UP Vice-Chancellor and Principal, Professor Tawana Kupe, congratulated all the entrants and winners for the exceptional creativity displayed in their work on Ad Destinatum VI.

The School of Arts in the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Pretoria (UP), with the Registrar and editorial committee, recently hosted an event to congratulate and award students for their efforts in submitting designs for the University’s Ad Destinatum VI. The publication covers the period 2009 to 2018 and follows on earlier volumes that document the history of UP.

The winning design for Ad Destinatum VI was submitted by Ms Marcholette Minnaar, who said she was inspired by the architectural designs of buildings on the Hatfield Campus. These buildings seamlessly flow into the surrounding space, creating a feeling of continuous motion and rhythm through an ever-changing environment.

“I wanted the final design to show how the University is moving towards its goals and into the future,” Minnaar said. “As a result, I decided to hand-draw every aspect of the design by making use of a conceptual architecture drawing style to show the motion of development. The use of construction lines created a dynamic rhythm within the image, showing how research within each faculty constructs, shapes, and develops the University's identity over time, moving forward into the future and towards its 2025 goal.”

UP Registrar Professor Caroline Nicholson, in her capacity as chair of the editorial committee of Ad Destinatum VI, expressed her well wishes to all participating students and congratulated the winner and the ten students who received merit awards for their designs.

“As the editorial committee, we were absolutely amazed by the quality of every single submission, and the ability to engage with the brief,” Prof Nicholson said. “After careful deliberation, the unanimous decision was to award ten students with certificates of merit to recognise their sterling work, and to select one winning design for the cover of the sixth edition of Ad Destinatum.”

The project was incorporated into the first-semester academic work of UP’s third-year Bachelor of Arts in Information Design students. The Information Design programme coordinator is Professor Duncan Reyburn in the School of Arts, and Ms Amy van Vuuren was the project leader for this assignment.

“The students were tasked with coming up with a visual expression for Ad Destinatum VI that would result in a well-considered and holistic designed product,” Prof Duncan said. “There was much room for exploration, and the aim was to generate something appealing and surprising, but still appropriate to the image of the University of Pretoria.”

Minnaar added, “I found the design process for the Ad Destinatum VI cover challenging, as I wanted to capture the University's identity, goals, transformation, and impact on the future in a simplistic but impactful way. Therefore, a lot of conceptualising, ideation, sketching exploration, and a couple of creative blocks – as with any design project – went into the design process to arrive at a final design.”

UP Vice-Chancellor and Principal, Professor Tawana Kupe, congratulated all the entrants and winners for the exceptional creativity displayed in their work on Ad Destinatum VI. Prof Kupe also presented the prize to the winning student, with the Director of UP Archives, Professor Karen Harris. In turn, Professor James Ogude, the co-editor of Ad Destinatum VI, presented the merit awards to the ten students.

“We know that the BA Information Design degree at UP is one of the most highly regarded communication design programmes in the region, having won multiple awards, including Best Design Institution in Africa and the Middle East at the prestigious Loerie Awards in 2020,” Prof Kupe said. “It should come as little surprise that involving these gifted students in the Ad Destinatum VI publication would result in finding new and fresh ways to envision the design of the volume. Through your work, you re-imagined a way of capturing the University – visually and aesthetically – that resulted in well-considered and holistically designed products.”

The ten merit award students were: James Dufana, Liané Greeff, Theresa Matthews, Orateng Nkwe, Amber Oberholzer, Bronwyn Sinclair, Khemira Soobramoney, Lean van den Berg, Berno van der Westhuizen and Rachel van Zyl.

Once published, print copies of the Ad Destinatum VI will be housed in UP Archives, along with the earlier volumes.