Art school posters recruit young election workers

The background to this is that elections take place almost every year: Local elections, state and federal elections, European elections, the direct election of the mayor, and elections to the Foreigners' Advisory Council. The next, ninth direct election to the European Parliament is already due in May 2019. The city of Kassel needs up to 1,800 people per election to work as election workers.

The two students Elisa Hempel and Kathrin Maurer from the study focus Editorial Design/Visual Communication of the KhK have developed a poster and applications for SocialMedia channels under the direction of the artistic assistant Milena Albiez, which went public on Monday, February 25.

On 20 poster columns, the motif, which glows orange in the color of 2019 "Living Coral," can be seen at locations throughout Kassel's urban space. Particularly districts where it has not yet been possible to recruit many young election workers, such as Kassel East and Nordstadt, were given greater exposure. 

With an "Instagram story", in which the poster is animated and which encourages people to register as election workers by simply swiping on their cell phone screen, a social media channel is served that is strongly designed for visual appeal. Twitter and Facebook are also served.

The mayor described the cooperation with the Kunsthochschule Kassel and the culture department, which established the contact and helped develop the project on the city's side, as very pleasing and successful. "The management of the art academy in the person of Professor Joel Baumann spontaneously agreed to our proposal for cooperation and set the course for the study focus "Editorial Design/Visual Communication", so that the students Elisa Hempel and Kathrin Maurer could get to work promptly under the direction of the artistic assistant Milena Albiez. The exchange with them about the goals of the poster campaign and our idea was a short and intensive process, at the end of which the motif now used was already presented in the first presentation as one of two design options."

Professor Joel Baumann, Rector of the Kunsthochschule Kassel, said, "We very much appreciate that the city of Kassel has chosen the Kunsthochschule as a partner for this project. This is because, unlike awarding a contract to a marketing agency, when we cooperate, we can also expect the experimental. This can be a long process; in this case, however, the good cooperation, the high level in the study focus on editorial design/visual communication and, last but not least, the openness of the city's stakeholders led to a quick and - in our opinion - very memorable result with a realization time of just under three months. It is certainly significant that the students Elisa Hempel and Kathrin Maurer are the same age as the target group of the advertising campaign, that they know the thought patterns of their generation and that they know how to translate the language of young people into graphics. They were expertly supervised and guided by Milena Albiez, who is an artistic assistant in the editorial design/visual communication major.

The fact that the impetus for a poster campaign to recruit young election workers, while at the same time recommending the art school, came from the university's Department of Politics also shows how close the connection is between the university and the art school."

Milena Albiez explained, "The project worked out great. The city was open to the designs we submitted and discussed them very appreciatively. It's a valuable and great experience for the students to now see their design presented on a large scale in so many locations around the city."

"It makes a big difference, having been commissioned through the ideas and design stages, to now see the finished product on large sites in public. In terms of content and design, it was important to us to realize what we experience every day in our environment, especially in the area of digital media that so strongly influences our thinking and attention. We took this into account in our design and hope that it will appeal to other young people," reported Elisa Hempel and Kathrin Maurer, who developed the poster.

Anyone interested in being an election worker can register online at www.serviceportal-kassel.de or by calling (0561) 787-8510.

Further information: http://www.stadt-kassel.de/aktuelles/meldungen/24905/index.html
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