Great Apes reaches the finals in Grand One and Vuoden Huiput
The Finnish design-awards season may be off to a brilliant start for HiQ’s creative studio Great Apes. The finalist spots in the Vuoden Huiput and Grand One competitions confirm that ambitious design-thinking and bold creative work pay off.
Multiple finalist spots – one work shines in several categories
Great Apes’ project SLS Arkivgalaxen has reached the final in the Digital Design category at Vuoden Huiput. The same work is also finalist in no less than three categories at Grand One: Best Visual Design, Best Implementation and Best Use of Data. In addition, the Maahanmuutto on maan puolustusta (Immigration is the defence of the country) campaign has made it to the finals at Grand One in the Best Work to Promote Positive Change category.
SLS Arkivgalaxen represents design where a strong concept and visual design form an experience that brings archives to life by presenting cultural history in a new way and revealing the connections between documents accumulated over decades.
In Maahanmuutto on maan puolustusta, creativity is used in a sensitive yet straightforward way. The narrative and visual solutions support a message that encourages people to think, learn and take a stand.
Great Apes on both sides of the jury table
This year, Great Apes Creative Director Łukasz Geratowski served at the jury member at Vuoden Huiput. This offers a unique perspective on the works currently being created in the Finnish design and advertising field.
“The works that stood out to me were either strikingly clever and simple, or crafted to an exceptional level. When the idea is strong, it communicates itself immediately and does not need a long explanation. And when the quality of design craft is exceptional, you feel it and can’t look away.”, Geratowski says.
Constantin Freche, who is also Creative Director in Great Apes, points to the bigger moment on the field: “We’re at the edge of a major transformation in digital design. That’s why it’s especially interesting to see where Finland’s digital design is heading and which projects this year Grand One will recognize as setting the direction.”
“The works that stood out to me were either strikingly clever and simple, or crafted to an exceptional level. When the idea is strong, it communicates itself immediately and does not need a long explanation. And when the quality of design craft is exceptional, you feel it and can’t look away.”
Design that performs at award galas and in everyday life
Great Apes is an internationally awarded creative studio that has won some of the most respected prizes in the industry. With a total of more than 200 awards over the course of its history, Great Apes creates digital services and experiences for its clients, where digital solutions are sometimes combined with physical objects.
In Great Apes’ work, quality is visible as both creativity and usability. It is the starting point for how a service takes shape and what kind of relationship forms between the user and the service. Technology and data bring depth and durability to these solutions, and creative design together with high‑quality implementation define how all of this looks and feels.
Business benefits arise from solutions that are designed for their specific purpose. Success in both domestic and international competitions is a sign that the work produced as a result of these assignments is of high quality and stands out from the crowd in the eyes of other industry professionals as well.
Great Apes’ Business Director Juuso Pihamaa considers it important that creativity can also be applied to business‑critical solutions: “Usability, clarity and a sense of interest towards a digital service emerge when the development team understands the true purpose of the service being built. Even highly complex needs can be solved when the team is committed to a high‑quality outcome and shares the goal of creating something that stands out from the rest through its excellence.”
New awards may be just around the corner
Both Grand One and Vuoden Huiput will announce their winners at their annual gala events. Grand One will be held on March 19th and Vuoden Huiput on April 23rd, so Great Apes may soon be looking for more space among its existing awards.
Even before that, it is clear that Finnish design is currently producing work that combines strong creative ideas with meticulously crafted execution. Great Apes wants to help drive this development forward.
