Winning design is out of this world

UQ Mechanical and Aerospace engineering student Jonathan Wei has put his design skills to good purpose to win the UQ 2010 Diversity Week Design Competition.

Mr Wei’s winning poster design on this year’s Diversity Week theme, “Our Global Community” — appropriately for his study discipline — is a view of Earth from space.

His design was announced the winning entry tonight during the Vice-Chancellor’s Equity and Diversity awards presentation at the UQ Centre, St Lucia.

Mr Wei, who receives $1000, is part of that global community himself, as a resident of Pretoria, South Africa, currently studying in Australia.

He said that in his design, space gave direct annotation to the "future", with the sun in the background adding the word "foreseeable" to the phrase, and giving a more striking view of Australia with respect to the world.

“As UQ develops in an increasingly globalised world, it is important to see Australia as a country that, from a global perspective, is itself a microcosm of the world,” he said.

“To reflect that, closely tiled photos of people from all walks of life are exhibited over this continent. The people illustrated express happiness and joy, suggesting that diversity is open and determined to broaden.

“From a different perspective, the mosaic can be viewed as a country that needs to be ready to deal with future population growth, and the ability to welcome and embrace neighbours of different cultures surrounding the very tiles.

“The impact of globalisation brings different cultures closer that many take for granted without realising.”

Last year’s Diversity Week design competition, psychology student Melissa Spearritt was Highly Commended for her entry, which metaphorically represented this year’s theme, “Our Global Community” using a pinball machine.

Ms Spearritt said that the design was based on the layout of the UQ St Lucia Campus, with the pinball machine capturing UQ’s economic growth, technological developments, research progress and cultural diversity.

To represent the links and relationships with other universities, research institutions and corporations worldwide, she scattered pinballs around the pinball table.

These pinballs represented the countries that UQ is partnered with and they continually won points for UQ in terms of economic growth and facilitating research development.

“For example, a student from Chile will aid UQ’s development by investing money into a degree, paying for parking and buying textbooks,” she said.

“However, the student will stop gaining points if they start obtaining 3s for their subjects.

“The university aids the student from ‘losing the game’, using tutors, lecturers, policy and student services.

“Finally, the points accumulated from universities around Brisbane are added to Brisbane’s globalisation score. In turn, Brisbane’s score is added then to Australia’s globalisation score.”

Media: Jan King 0413 601 248.