Chicago Fringe Festival Announces 2012 Design Winner

The Chicago Fringe Festival has announced the winners of the 2012 design contest are Andrew Gen, Richard Hibbert and Maschell Cha of Oregon State University in Corvallis, Oregon. Their design will appear on all marketing and promotional materials for the 2012 Chicago Fringe Festival, August 30 – September 9. The third annual Chicago Fringe Festival will take place at various locations throughout Pilsen. The complete schedule of performances and locations will be announced August 2. For more information about the 2012 Chicago Fringe Festival go to chicagofringe.org.

The 2012 Chicago Fringe Festival Design Contest, now in its second year, was open to the public and launched in May. The Design Committee, Executive Director Vinnie Lacey, Festival Designer Jen Dorman, Marketing Manager Timothy Mullaney and former Executive Director MikAyla Brown, chose the winners from more than 50 submissions. The 2011 winning design was by Alex Cruz.

Executive Director Vinnie Lacey says, "Not only does Gen, Hibbert and Cha's design capture the feel and energy of the Fringe Festival, it also allows us to reach beyond the performance community and involve another aspect of the artistic scene. The image fits well with our election year theme that Fringe is all about choice. We give you 50 shows from all over the world, and you are the artistic director deciding which to see. We are excited to have this image seen in Pilsen during the Festival and all over Chicago on our ads, posters, t-shirts and more."

One of the artists, Maschell Cha reflects on the Fringe Festival winning-design, "It was a great project to work on and we had a lot of fun. We really enjoyed learning about the Chicago Fringe Festival and we tried our best to understand the essence of it and have that reflected in the poster design. As graphic designers, it's important to us to build an understanding of anything and try our best to visually communicate it. We're so glad that we were able to do that for the Chicago Fringe Festival."

The winning design team includes Andrew Gen from El Segundo, California; Maschell Cha from Portland, Oregon and Richard Hibbert from Eugene, Oregon. They are junior graphic design students at Oregon State University in Corvallis, Oregon. The collaboration on the poster started in their graphic design course titled "Collaborative Processes" and the design was conceived after the group looked at previous designs and the Chicago Fringe Festival's history and aesthetic.