Season Six of HSE CREATIVE OPEN Competition Begins
Beginner-level specialists and students, as well as graduates of any university, regardless of geographical location, are invited to participate. Works can be submitted in the categories of Identity, Object Design, Illustration and Comics, Game Visuals, and Sound until January 21, 2024. Launched by the HSE Art and Design School in 2022, the competition collected more than 1,500 works in its first year. Its goal is to present a unified platform to host original ideas and spectacular projects in all areas of design, contemporary art, and fashion, as well as to draw the attention of the creative community to the development of professions in the industry.
The jury of each category consists of a curator, a ‘thought leader’, and representatives of various institutions and trend-setting companies, who select relevant projects.
Based on the results, the jury will put together shortlists of notable and interesting projects and decide on the top three. The winners will receive cash prizes, support improving and/or implementing their project, and have their work published on a platform that showcases the best works, forms an online archive of art by talented young people, and discovers new names.
HSE CREATIVE OPEN in numbers
Prizes
🥇 1st place—50,000 roubles.
🥈 2nd place—30,000 roubles.
🥉 3rd place—20,000 roubles.
Applications are accepted up to and including January 21, 2024. Each category has its own curator.
Winners are chosen separately for each category.
Categories of HSE CREATIVE OPEN Season Six
Identity
Today, brand identity is a key stage in interaction with an audience. The ability to think through and implement a holistic concept for visual branding is not just a valuable skill, but an entire area of creative activity that needs competent specialists. We expect participants to present real and fantasy projects that present interesting visual identity concepts for brands and companies.
Visual identity (corporate style) development projects, both made according to real briefs and initiative projects, are accepted for participation in the Identity category. Identity development projects can be carried out for real or imaginary commercial companies, services, consumer brands, cultural and educational institutions, charitable and public organisations, as well as events and festivals.
Reference Works
Object Design
Object designers shape the environment that surrounds us. The objects found in interiors and public spaces create an atmosphere and help us feel better at home and be more efficient at work.
We are looking for works that form a new object environment—bold statements and conceptual findings, technological discoveries and concise objects that will become a functional addition to many interiors/public spaces and improve the user experience.
Reference Works
Game Visuals
Video games are one of the youngest forms of communication, yet one of the most effective. Today’s gamers don’t just play for fun—as technology advances and audience expectations rise, the most important element of gaming communication comes to the forefront: graphics.
The repertoire of modern video games has gone beyond fantasy and genre fiction, and game graphics are needed not only to depict elven princesses and combat robots. The competition does not exclude traditional solutions, but we will be particularly pleased with avant-garde, innovative concepts in which game visuals resonate with digital art, video art, and original design.
Projects that can address the main tasks solved by visual content in the interactive format of a video game are accepted for participation in the Game Visuals category: to make an impression, to indicate the action location, and to show the events taking place in this virtual space as effectively as possible.
Reference Works
Sound
This season, the focus of the competition is on the increased interest in ambient music in recent years. The trend towards this genre can be seen in the global music market very clearly in the works of multiple producers. Rapidly developing technologies provide a colossal variety of instruments and, as a result, saturate modern music with new timbre colours and textures while updating the understanding of long-existing musical genres. The new ambient is no exception—we can clearly discern a trend towards a fusion of smooth, defocused harmonic layers familiar to this genre with technological textures, ASMR / spoken word, and complex spatial processing.
Today, such music exists not only in the format of music releases, but also as soundtracks for a wide range of media products and voiceovers for contemporary art exhibitions, performances, theatrical productions, and fashion shows.
Reference Works
More information, recommendations, and registration links are available in Russian on the HSE Art and Design School website.
See also:
ADCR Awards: HSE University Wins in Ten Nominations
In early October, the award ceremony for the winners of ADCR Awards, a Russian professional competition in creativity, design and advertising, took place. This year, all the prizes in the Graphic Design/Product Design category were taken by HSE students. Additionally, the HSE Art and Design School has once again been named the School of the Year, and Leonid Slavin has been recognised as the tutor of the year. In 2024, participants submitted a record 649 works to the competition, of which 84 received awards in various categories.
GRADUATION'24: HSE Art and Design School at the Zaryadye Exhibition
On October 11, 2024, the third exhibition GRADUATION'24 opened at the Parking Gallery of Zaryadye Park. More than 200 promising artists from 22 Moscow institutions are participating in the event. The exhibition features various works from modern painting to computer games created by graduates of different tracks of HSE Art and Design School.
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Last year, HSE University and the team at Yandex Museum launched their first joint competition, ‘New Life of Familiar Things,’ involving students from various fields at the HSE Art and Design School. The winners' works are now displayed at the Yandex Museum. The HSE News Service interviewed the winners about their innovative design and implementation.
‘New Life of Familiar Things’: Exhibition of Student Projects at Yandex Museum
On July 3, 2024, the Yandex Museum on Paveletskaya in collaboration with the HSE Art and Design School opened an exhibition showcasing familiar objects that have been given new forms, functions, and meanings. The exhibition features the projects of finalists from a competition organised by the HSE Art and Design School and the Yandex Museum. Visitors can explore works created by young designers and talented students of the HSE Art and Design School, who have reimagined familiar objects in the context ofmodern life.
Season Eight of HSE CREATIVE OPEN Competition Begins
HSE CREATIVE OPEN international online competition of the HSE Art and Design School opens the summer season featuring new categories: ‘Visual Research,’ ‘Game Design,’ ‘Motion Design,’ ‘Poster,’ and ‘Digital Product.’
HSE ART GALLERY 2.0: Relaunch and New Space at the Winzavod
HSE ART GALLERY, which was established in 2018, is launching a new exhibition area. This second gallery will be in Winzavod, one of the largest private centres for contemporary art in Russia. The art space on Paveletskaya will become a place for implementing commercial projects and housing exhibitions by HSE Art and Design students and graduates.
HSE University and Pobeda Airlines Launch Joint Competition
HSE Art and Design School, in collaboration with the Pobeda Airlines, has announced the start of a competition to create a new uniform design for flight attendants and representatives of the airline. Young professional designers, as well as students over 18 years old studying at Russian universities in full-time and part-time programmes in the field of ‘Design and Fashion,’ will have the opportunity to showcase their talent.
Exhibition by HSE Art and Design School Students Now Open at Fabrika Centre
The Fabrika Centre for Creative Industries is hosting a graduation exhibition by bachelor’s students of Contemporary Art at the HSE Art and Design School. In the exhibition titled ‘Freedom of Absurdity’, the early-career artists present their interpretations of melancholy. The exhibition is open to visitors until April 21, 2024, and admission is free of charge.
‘The Form of a Building Plays a Supportive Role; the Main Thing is Its Content’
Environmental design shapes the reality around us. It is the appearance of spaces, buildings, and objects that surround us. What is happening in this field today? What awaits us in the future? And how do we prepare for it? The HSE News Service discussed these and many other topics with Boris Bernaskoni, Head of Environmental Design Studies at the HSE Art and Design School.
Still the Best: HSE Art and Design School at the World Brand Design Society
HSE Art and Design students, graduates, and curators have been participating in the World Brand Design Society international competition for several years. The winter of 2023/24 was no exception—several projects won in various categories.