2006 Adobe Design Achievement Awards

Print Design Multi-Page: Winner

Stephan Powilat, Mathias Vogel, Stephie Ambiel

Fachhochschule Mainz

Rororo Monographien Redesign

Biography: Stephan Powilat was born in Wiesbaden, Germany. After graduating from school and doing community service, Stephan completed an internship at a design agency in Wiesbaden. He then enrolled in the communication design program at the University of Applied Sciences in Mainz. As a student, he joined several design classes, including typography, type design, corporate design, information design, illustration, creative writing, 2D and 3D animation, and photography. Stephan spent one semester studying abroad in Melbourne, at Swinburne National School of Design. In his work, he focuses on experimenting with all the visual materials discovered during the research process.

Objectives: Our task was to redesign the rororo monographien, a series of Germany's first soft books publishing company. Together with this task, the question arose of how to design and transform information, which is based on plain facts and figures, how to make it lively. We created an old, used, black-and-white picture language by using several scanned materials. Combined with vector-based, colored objects, regarding the aspect of contrast between retro and modern, we made sure to develop an interesting tension. We defined a square module that gave us the possibility to rearrange and position it wherever we thought it was necessary and useful.

Tools used: We used Adobe® Photoshop® CS to create and edit all pictures and pixel graphics. We worked with different layer styles to combine scanned materials. We developed a grid by using Adobe InDesign® CS and defined diverse master pages for the single pages, chapter opener, etc. At last, we created several style sheets for the copy text, quotations, headlines, and subheadlines. The book is arranged and designed in InDesign CS, which we used to create the preprint PDF file. Having this first experience in designing a book, we appreciated the comfortable workflow created by using InDesign CS and Photoshop CS.

Back to 2006 Adobe Design Achievement Awards winners.