The North-West University (NWU’s) name was held high at the recent Pendoring Awards in Johannesburg, with four wins in this annual competition that recognises the best efforts in promoting and stimulating advertising in all of South Africa’s indigenous languages.

Three of the NWU’s final-year graphic design students of 2016 won prestigious silver trophies.

Annemie Jansen van Vuuren’s Shibit! Soet en Suur Grafies Ontwerper entry brought her the award in the category for student communication design – logos and identity programmes.

“The award is to me a celebration of my creativity and the talent God gave. I consider it one of the greatest awards a student can get in recognition of many long hours of hard work.” Annemie designed a logo and identity programme for herself. She illustrated herself as a Kewpie doll and used contrasting colours in her designs. She portrayed herself as a “sweet and sour” graphic designer with a sweet shop and lucky packet as part of the design elements.

Suiwerbek Slingersous: Rêk Jou Bêk in Jou Eie Dialêk is the brainchild of Suné Potgieter and Grace Serfontein. The dynamic duo won a silver trophy in the category for integrated student campaigns.

Their project entailed creating an integrated campaign for craft beer. “It included everything from the beer bottle labels to promotional items,” says Suné. “We used satire to illustrate how different people use four different dialects of Afrikaans and to show that Afrikaans is a strong and versatile language.”

Suné and Grace say they feel exceptionally honoured to have received the coveted awards. “It is wonderful if your passion, which is graphic design for us, gets recognised on a national level,” says Suné.

“It is an honour to promote my alma mater, especially because of all the opportunities that it gave me during my studies. I give all honour to God for this award,” says Grace.

In the original Afrikaans category, a silver award went to Prof Hans du Plessis of the NWU’s ATKV School for Creative Writing on the campus in Potchefstroom and research fellow of the research unit for language and literature. The award was for his script, Vat die Stof my Bra, which was used in the BUCO Hardware Buildware advertisement, made by the Black Khaki agency.

His script was a translation of the original English script into Tsotsi Afrikaans. The advert also won two Craft Certificates, one for the television, film and video crafts – writing category, and the other for radio communication crafts – performance category.

“I feel very honoured and this award means a lot to me especially because the world of advertising is something I don’t know a lot about,” says Prof Du Plessis.

The four worthy recipients of silver awards at the 2017 Pendoring Advertising Awards once again showcase the talent of the NWU’s students and staff.

Annemie Jansen van Vuuren

Suné Potgieter

Grace Serfontein

Prof Hans du Plessis