Sacha Saddul, a third-year Information Design student, was selected as the University of Pretoria (UP)'s 'poster boy' for his poster titled Killer Fashion, which forms part of the Green Bauhaus Global Communication Project 2017. The poster project, curated by Professor Helmut Langer (a renowned communication designer and design educator), is an international design project in which 33 universities on five continents will participate.

While the end-of-July deadline is looming for the project, there was a preview exhibition of already-completed posters on the occasion of the UN Ocean Conference that was held from 5 to 9 June 2017 at the United Nations Headquarters in New York. The theme for the Green Bauhaus project is 'SAVE THE OCEANS – Stop plastic pollution'. The UN conference served as an excellent springboard for the poster project to raise international awareness and to initiate dialogue about the harmful effects of the extensive plastic pollution in the world's oceans. More significantly, as the youth have a central role to play in advocating for social change, the project embraces the visual voices of design students to address pressing environmental problems, such as saving the oceans and marine life.

Ten posters were selected for the UN conference exhibition, of which Sacha's was the only South African contribution. However, posters designed by Rudo Zijena and Gideon du Plessis also appeared in the press release for the exhibition, and on 20 June 2017 Rudo's poster was published in an article in the German newspaper Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger. The instruction from the Green Bauhaus Foundation was for participating universities to contribute 10 of their best posters so that approximately 300 posters could be selected for the final project. Ultimately, the aim is to curate and collate a selection of posters that will travel internationally as an exhibition and will also be documented in a catalogue.

At UP, the project was completed as a curriculum-related project earlier this year under the guidance of designer Amy van Vuuren and photographer Michelle van Aswegen. Historically, the poster format has been a powerful vehicle for communication as it combines texts and images in ubiquitous messages that have an instant appeal in their aesthetics and communication value. The project therefore provided Information Design students with an opportunity to use their imaging and visualisation skills strategically in a design layout in order to share a poignant message with a global audience. In turn, this communication exercise allowed students to reflect on their role as change agents in an ever-changing and complex world.

Sacha Saddul's Killer Fashion poster

Read more about Helmut Langer at www.helmut-langer.eu.