Goldsmiths students' Orwell Prize design represents ‘removal of hierarchy’

Goldsmiths, University of London students have revealed their design for this year’s Orwell Prize - Britain’s most prestigious award for political writing.

At a ceremony on Thursday 26 May, George Orwell’s son Richard Blair presented each winner with a striking and unusual trophy exclusively designed and made by three second-year Department of Design students: Tom Morgan, Archie Harding and Panagiotis Tzortzopoulos.

The Orwell Prize rewards the writing that comes closest to achieving Orwell’s ambition to ‘make political writing an art’.

Two journalists share the Orwell Prize for Journalism: Financial Times’ Chief Foreign Affairs Columnist Gideon Rachman and freelance journalist Iona Craig.

Arkady Ostrovsky’s The Invention of Russia (Atlantic Books) won the Orwell Prize for Books, and Nicci Gerrard was awarded the Orwell Prize for Exposing Britain’s Social Evils for her reporting on the care and understanding of dementia patients in the UK in The Observer and on social media.

Rose Sinclair, Lecturer in the Department of Design at Goldsmiths, said: “It has become tradition for students from our department to design and make the Orwell Prize trophy. Tom, Archie and Panagiotis have worked together to create something that resonates with the rhetoric of the George Orwell prize."

"Creative, stylish, symbolic, it's a piece of art in its own right.”

The student designers explain: “The concept of this years prize revolves around the notion of three being one. Symbolising the removal of hierarchy, with each piece being of equal importance to the whole. Formed of concrete, the trophies were broken from a single slab. The categories stand side by side uniting the prize."

Professor Jean Seaton, Director of the Prize, adds: "For the last five years, The Orwell Prize has worked with Goldsmiths designers to produce awards for the distinguished journalists and writers who win the prize. This year's design was outstanding - heavy, modernist, elegant, rocky, they captured something about Orwell and his values. They were presented so well and accompanied by a great film of their making - which played on a loop to the hundreds of journalists, editors, publisher, writers, academics, think-tankers and winners."

 

Find out more about the Department of Design at Goldsmiths

Find out more about The Orwell Prize 2016