Joel Zanon a Grade 12 pupil who attends the Frank Joubert Art Centre, is one of six talented learners participating in the Woolworths ‘Making the Difference Through Design’ programme that was recently given the opportunity to create designs to be featured on delegate bags and t-shirts at this year’s Design Indaba. Woolworths is once again a major sponsor for this internationally acclaimed design forum. With excitement around 2010 growing daily, these budding artists and designers were asked to honour their South African design heroes in the context of 2010 by creating a contemporary emblem or crest that symbolises something uniquely South African and which would be a fitting and unique memento for delegates to take away with them. Pieter Twine, who heads up the Making the Difference programme at Woolworths explains: “Every country has its own cultural and historic identity, which is often depicted in its flag and crest. We’ll be seeing many of them flying here during the World Cup. As a young country, South Africa is still developing its own sense of history. We felt that this occasion provided an idea opportunity to ask our young design learners to create an emblem that captures their personal sense of South Africa and at the same time honours their own design ‘heroes’.” Teachers were asked to nominate their top students to participate. Using South Africa’s unique history, culture, language, indigenous knowledge systems, environment flora and fauna as inspiration, the young designers produced intricate and insightful emblems representing local culture and heritage. Zanon reinterpreted Heath Nash’s ‘Flowerball’ as a soccer ball encapsulated in a traditional crest offset by organic lines and flourishes. ENDS