2021 Winners' Gallery

Alex France Design

Social Distancing for Alaskans

Juried Award Level:

Gold

Client:

Locally Grown Restaurants

Creative Team:

Alex France, Senior Designer

Lana Ramos, Marketing

Laile Fairbairn, Marketing

Yuit Communications

Calista Annual Report

Juried Award Level:

Honorable Mention, Best in Category

Client:

Calista Corporation

Creative Team:

Alec J. Wilber, Art Director

Ingrid Klinkhart, Account Executive

Project Brief:

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971, a policy Congress passed that divided Alaska into 12 regions and for-profit Native corporations. The Calista region is in western Alaska and the Corporation represents about 33,000 shareholders, most of them of Yup’ik descent. Yuit Communications has been Calista’s marketing agency since 2016 and produces all of its internal and external communications content, including annual reports. For this year’s annual report, Calista leadership wanted a theme that celebrated the corporation’s business success while honoring its culture, the strength behind all of Calista’s decisions over the past five decades. For the cover, Calista President and CEO Andrew Guy and Vice President of Lands and Natural Resources Tisha Kuhns were chosen as they represent long-term leadership and the next generation. The photo conveys that Calista’s leaders may put on their corporate dress for business meetings, but their cultural values are just as important to the corporation’s success. As a nod to Calista’s history, Yuit used design elements from its original logo. The texture in the tan element is an aerial photo near Bethel, the largest village in Calista’s region, and represents the corporation’s ties to the land and traditional way of life. Calista’s leadership was extremely pleased with Yuit’s creative spark and how this annual report tied the region’s culture to Calista’s overall business success.

Poetica

Music Alaska

Juried Award Level:

Gold, Best in Category

Client:

Music Alaska

Creative Team:

Emily Tallman, Designer

Project Brief:

Music Alaska is a nascent organization that will eventually replace the Alaska Independent Musicians Initiative as the primary music export office of the state of Alaska. Its goal will be to facilitate growth in Alaska’s music sector and export Alaskan music nationally and internationally. Its vision is to “put Alaska on the map as a place where music comes from.” The Music Alaska team sought a logo that was memorable and uniquely Alaskan, while feeling inclusive of all the varied genres covered in the Alaska music sector: rock and folk, indigenous and punk, classical and bluegrass. The logo and branding would need to be easily adaptable for a variety of uses, from large scale convention signs to small artist lanyards. In designing the logo, I considered the features of Alaska that were most recognizable worldwide – snowy mountains, northern lights, expansive wilderness. I chose to incorporate the imagery of EQ bars as a versatile representation of music, no matter the genre or format. The final Music Alaska design brings together the snow-capped peak, the aurora borealis and audio equalizer (EQ) bars. The color palette is drawn directly from the natural colors of the aurora borealis with a green to blue color gradient. The typeface is a custom geometric sans serif based on the typeface Sofia Pro that feels both confident and distinctive, without feeling urban or stuffy. The rounded edges and use of lower case feel as windblown and weather worn as the Arctic, solid and enduring.

Alex France Design

Social Distancing for Alaskans

Juried Award Level:

Gold, BEST IN SHOW

Client:

Locally Grown Restaurants

Creative Team:

Alex France, Senior Designer

Lana Ramos, Marketing

Laile Fairbairn, Marketing

Project Brief:

How far apart is six feet? One snow plow away? Three salmon? Alaskans, here's a handy chart of what six feet social distancing looks like for us! This marketing campaign was developed for in-store usage at each of Locally Grown Restaurant's locations and quickly grew to include small collateral like social media graphics, location-branded social distance floor stickers, and postcards for guests. True to their nature of supporting their community, Locally Grown also provided live files to other local businesses and farmers markets to help promote social distancing and other mitigation efforts during the COVID-19 outbreak. True to their nature of supporting their community, Locally Grown also provided lives files to other local businesses and farmers markets to help promote social distancing and other mitigation efforts during the COVID-19 outbreak.