and unusually busy line forms on Saturday morning in front of the doors to the TYPO16×Adobe portfolio show. A sense of excitement and nervousness is in the air, and it’s no wonder: Five young designers are eager to enter the stage and show their work to the TYPO audience and the jury.

Hundreds of submissions, five finalists

Adobe asked young designers from German-speaking countries to submit their Behance portfolios, and received hundreds of submissions, explains Rufus Deuchler, Adobe’s Creative Cloud Evangelist. Adobe invited the five top contestants to travel to Berlin, join the TYPO conference, and bring their best works. Each of the finalists is asked on stage for three – and only three! – minutes to introduce their work and prove their creative potential in front of a jury of renowned designers: Vera-Maria Glahn, co-founder of the creative studio FIELD, Isabel Urbina Peña, letterer, graphic & type designer, and Matteo Bologna, Creative Director and founder of Mucca Design.

Alexandra Jeglitsch

The portfolio show is kicked off by Alexandra Jeglitsch, designer from Salzburg in Austria. Visibly nervous, she points out diversity and multi-disciplinary elements as the theoretic base of her work. Her showreel demonstrates the variety of her personal and client projects, which range from product and furniture design over branding to UX design. When she announces that she had just founded her own design studio LUA LAB only 13 days ago, the audience gives spontaneous applause.

Anastasios Koupantsis

Second on stage is Anastasios Koupantsis from Düsseldorf, Germany. Since 2008, he’s a part of the small multidisciplinary design studio Betty und Betty, and shows great routine in presenting the aesthetic decision making in his client projects, which are heavily conceptual.

Fabian Fohrer

Next up, Fabian Fohrer, graphic design student from Konstanz, gets on stage and uses his three minutes to present just one project: KD Lounge, a talk series that he organizes with fellow students. Besides creating a successful format for young designers to learn, network and connect, the KD Lounge team also developed a striking visual language for the event series. Their posters, invitation postcards, videos all make use of a custom developed typeface. Even though jury member Matteo Bologna can’t keep himself from joking why they didn’t simply use Helvetica, the KD Lounge work doesn’t fail to impress both jury and audience.

 

Kenzi Benabdallah

The forth contestant is Kenzi Benabdallah, is an art director from Berlin. He introduces his work for Google Play, which unites sleek and state-of-the-art mobile design with playful and unique visuals. Another project of his, Haram, is influenced by his arabic background and the Muslim tradition of his family. The experimental typeface is his personal interpretation of Ramadan: Each day of the fasting time, he created one letter, built out of one forbidden item.

Sarah Schnurbus

Lastly, Sarah Schnurbus enters the stage. The communication design student from Dortmund calls graphic design her passion, and eloquently explains the concepts that inform her creative decision making. She presents two personal projects: An illustrated book about the Tibetan national anthem, and an editorial project collecting Native American tales and myths. Her interest in both spirituality and foreign cultures is evidently a red thread in her work. Her last project, a package design for a small local food company, proves her ability to also develop clean and confident brands.

All five presenters manage to impress with their variety of creative work, and the decision is not easy—but in a close call, the jury eventually votes on Fabian Fohrer as the winner of the portfolio show. The designer from Konstanz is awarded an iPad, an Apple Pencil and a year of Adobe Creative Cloud subscription, hopefully coming to good use in his creative work. We say congratulations, and are excited to see the future creative work of all five participants!

 

Written by Kristina Schneider •