Circus receives Arthur Zelger Prize

Updated 30.06.2021

The Innsbruck graphic design studio Circus is the winner of the Arthur Zelger Prize for Good Design, which will be awarded for the second time in 2021. Initiated by the daughters of Zelger, offered by the Tirol Tourist Board and organised by WEI SRAUM. Designforum Tirol, the award recognises outstanding achievements in the field of graphics and design with a Tyrolean connection. The scholarship, also endowed with 5000 euros, is shared by Stephanie Walter and Elisabeth Eiter.

Innsbruck, 30 June 2021: Esprit, humour, intellectual depth and a clear handwriting - these are the qualities that convinced the six-member jury of the Arthur Zelger Prize for the work of Circus, the Innsbruck-based office for communication and design. Beate Palfrader, Provincial Councillor for Culture, together with Zelger's daughters Nicola Schlachter-Zelger and Elisabeth Mittermayr, jury chair Anita Kern, Florian Phleps, Managing Director of Tirol Werbung, Nicola Weber from WEI SRAUM Designforum Tirol and Kurt Höretzeder, who played a major role in the conception of the award, presented the 5000 euro prize at the Landhaus.

"The Circus design studio has provided conceptual and graphic support to cultural institutions, companies and the public sector and has played a significant role in shaping their public image. This also applies to our country, whose cultural magazine Quart has been designed by the award winners for about 20 years. Circus is an outstanding example of graphic design work that has a particularly close connection with Tyrol," says Beate Palfrader, the provincial councillor for culture.

Outstanding contribution to Tyrol's visual culture

The jury took a similar view in its statement of reasons, as chairwoman Anita Kern, graphic designer and design researcher, makes clear: "The formative personalities Andreas Schett, Michaela Posch and Klaus Mayr stand for the Circus office. With their work, they have made an outstanding contribution to the visual culture of Tyrol." The award winners convinced with their continuous visual work of consistently high quality over more than 25 years and were thus ranked at the top of the designer personalities or collectives nominated by the jury.

Well-known works by Circus include the Quart Heft für Kultur Tirol, which has been designed in collaboration with Heidi Hackl since 2003, the campaign for the exhibition "Sehnsucht Heimat" (Longing for Home), the characteristic logo for the Literaturhaus am Inn, the work for the Tyrolean Festival in Erl, which has lasted from its beginnings to the present day, or the further development of the visual image for the Salzburg Festival and the founding and visual design of the music label Col Legno. Another example would be the campaigns for renowned Tyrolean companies such as Zillertal Bier or the energy provider Gutmann.

"In many works, Circus plays with regional clichés, which are alienated and placed in a new, often ironic context. Dialects, everyday objects or well-known image subjects are gleefully misappropriated and thus also become contemporary, critical-ironic examinations of the country and its people. Not the oversized advertising cudgel, but communication characterised by intelligence, wit and craftsmanship, which often draws its ideas from the context of art, literature and music, made Circus one of the most influential design offices in Tyrol in the last decades," said the jury.

From 28 September, an exhibition will be dedicated to the Circus office at the WEI SRAUM Designforum Tirol.

Parallel to the prize, the Arthur Zelger scholarship was awarded, which is also endowed with 5000 euros. This scholarship supports the final theses of young designers who come from Tyrol or whose work has a contextual connection to Tyrol. It thus aims to be an impulse generator for innovative design, research and development projects. This year the jury divided the scholarship. Stephanie Walter's diploma project at the Vorarlberg University of Applied Sciences is dedicated to the highly relevant topic of local communication between the municipality and the population. On the one hand, this involves a classic corporate design approach, but on the other hand, it also involves a technically innovative gadget that makes it possible to directly pass on important information to people who are less comfortable with digital media - older people, for example. Elisabeth Eiter was ranked second with her diploma project at the Linz Art University. With the fresco technique developed by Eiter on a substrate containing sand from the Pitztal glacier, walls can be designed graphically or painterly and at the same time the humidity is regulated with this technique. Stephanie Walter's project is funded with 3000 euros, that of Elisabeth Eiter with 2000 euros.

Humour as an important quality

"In our father's opinion, a good designer needs a sense of humour as well as craftsmanship and knowledge of the laws of design, logical thinking and creativity. I think our father would therefore be delighted with this year's prize winners," Nicola Schlachter-Zelger and Elisabeth Mittermayr, Arthur Zelger's two daughters, are sure.

"Attention has become a scarce commodity. In order to stand out from the great mass of messages, creative achievements and good design are needed more than ever. That's why it's important to us not only to honour designers who have been active for many years, but also young designers, as the scholarship shows," emphasises Florian Phleps, Managing Director of Tirol Werbung.

"Creative work is not created in anonymity. It thrives on the commitment of formative personalities and the energy of good cooperation. This is exactly what the Arthur Zelger Prize wants to show: the people behind the projects. Young designers are also very important here. Young people should find a productive breeding ground for their work and openness to experimentation in Tyrol," explains Nicola Weber from WEI SRAUM Designforum Tirol.

About the Arthur Zelger Prize

The Arthur Zelger Prize for Good Design is awarded according to the curatorial principle: the candidates are proposed by the jury members and the prize winners are selected in a jury meeting. The jury consists of three expert jurors and three specialist jurors. The expert jury consists of one representative of the Tirol Tourist Board, one representative of the province of Tyrol and one representative of Arthur Zelger's descendants. The expert jury consists of experts from the field of design. Currently, the jury is chaired by Viennese design researcher Anita Kern, Katrin Androschin (expert for strategic design and brand communication in Berlin/Innsbruck) and Andreas Koop (information designer from Allgäu).

Like the scholarship, the prize is endowed with 5000 euros and will be awarded for the second time in 2021. The award will be made every two years, the next time in 2023.

About Arthur Zelger

Arthur Zelger (1914-2004) is one of the most important representatives of Austrian graphic design and played a major role in shaping the external image of the Tyrol as a tourist destination. After studying in Vienna, he returned to Innsbruck after the Second World War and soon made a name for himself as a commercial graphic designer. The Tirol Tourist Board was one of Zelger's biggest clients over the years. In addition to numerous posters, the Tirol lettering is one of his best-known works.