Five Participants, Including a First-Year High School Student, Won Awards Held by TradeWaltz Inc., ! Publication of Our Corporate Brochure, Evaluated Highly by Judges, Including One From Tokyo University of the Arts, Is Now Available!

 Tradewaltz Inc. (Hereafter referred to as Tradewaltz) that operates TradeWaltz®, a trade information linkage platform, held “TradeWaltz Student Design Competition”. This Competition invited high school and university students from all over the world to share their visual designs for our corporate brochure. The corporate brochure adopting the design of the competition winner was completed at the end of the contest. 

■ The World TradeWaltz Wants to Realize through Student Design Competition

 TradeWaltz Inc. operates “TradeWaltz,” a trade information linkage platform that uses blockchain technology to digitize analog trade procedures that are still conducted on paper. By using TradeWaltz, we aim to realize a future in which trade practitioners and all related parties are connected and can conduct safe and secure trade transactions.

 TradeWaltz is currently the world’s pioneer by developing the service with the collaboration of government, private sector, and academia. However, this effort must continue not only by the current management team but also by the next generation more than 10-20 years from now. In order to build the future of trade together with the young generation who will lead the future, we held a design competition for students in order to get the younger generation involved in our efforts and to raise their interest.

 As a result, we have succeeded in communicating the concept of Trade DX unfamiliar to society in a way that is easy to understand from a point of view that students can bring to this competition. 　

 The winner of the Grand Prize, Ms. Shiika Nakao (Fouth-year student, Product Design Course, Tama Art University), will be working as a designer for Trade Waltz from March, in while she works as an artist after graduation. In addition, Aruto Hombu (freshman, Tokyo City University Senior High School), who received the Excellence Award, will also join Trade Waltz as a creator from March. Their first assignment will be to create a concept movie to be presented at Trade Digital Conferenc organized by the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) , where a representative from TradeWaltz Inc. will be presenting in April. The film made by the creators including a high school freshman will be screened at this level of international conference, which should be a record for the youngest participant ever. TradeWaltz will continue to promote Trade DX with transgenerational players among industry, government and academic collaboration.

 

■ Final Judging Session

 Five finalists who passed the preliminary screening participated in the competition, each giving a five-minute presentation followed by a Q&A session with the judges. 　

 In the presentations, the finalists presented their proposals, which included out-of-the-box ideas unique to students: expressions that conveyed seemingly difficult subjects such as trade DX, blockchain, and TradeWaltz in an easy-to-understand manner; easy-to-understand design; a device that gave a three-dimensional impression even in PDF format; a link to the website taking advantage that the brochure was a company brochure to be used only in electronic media; and the company name “Tradewaltz Inc.” seems to float above the patterns on each page of the brochure.

 During the Q&A session, a judges asked, “Did you learn anything interesting to you about Trade DX in the design process?” The presenter, Mr. Honbu answered, “I had never heard of blockchain technology before, but I became interested in it because I learnt it was a very innovative and transparent mechanism. Ms.Momoka Takami (hird year, Department of Graphic Design, Saga University of Arts) said, “I was surprised that paper-based operation has been implemented by trade practices. I was amazed at the activities to promote the digital trade all at once in cooperation with other companies.” Through this design competition, they had the opportunity to learnt the challenges of trade and deepen their understanding of DX and Tradewaltz Inc.

 Judging was conducted with an emphasis on originality unique to students, and feedback and comments were given by professors, corporate PR staffs, advertising agency sales representatives, and others from their respective perspectives. The judging was difficult due to the high evaluation on all finalists, but Ms. Nakao won the Grand Prix for her design that expressed the excitement of flipping through a paper company brochure with depth.

Grand Prix winner
Shiika Nakao (fourth-year, Product Design Course, Tama Art University)

• Design concept

I created the pamphlet with the goal of helping viewers visualize the future of trade through looking at the company brochure. Also, I designed the pamphlet for people to imagine on a large scale how transportation and trade will change as a result of digitalizing all paper documents, and how they can hope that trade will change the future in this way.

• Comment

I learnt about the challenges of trade to join the competition, and was surprised by the fact that most trade operations are conducted using paper documents. Although trade is something that my life is related to, I had not been aware of its challenges and current status until now, so I was able to learn about it through the competition. Also, although it was difficult to produce a pamphlet while understanding a field I had never heard of before, I created it with the hope that those who read the company brochure would be able to imagine the future of trade with excitement.

Runners-up (two winners)

Akane Takakuwa (Second-year student, Visual Communication Design Course, School of art & design, University of Tsukuba)

• Design Concept

My design was based on the concept of “Change & Spread,” which expresses the company’s image of changing and penetrating the future of trade. The main corporate color is blue, and there are many gradations to communicate growth and potential. I kept in mind to creating a design that had beauty and a sense of trust.

• Comment

Having never heard of Trade DX before, this was my first time being exposed to it. As everything becomes more digitalized, there are more and more technologies I am unfamiliar with, and this leaves me feeling distrustful. As a designer, I strongly believe that designers need to explain complicated things in an understandable manner, and they must have the ability to research, express themselves, and think creatively.

 

Miku Nakai (Second-year, Visual Communication Design Course, School of art & design, University of Tsukuba)

• Design Concept

The pamphlet was designed with “readability” and “differentiation” in mind. As much as I could, I wanted to dispel the impression that corporate brochures are stiff and difficult to read. To make the page easier to read, I used icons and included a link to the official website. A wave in the background of the brochure is also made to look like Trade Waltz’s logo mark and words.

 

• Comments

Thank you very much for the runner-up prize. I would like to express my sincere appreciation to the management for their support and to the judges for their selection. All entries that made the final judging were excellent and very inspiring. I also learned a lot from the comments and advice of the judges who are active in various fields.

 

 

Excellence Award (2 winners)

Momoka Takami (Third year, Department of Graphic Design, Saga University of Arts)

• Design concept
  I created this corporate brochure with the thought that “the reader can imagine the kind of business the company engages in and even feel the potential of the company.”. 

 

• Comment

I had an unprecedented experience participating in TradeWaltz’s design competition. Even though I am grateful for winning the Excellence Award, the competition also left me feeling frustrated. I would like to brush up on the points that were pointed out to me this time and continue to learn more about design.

 

Aruto Hombu (First-year, General Course,Tokyo City University Senior High School)

• Design concept

“Easy to read for everyone” is my design concept. The key to explaining a complicated service is to make it easy to understand and read. Choosing “easy to read for everyone” as my design concept is because it is not necessary to provide detailed information, but rather an outline that is easy to understand.

 

• Comment

In the competition, my design won the Excellence Award. I am proud of myself to compete with university students, especially those specializing in design. When I heard the result, I was disappointed, but I will use this frustration as fuel for my next work, thank you so much! 

 
[Comments from judges]

Professor Kei Matsushita, Tokyo University of the Arts

I was impressed by the high level of the students’ ability to convey the information given to them. However, I think what is required of the students now is not how “correctly” they did it, but rather whether they were able to make it look like shining, vivid information. I was able to discover such elements in the top entries, and I really enjoyed judging them.

 

Takeshi Mizukawa, Associate Professor, Nagaoka Institute of Design 

What I felt from this design competition is that all of the entrants’ works were correct answers. In the conventional way of thinking, one type of pamphlet is taken for granted, but I felt that it is good to have more than one pamphlet to communicate a new service. It means that a corporate brochure can be a communication tool in a competition format.”

 

Kazuhiro Ikeya, Executive Officer, University Department, Digital Hollywood Co., Ltd.

I participated in the judging from the perspective of industry-university collaboration, which is our mission at Digital Hollywood University. Many of the designs proposed the appropriate usage of publicity materials in a digital age in addition to a deep understanding of the conditions presented by the client were appealing to me. I hope that corporate creativity will continue to be promoted by this type of activity in the future. 

 

Hiroaki Sasamoto, ADK Marketing Solutions Inc.

I am grateful for the opportunity to experience the students’ fresh ideas as a judge. It amazed me how students, who had not yet been members of an organization, came up with their own ideas for designing the composition based on actual usage scenarios. I hope they can use this experience for their own growth in the future.

 

Mirai Okamura, Representative, unit X

This time, I was in charge of organizing the competition. We were able to bring fresh air to TradeWaltz by allowing students to think about trade DX, which they don’t often deal with on a day-to-day basis, and express themselves freely without being too bound by societal expectations. 

 

Satoru Someya, Managing Director and Head of CEO’s Office, Tradewaltz Inc.

We would like to thank unit X for running the competition, the judges who took time out of their busy schedules to select and comment on the entries, the student designers who participated, and everyone else involved. We would like to continue to pursue our mission of creating the future of trade with the younger generation we have met this time.” 

 

Contact name Someya/ Okamura, CEO Office, TradeWaltz Inc. Email：info@tradewaltz.com