Design a Cover
The competition to design ICAS’ 170th anniversary cover for CA magazine attracted nationwide interest. Here the overall winner outlines his inspiration and we reveal the category winners and runners-up
To celebrate ICAS’ 170th birthday, we decided to do something different for the cover of this month’s magazine. While so much has changed since 1854, and the pace of change becomes more rapid with each passing year, ICAS has always been an educator.
So we thought it was only appropriate to run a competition inviting school pupils to design the cover, bringing the worlds of art and finance together and fuelling their creativity. For the winners, there is also a prize for their schools.
In total, we received nearly 400 entries, from contributors ranging in age from five to 18. The judges – who included CA magazine Editor, Sarah Speirs, and Creative Director, Phil Tristram, President Alison Cornwell CA and Carole Ford, of the ICAS Investigation Committee – got together in late October to go through each of the entries and decide on the overall winner, as well as the winners and runners-up for each of the three categories (Primary Years 1–3, Primary Years 4–7 and High School).
After much deliberation, they chose the entry from Stewart Mackay, a 14-year-old pupil at Broxburn Academy in West Lothian, as the overall winner. His school will receive the first prize of £500 in Amazon vouchers. Stewart’s work can of course be seen on the cover of this issue.
We also want to give a shout-out to our two worthy runners-up, who receive £250 each in vouchers for their schools. Hettie Todhunter from Barlows in Liverpool won the Primary Years 1–3 category and Poppy Rice of Wallace Primary School in Elderslie, who is photographed below with Head Teacher Mr Rigmand, won Primary Years 4–7.
But the judges also wanted to showcase some of the other entries. So we’ve put together this selection below. We also want to use this opportunity to thank everyone who took up the challenge – we were thrilled by both the quantity and quality of entries received.
FULL RESULTS
Overall winner
Stewart Mackay, Broxburn Academy, West Lothian
Primary Years 1–3
Winner
Hettie Todhunter, Barlows Primary School, Liverpool
Highly commended Aly Ibrahem, Boldmere Junior School, Sutton Coldfield
Highly commended Rebecca N, St Margaret’s School for Girls, Aberdeen
Primary Years 4–7
Winner Poppy Rice, Wallace Primary School, Elderslie.
Highly commended Joanna Goff, St Margaret’s School for Girls, Aberdeen
High School
Highly commended Xanthe Bunch, Headington Rye School, Oxford
Highly commended Milly Russell, Broxburn Academy, West Lothian
Stewart Mackay explains how he designed the winning entry
I chose the two shades of blue and pink because they are contrasting, so it can stand out against the font. Also, they represent ICAS because their main brand colour is blue, and pink is close to red.
The wavy line represents a line graph, as accounting uses graphs a lot of the time, and I wanted to capture this artistically.
The arrows on the left are fireworks to celebrate ICAS’ 170 years as fireworks represent excitement and celebration.
The whole design was built from scratch using shapes and different effects and techniques in Affinity Designer.
Built with Shorthand