Linea Matei, a student at Konstfack University College of Arts Crafts and Design, has won the Mactac ‘Bright Young Things Take Hackney’ graphic design competition that attracted more than 200 entrants. Matei‘s work will now be installed on a two-storey wall at Hackney Walk, a retail destination in East London. She will collaborate with Mactac’s design and large-format print partner Onward Display and with installation partner GESS to complete the installation.
The design, along with the other finalists’ work, will also be featured on social media and will take centre stage at the Mactac exhibition at Fespa 2018.
The award follows Matei‘s recent Mactac-sponsored visit to London, where she and seven competition finalists were given the opportunity to develop their initial creative ideas with the support of creative and technical teams from Mactac and Hackney Walk.
Douglas Spencer, sales manager UK for Mactac, said: “We launched this competition in collaboration with Arts Thread because we wanted to see how design students would respond to this large and iconic display area and learn how our products can play a role in their design. Giant, colourful graphics of this kind can make a very pronounced impact, and we were certainly expecting some good ideas, however the sheer breadth of creativity that was shown by these students was genuinely surprising and inspiring.”
The original competition panel of judges was joined by a number of representatives from the Hackney Walk initiative for the final selection, including architect Rafael Vinoly. Competition judge Jack Basrawy, chairman of Hackney Walk, said that the final decision was tough: “It goes without saying that our job as judges was difficult, but Linea Matei’s design is a very worthy winner. She has embraced the scale of the two-storey canvas available to her, creating an image that will stop people in their tracks. We are very much looking forward to seeing the final installation at Hackney Walk.”
The Mactac brand’s parent company, Avery Dennison, is launching a large interactive installation in Times Square NYC, a result of the second ‘Bright New Things’ competition, in partnership with Arts Thread and in conjunction with Design Pavilion as part of NYCxDesign, New York City’s annual celebration of design.
The installation, powered by Avery Dennison’s new Vela dynamic window display technology and Avery Dennison’s Janela Smart Products Platform will be open to the public until 20 May.
