Double Win For NZ Designer

Double Win For NZ Designer

Winning international awards is becoming a habit for Emma Mann.

Creative Force, her Auckland-based, graphic design company has just been notified of two awards it's picked-up at the Creativity 33 competition in the United States. The company also secured two awards at last year's competition.

The contest, which aims to honour outstanding work achieved in the international design industry, attracts thousands of entries from across the globe, including many from top advertising agencies such as Young and Rubicam or McCann Erickson.

Winning entries are recorded in The Creativity Annual, a hard-bound, large format volume to be published later in the year by HBI, an imprint of HarperCollns. Creative Force won its awards last year in the Letterhead & Envelope Set and Website Design categories, for work performed on its own branding.

This year, the company again won an award in the Letterhead & Envelope Set category for a design created for Auckland print broker, Top Notch Design & Print. A further award was gained in the Invitations/cards category for an invitation to a fashion show held by Auckland designer, Luna.

"It's just wonderful to achieve international recognition for the second year running. In a small design company, you can do things which really work for clients and which are also truly fresh, new and dynamic. It's great to have this recognised," says Emma Mann. "It's also good to know we can achieve this kind of global acknowledgement here in New Zealand. Companies don't necessarily need to instruct some huge international agency to do their creative work. The answer to their needs is often right here in their own back yard," she adds.

Creative Force was formed by Emma Mann in 2001, following several years of freelancing in New Zealand and the United Kingdom. She says that the strength behind Creative Force has been its' ability to break traditional rules in creating design solutions.

"Normality and convention bore me to tears. design is about being original, right down to the smallest detail," she says.

Creative Force's successful involvement with Creative 33 has drawn praise from leading graphic designer, Dave Clark, who is the immediate past President of the Designers Institute of New Zealand.

"It's a significant achievement for a small company at the other end of the world to win two such awards two years running. We do tend to underplay our work here and this is a good example of how we can foot it with anyone else," he says.

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