Neha is based in the NYC area. Her expertise in design branches out to identity systems, publications, announcements, signage and web. She enjoys working with clients on all levels of design, from art direction to production, to deliver clean and effective design solutions.
This year’s Philip C. Jessup competition, addresses important and timely issues regarding intervention and state sovereignty, which was communicated in the main event poster and supporting collateral. The event is widely recognized as the world’s largest, most prestigious moot court competition focusing on public international law.
With a smaller budget to that of previous years, a cohesive and memorable experience still needed to be created for the participants while heightening the awareness of international human rights issues and further enhancing the overall experience for the 50th year celebration.
For the 2009 campaign, a mark composed of three symbols of aid, target, and skull and crossbones, was created that would resonate with the participants both during and after the competition. The individual symbols were represented on the poster series, each focusing on a different aspect of the case. The aid and skull and crossbones posters bear the words of the respective authorities from the fictional case on one side with supporting text from United Nations’ documentations on the reverse side. To communicate a universal message, the target poster brings to light current and past conflicts of intervention and the lack thereof.
To reduce printing costs associated with creating separate event signage and promotional posters, the three posters were combined on a single press sheet. Several press sheets were pulled prior to trimming and served as signage for the duration of the event. There was plenty of prepress experimentation that had to be done in order for the individual posters to work as a unit. The remaining budget went into purchasing the participants’ gift, a “survival kit”, which unlike previous years tied back to the theme.
The campaign has been the most comprehensive in the seven-year span that Shearman & Sterling has been sponsoring the event. Between the printed materials, participant gifts, and the physical experience of debating on an important and timely case, the audience is left with a greater awareness of the responsibility to protect against genocide, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity.
