Dubai Lynx, in partnership with Campaign Middle East, launched a competition for standout creative students from the MENA region to create the front cover for this ‘Know Your Platform Guide’ issue.
Students were asked to create a front cover that encapsulates how social media continues to move creativity forward. The brief was to be inspiring and reflective of the MENA region.
The winner of the competition was Samantha Ablo at the SAE Institute, Dubai. She appeared on stage at the Dubai Lynx Awards to collect her award. Second place went to Leina Daher, American University in Dubai (AUD), while third place went to Ghada Almaneae, from Prince Sultan University, KSA.
The jury president was Tahaab Rais, Chief Strategy Officer and Film Director at Publicis Groupe. He was joined by judges Choi Co, Creative Director at McCann Dubai; Saymon Medeiros, Creative Director at ‿ and us; Rana Sadek, Associate Creative Director at Impact BBDO Dubai: Firas Ghannam, Creative Director at VML and Justin Harper, editor of Campaign Middle East.
Rais said: “The entries were exciting. Some had a lot of effort and thinking put behind them. And that’s what we choose to reward. We collectively agreed to reward the idea first, the effort and thought process next, and because they’re so young and new, we didn’t go too knee deep into the execution and judging the craft specifically. We know that’ll come with time and experience. And we left the online judging room, excited.”
The winning design from Samantha Ablo was commended for blending the world of digital connectivity and entertainment, with traditional entertainment.
Campaign Middle East was interested to know how Rais himself would go about the creative process of ideating and designing the front page. “For this brief I’d start by identifying the real naked problem.
“Then, I’d define the audience – the ones seeing the cover – and I’d set a goal – what would I want them to think, feel and do. Next, I’d dig into find an interesting revelation about that audience that no publication has tapped into.”
