Aalto University: VCD Master’s student Aliisa Perikangas wins the ’Gold Top’ at Grafia’s Vuoden Huiput

Grafia’s Vuoden Huiput 2021 is Finland’s most important creative design competition. The main prize of the Young Creators series, the Gold Top, has been awarded to VCD Master’s student Aliisa Perikangas for her coursework Herätä minut (Awaken Me).

The Vuoden Huiput 2021 awards were handed out on 28 April 2022. The main prize of the Young Creators series, the Gold Top, was awarded to Aliisa Perikangas, a Master’s student in Visual Communication Design at Aalto University. The jury was impressed by the creativity and originality of the winning coursework, Herätä minut (Awaken Me). The award criteria states: “A website that feels like entering an art gallery when you land on it. The text and visuals support each other beautifully. Enchanting, artful, beautiful!”

The award criteria
Through typographic narrative, Herätä minut explores how story, mood and suspense can be built through white space, reading speed and rhythm. The project finds alternative narrative devices to the minimalist, unadorned and simple typography we commonly encounter in poetry. The work is founded on the writer’s experiences, emotions and thoughts in the face of a global pandemic.

Herätä minut was created during the course “Studio: Type and Written Language Studio” in spring 2021, instructed by Tuomas Kortteinen.

Grafia’s Vuoden Huiput is Finland’s most important creative design competition. The annual event aims to raise the level of design, enhance creativity and originality, and develop designers’ professional skills. The jury, which changes every year, consists of 70 designers and the head judge, this year creative director Sami Niemelä.