The annual international design award ASTRID Awards 2023, which recognises the world’s outstanding promotional materials, announced the list of winners in April. The Force achieved a remarkable result of eight awards, among which two Gold, two Silver and two Bronze Awards, as well as one Honours Award, came from the Public Relations Wing (PR Wing). The Police College also received an Honours Award. One of the Gold Awardees, “2023 Calendar - Police Buildings”, refreshingly portraits the buildings of the Force using sketching techniques. The masterminds behind the creation were two summer interns at the Force, Victoria and Karen, who are in their early twenties.

The two girls had their internship in the PR Wing from June to August in 2022. Victoria, who was studying social media design at an overseas university, said that the internship gave her the opportunity to practice what she had learned. In addition to assisting social media work, the duo was entrusted with a major task to design the calendar of PR Wing. Victoria shared her inspiration, “The Force gave us a lot of freedom in the course of creation. We had various ideas. After garnering opinions, we eventually decided to use police buildings as the theme of our design.”

There are many historic police buildings in Hong Kong. The two interns meticulously selected 12 of them for the 12 months of the year. They drew the exteriors of these constructions with computer software. In addition to the popular buildings, they also included the less well-known ones, like the MacIntosh Forts at the border. Victoria recalled, “The most difficult part was to sketch the former Marine Police Headquarters ‘1881’ and the old Yau Ma Tei Police Station. Their appearance comprised an array of lines which could easily lead to wrong proportions. We visited the scenes many times and took photos as records to make sure that we had captured the essence of these buildings.”

The design of the calendar embodies many ideas beyond and has received lots of positive reviews. The names of buildings are displayed in handwritten characters in lined grids, which is full of Chinese characteristics; dates that are symbolic to the country and policing, such as the Constitution Day and International Day Against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking, are marked up in blue as reminders; the page of each month contains a brief text to introduce the building on it, etc.

Apart from encouraging the interns to unleash their creativity, PR Wing was monitoring the project and liaising with a professional printing company to fine-tune the design. “The top of the calendar is die-cut into shapes of different landmark buildings in Hong Kong; the cardboards supporting the calendar are cut into the shape of the Police Headquarters. These are all the printing company’s ideas.” Victoria added.

Victoria, a 21-year-old college student who is about to graduate from university, said that it was beyond her expectation to win the international design Gold Award. She sincerely thanked PR Wing for giving interns opportunities and hoped that the public would have a better understanding of the historical buildings of the Force through the calendar.