The University of Johannesburg’s Alumni Student Prince Zwane, and his colleague Kaylee Germann won the South African leg of The Cannes Young Lions Competition for Publicis Machine Johannesburg. The winning team will represent South Africa at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, 18–22 June in France.

The Brief was for Ster-Kinekor SA through Cannes Young Lions. The team had to create and design an advertisement that promotes ‘Vision Mission’, a CSI initiative aimed at helping blind or visually impaired children. Zwane had said that he along with his copywriter were given 48 hours to come up with a concept, shoot original footage and edit the 60 second video.

Zwane explained that it was so surreal when they received the exciting news that they had won the competition. Zwane said that they were called for an urgent staff update at the office only to have their ECD gave them the news. They both thought it was a joke until a representative from Ster-Kinekor awarded them their prize, an entry into the international competition in France. The team will be spending 5 days at Cannes, competing in Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. After graduation Zwane described his experience as “completely different to what you would expect when you come out of Varsity.” He said that he thought he would be sitting all day in front of a computer designing pretty pictures, which he soon found that he was wrong. “It’s a lot of hours and constant pressure to be creatively conceptual and always bring out the best work you possibly can especially as a Junior Art Director,” Zwane said.

Zwane is a young Art Director with a promising future and with big dreams and aspirations. His advice to young designers at UJ is to “learn constantly, absorb information from as many people as you can possibly think of, keep feeding your brain with information, get mentors and use their path as a guide line to how you want to shape your career!”​