Calling all aspiring designers: Woden Youth Centre wants your ideas

Got a passion for graphic design, art, sketching or painting?

Woden Community Service is calling for interested young people to pull out their sketchbooks and get busy designing the new logo for its Woden Youth Centre.

The organisation’s Youth Engagement Team leader, Joel Artup, says the current logo is in need of an update.

“Essentially, because it’s been in place for a long time it is starting to show its age,” he says.

The current logo is basic. It simply has the words ‘Woden Youth Centre’ with a red bubble behind them. So if you think you can do better than this, send in your designs.

The new logo needs to represent who and what Woden Youth Centre is, as well as what it does.

Joel suggests thinking about values such as inclusion, compassion, hope, responsiveness, integrity and social justice when people are coming up with design concepts.

“Above all, let your creativity shine,” he says.

With 11 years’ experience in youth engagement in various roles, Joel is passionate about ensuring young people have tangible ways to participate in decision-making processes that have concrete outcomes.

A logo redesign is just one small element of this.

When Joel initially heard the Woden Community Service marketing team was thinking of doing a logo redesign, he decided it was the perfect opportunity to do a call-out for young designers in the community.

He says a competition seemed like the obvious route to go down so young people could submit their creative ideas before all submissions go to a judging panel.

The winning entry will then be used as the new Woden Youth Centre logo.

“At its heart, it is a youth centre so any opportunity we can take to get their input in a decision-making process, we take,” says Joel.

“It’s about ensuring their voices are heard and they feel they’re a part of the bigger things.

“Sometimes there are going to be times when young people come up with ideas that are simply unfeasible. It helps them to learn resilience when their ideas are not adopted.

“While young people obviously do participate with us and our activities, we want to make this even more of a priority by formalising their engagement with some of the decision-making processes.”

There is a longer-term project underway to ensure this engagement can be formalised, although it’s still very much in the formative, planning stage.

“I encourage everyone to get involved and have a go with this logo redesign,” says Joel.

Anyone from ages 12 to 25 living in Canberra is eligible to submit one design and it can be via multiple mediums –painting, drawing, digital media or printmaking.

The entry form and more information about the logo redesign, including a style guide, is available on the Woden Community Service website and Woden Youth Centre Facebook. Entries are open until Friday, 18 June, 2021, and the winner will be formally announced during the logo launch event on Friday, 25 June, 2021, at Woden Youth Centre.

Three finalists will also receive surprise prizes.

For more information, email Joel.Artup@wcs.org.au.