Designers As Their Own Best PR

Last week in the Zagreb Student Center’s premises, the 15^th University Open Doors Fair was held where Zagreb faculties did their best to present their programs and concepts to current seniors/future university students as well as explain to all future academic citizens any and all queries they might have concerning their professional future. Approaches to presenting certain faculties largely differed, however, we can state with certainty that, production-wise, the University Open Doors Fair extends a significant step forward each coming year. Such was the case this year when during the course of Saturday morning, when the Fair closed, awards were conferred for the most successful faculty presentation. Two awards for the most successful promotion went to the Zagreb School of Design from the Faculty of Architecture, which was proclaimed best in the showcase category (along with the PMF and FSB). It also won the category for originality in presentation (along with the FER).

The School of Design presented itself at the 2010 University Open Doors Fair with the slogan “Fertile Ground for Your Creativity”. As the authors explain, the idea was to show the School of Design as a faculty whose student works are the fruits of a creative and team effort which, of course, isn’t any kind of bugaboo.

Thus the creativity tree came to be, whose crown, full of brochures of various student works, covered the whole stand. At the foot of the illustrated tree a place where anyone interested could symbolically plant their creativity as follows: Everyone was offered to pick a brochure and leave their name and email address on the overleaf. After that, the slip of paper with the name and email address would be cut off and the potential student would plant it next to the tree.

The aim of the stand was to establish communication with future students not just for the duration of the Fair, but post-Fair as well, through its web pages (which are under construction) where the growth of the virtual tree can be monitored, which implies the constant appearance of new informative content tied to the School of Design, entrance exam and design in general.

Credit for the concept of this year’s University Fair presentations goes to the following students: Marija Tizaj, Vlatka Leskovar, Adriana Pavelić, Karlo Pavičić, Andrija Mudnić, Luka Reicher and Marina Jukić.

It’s important to note that the visual identity of this year’s Fair was created by former School of Design students, the young and acclaimed designers Marko Šesnić and Goran Turković from the Šesnić&Turković Studio, whom we featured here. The duo is, among other things, responsible for the University Fair 2010 excellent posters which you had the chance to see along Zagreb streets and the new Fair Logo which is supposed to become the permanent logo of this manifestation. The guys have been in collaboration with the University of Zagreb since 2006 when they won a public tender for its poster design.