With the sense of good communication design and creativity: the jury 2017 (part 6)
The heart of the Red Dot Award: Communication Design is the jury. With its expertise, it assesses thousands of submissions each year on the basis of established criteria. In 2017, there are 24 globally recognised experts who meet in Essen, Germany, to jointly decide in a multi-day process about the awarding of the coveted label “Red Dot”. Among others, Thebe Ikalafeng, Philipp Teufel, Thilo von Debschitz and Akira Kobayashi are part of this year’s jury.
African brand architecture
He is one of the worldwide leading brand and reputation architects: Thebe Ikalafeng, born in South-Africa. Furthermore, he is adviser and author and worked with over 100 brands. The number 100 also plays a role elsewhere in his life: the “New Africa Magazine” named him one of the 100 most influential Africans. This is not a coincidence: He not only founded the “Brand Leadership Group” and the initiatives “Brand Africa” and “2Public Sector Exellence”, he is also a member of the supervisory board at “Cartrack Holdings”, “Mercantile Bank Holdings”, “Brand South Africa”, the “World Wide Fund for Nature” and “South African Tourism”, as well as an advisory board member of “Henley Business School Africa” and “African Business Magazine”. He was educated at Marquette University, Wits Business School, and Harvard Business School, graduating with the Bachelor of Science and the Master of Business Administration. And there’s no place for boredom in his private life, too: He already climed up the Kilimanjaro and travelled more than 70 countries.
Expert for scenography
Professor Philipp Teufel works less with brand architecture but even more with scenography. He studied Communication Design at the University for Design (HfG) in Schwäbisch-Gmünd, Germany and was a partner of the design agency “conceptdesign” from 1985 to 1995 in Frankfurt am Main, until 2007 he was a member of the studio community “nowakteufelknyrim” and is leading the studio “malsyteufel” in Willich since 2008. His most important projects in the field of scenography include, for example, the German Film Museum, the New Museum Berlin and the House of the Forest in Stuttgart. Between 2010 and 2015 he was deputy overall project manager for the scenography of the Humbolt Forum in the Berlin Palace, from 2011 to 2014 he was part of the Art Council for the graphic design of the special postage stamps at the Federal Ministry of Finance. For more than 20 years, Philipp Teufel has been teaching and researching in the field of 3D communication at the University of Applied Sciences in Düsseldorf and leads the bachelor's programme in retail design. If he wasn’t a designer, Professor Philipp Teufel would like to be the coach of FC Barcelona.
Designer and author
Juror Thilo von Debschitz studied Communication Design at the RheinMain University, Germany, and completed with a diploma. After stations as an art director at diverse offices, he founded the design agency Q together with Laurenz Nielbock in Wiesbaden in 1997. In addition to his agency activities, he publishes books with visual focus. Among others, he attracted special attention in the worldwide creative scene with the rediscovery of the infographics pioneer Fritz Kahn and the eponymous monograph (German: Wiederentdeckte Bildwelten – Fritz Kahn als Pionier der Informationsgrafik) which was published by Taschen-Verlag. Thilo von Debschitz used to teach at the RheinMain University and at the Institute of Marketing and Communication in Wiesbaden. Moreover, he is often a speaker in the field of design. He keeps an eye on trends, among other things, by following the young design scene. Ideas, that are ahead of their time, can, above all, be seen in works of students and emerging design agencies.
Specialist for font and characters
He already worked together with design luminaries like Adrian Frutiger and Hermann Zapf, but began his career a little smaller: Akira Kobayshi started as a Type Designer at Sha Ken Co., a phototypesetter manufacturer in 1985. In 1989 he quit the company in behalf to study calligraphy and typography in London. After his return to Japan in the year 1990, stations at Jiyu-Kobo, TypeBank and Type Project’s were following. After he designed the Latin alphabet for the Japanese font “Axis”, he moved to Germany in 2001 to assume his current position at Monotype, formerly Linotype. Together with the designers Adrian Frutiger and Hermann Zapf, he modernised their earlier type designs. Besides all this, he is making his own types, is a frequent speaker at international type conferences and workshops in Europe, America and Asia, and works as a juror in prestigious international type design competitions.
» Jury special 1: Michel de Boer, Bettina Schulz, Chris Lee and Christof Rezk-Salama
» Jury special 2: Rainer Hirt, Eric Chang, Kelley Cheng and Michel Chanaud
» Jury special 3: Shu Chang Kung, Renne Angelvuo, Seung Hun Yoo and Jean Jacques Schaffner
» Jury special 4: Uwe Melichar, Damon Aval, Gustavo Greco and Holger Windfuhr
» Jury special 5: Johnason Lo, Niels Schrader and Peter Philippe Weiss
» Further information on the Red Dot Award: Communication Design 2017
