The project of the Ukrainian startup Awesomic received the Red Dot Award in the Brands & Communication Design category and will now be presented at the Red Dot Design Museum in Germany, the world’s largest collection of contemporary design achievements.

“The League of Information Warriors project is a communication campaign that reminds us of the power of words and information. Its goal is to inspire people to fight on the information front in the Russian-Ukrainian war,” the company notes.

To popularize the campaign, Awesomic depicted famous Ukrainian writers and philosophers as warriors defending their land with weapons in their hands “in word and deed.” Among them are Vasyl Stus with a “javelin” on his shoulder, Lina Kostenko with a machine gun and Hryhorii Skovoroda with a mortar.

“The war is going on on all fronts, including the cultural one,” says Roman Sevastyanov, one of the co-owners of Awesomic, “Our writers, culture, language – all this helps to keep the defense on the information front. And activity on the information front helps the real front”.

The design of the campaign was created by Yuliia Kuznetsova, who has been cooperating with the Awesomic platform for almost a year and a half. In the community, Kuznetsova is known as a top illustrator and winner of Design of the Season, an internal Awesomic award. Motion designer Illia Stashchenko worked with her on the design of the project for Red Dot.

“I believe that Ukrainians have everything to impress the world with their creativity (and we are doing it successfully). Probably, an artist (Ukrainian) needs to feel strong emotions, needs to be in extremely difficult conditions in order to reach the peak of his thoughts and do something important. My work was created during the full-scale Russian aggression, the genocide of my people – this is probably what makes it so special,” shares the project’s designer Yuliia Kuznetsova.

The Red Dot Design Award is one of the most prestigious awards in design, which has been awarded since 1954 by the institute of the Design Center of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. Apple, Google, and Sony have received the award at different times.

“This victory is another proof that Ukrainians can create world-class designs and products and deserve international recognition,” adds co-founder Anastasiia Pavlyshina.

Ukrainian startup Awesomic helps companies find experienced designers and get design results within 24 hours. The project was founded in 2020 by Ukrainians Roman Sevastyanov and Anastasiia Pavlyshina. During the two years of its existence, the startup attracted $2.5 million. Investors include: Flyer One Ventures, Y Combinator, Pioneer Fund, business angels Ragnar Saas (Pipedrive), Michael Siebel (Managing Director YC), James Park (FitBit) and others. In 2021, Awesomic also underwent an acceleration program at Y Combinator (S21).

This year, another Ukrainian project Diia.City also won the Red Dot award in the “brand experience” and “logo design” categories. The design for Diia.City was developed by the Ukrainian agency Fedoriv.