CEPT Essay Prize 2024
Deliverables:
- Competition Poster
CEPT University is a leading institution in Gujarat, India focused on architecture, planning, design, and built environment studies
Known for its interdisciplinary pedagogy and emphasis on research and critical thinking, CEPT holds an annual Essay Prize to encourage writing across its various faculties. The 2024 edition was themed “Labyrinth”, a word chosen for its depth and multiplicity. It evokes both a spatial construct and a philosophical condition; at once a path and a pause, a place of navigation, orientation, and sometimes deliberate disorientation.
Pomoco was commissioned to design the call-for-entries poster with the goal of making the theme visually compelling and increasing engagement and submissions across departments
The theme invited essays that could hold contradictions, meander, or double back borrowing from the language of archaeology, planning, mythology, and literature.
Our design process began by studying classical labyrinth iconography from ancient Greek patterns to medieval mandalas and examining how the symbol has evolved across time and cultures.
For the central visual, we developed a stylized labyrinth that retained a sense of easy recognition while allowing for contemporary abstraction. This form balanced both directionality and ambiguity, referencing the thematic dualities, myth and reality, path and pause, known and unknown.
The font system was carefully selected to feel academic yet accessible, aiming to appeal to CEPT’s wide student body without sacrificing formality. The visual tone was kept minimal, grounded, and deliberate
We worked with a strictly monochrome palette to create the highest visual contrast and to keep the poster striking across both print and digital formats. Positive and negative space were used intentionally, allowing the labyrinth motif to emerge and recede depending on vantage and scale mirroring the theme’s layered meaning. The overall layout was structured and balanced, providing clear readability for submission details without interrupting the conceptual core.
The poster operated as both a functional call to action and a thematic entry point, ultimately helping CEPT frame the prize not just as a competition, but as an invitation to narrativize thought within complex spatial, disciplinary, and mythic frameworks
Indian Aeropress Championship
2026