Young Designer Prize 2022

Jaunojo Dizainerio Prizas, or Young Designer Prize, is an annual competition organized by the Design Innovation Centre of Vilnius Academy of Arts (VDA) in Lithuania since 2011, with sixty to seventy young designers competing for the awards each year. The main aim of this competition is to encourage the professional development of design students, providing them with an opportunity to present ideas outside the Academy.

The identity for the 2022 edition was created by Amsterdam-based designer Domantė Nalivaikaitė, who comments:

Inspiration for this year’s visual identity comes from fairytales, particularly the endings which consistently ensure readers that characters live happily ever after. While the selected motif is slightly ironic, its naivety and innocence help to ignite the belief that every designer’s path will be authentic, that the challenges experienced will nevertheless ensure a meaningful career development – a path with a happy ending. It also marks the beginning of a new phase in life – like finishing reading a fairy tale, it brings one narrative to an end, giving space for a new one to develop. To achieve this bright sense of ‘happily ever after’, an organic, fairy-tale-like typeface [Rabbit Hole Display by Tomasz Pawluk] recurs throughout the overall identity, although the key element is the abstract floral motif that embodies a magic vine, the plant that climbs upwards, towards the light.

Rabbit Hole Display is supported by Bagoss by Daniel Quisek for text and Generation Mono by Nguyen Gobber for the year and other display applications.

Photos: Lukas Mykolaitis, Rusnė Šimulynaitė
Exhibition architecture: Miglė Nainytė & Karolina Jašinskaitė