ZEW Annual Report Wins International Design Award for the Third Time

The ZEW media design team once again received two awards at the twelfth International Creative Media Award (ICMA). The designers won bronze in the main category “Annual Report” and the Award of Excellence in the sub-category “Infographics” for the ZEW Annual Report 2020. In the year of the pandemic 2020, the ZEW Annual Report, which has a thematic focus on COVID-19, convinced the jury among 406 submissions from 21 countries.

The focus topic of the ZEW Annual Report 2020 has a high social relevance: The COVID-19 pandemic was taken up both in terms of content and design. The aim was to visualise emotions as well as challenges of the pandemic and at the same time to showcase ZEW’s scientific competence with regard to research on COVID-19. “Our goal is to do visual science communication at a very high level. I am very pleased that my team’s work has been awarded,” says Janin Villhauer, head of the media design team at ZEW.

Thanks to a coherent image and graphic concept with appropriate, minimalist typography as well as concise, reader-friendly texts, the annual report was able to prevail against strong competition again this year. The coronavirus theme was illustrated by a clear, high-contrast design with antonymic word clouds as well as atmospheric photography capturing impressions of the lockdown. Proximity and distance played an important role in the design of the annual report. Last but not least, the ICMA award underlines the creative value of the publication.

The ICMA is an international design competition for corporate publications, books, corporate identities, logos and magazines. Since 2010, the International Editorial Design & Research Forum has been awarding prizes for outstanding publications in various categories. The aim of the competition is to highlight worldwide design trends, to honour outstanding work and to promote creative exchange at an international level.