Three Communications Design Students Had the Best Ideas

By Dr. Ernst-Michael Stiegler

Three students of RheinMain University of Applied Sciences have reason to perform their very own victory dance: They submitted the most cogent concept for a new image film on Germany's federal state of Hesse. The Hesse Ministry of Economics, Transport and Regional Development had called on film students within the Hesse Film and Media Academy network to work out a concept for a new image film for Hesse. From ten submissions, the concept design of the Wiesbaden communications design students Anil Cakar, Michael Mladek and Claudio Como was chosen winner.

The students received valuable support from Günther Klein, who is adjunct instructor in film for the communications design program. He will continue to contribute his ideas and his expertise to the potentially resulting production of the image film. Roland Blum and Johann Graf of the program's academic staff were pleased: "We are all very happy to have won. And we're taking a little bit of pride in winning too. To be sure, the other competitors and involved universities must have given their best as well ..."

The up-and-coming communication designers had wanted to give their film an entirely new look and thus differentiate themselves from conventional work in this genre. When doing their thorough research on other image films, among them films on New York, Tokyo and Hamburg, they noticed "immediately that they all use the same concept: A repetitive sequencing of visually similar urban images, visually similar aerial shots. The city that is being advertised can basically be exchanged at will." Instead, the design students wanted their image film to be "emotionally charged. The viewers are not supposed simply to be fed a string of visual images, but be immersed in the economic and cultural innovation landscape called Hesse."

Goethe's Vision of the Modern Hesse of the Future

To reach this goal, the communications designers will use a "fresh, young design" in the place of generic and tedious sequences of urban and landscape shots. Mixed media elements – a combination of traditional drawings, state-of-the-art vector graphics and animated illustration", as Anil Cakar explains – will address viewers in a "personal and highly emotional" way. For this purpose, the three students employ a dusted-off version of privy councilor Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, whose fictitious visions of Hesse they visualize in the form of dreams.

The synopsis of the three communications designers' film concept describes more in detail how this is supposed to work: "It is 1782, and we are in Johann Wolfgang Goethe's study. Tired, his desk sparsely illuminated by a candle, he is writing Faust. By and by, sleep is getting the better of him. Accidentally knocking over his inkwell, he eventually dozes off. Slowly spilling over a number of papers, the ink gives life to drawings and images of today's Hesse. A deft combination of entrancingly animated graphic visuals and beautiful realistic takes that blend into each other guide through the Land of Hesse and presents its assets."

Introducing Hesse to a Global Audience

International businessmen and officials are the envisioned target audience of the 90- to 120-second film. Some of whom might have to be told first where Hesse is located on the map. Others will have been fed PR films ad nauseam already and will not be easily captivated by yet another film of this genre. The film is meant to place special emphasis on the three capital "I"s of Hesse branding: the superb infrastructure, internationalism and innovative powers of the centrally located state with its major airport, motorways, much international direct investment and a high gross domestic product.