Platinum Winner of the International Architecture & Design Awards 2026

Marina Sfakianaki

Typography

Poster Design Typography

Completed / Built / Professional Category

Architect / Designer:

Antonia Skaraki

Studio:

A.S. Strategy Branding & Communication

Design Team:

Art director Laios Papazoglou

Country:

Greece

Marina Sfakianaki is a high-end interior design brand supplying architects and designers with carefully curated design materials of exceptional quality. In 2025, the brand participated as a sponsor in Hotel Experience, a cultural and design-focused event held at Technopolis City of Athens. Each year, the event is structured around a central cultural theme, and in 2025 this was Luchino Visconti’s iconic film “Death in Venice”.
As part of the sponsorship, participating brands were invited to create communication material inspired by the year’s theme. Rather than producing conventional promotional content adapted to a cinematic reference, the brief called for a response that could engage meaningfully with the cultural framework of the event and the audience it attracts.
The objective was to develop a series of posters that would interpret Death in Venice through a contemporary visual language, allowing the brand to be present within the exhibition space without relying on product presentation or explicit brand messaging. The posters needed to function both as communication tools within the event and as autonomous visual objects, positioned between graphic design, art and exhibition ephemera.
A key challenge was translating a complex cinematic work into visual form without illustration or narrative literalism. The posters were required to convey atmosphere, symbolism and emotional tension through abstraction, composition and materiality, creating a dialogue with cinema history while remaining aligned with the refined, culturally informed world of Marina Sfakianaki.

A.S. Strategy Branding & Communication

Instead of illustrating scenes or characters, the poster series distils the film’s core themes—beauty, decay, desire, absence, and the passage of time—into a set of visual fragments. Human presence is suggested rather than shown. Faces are partially erased, crossed out, dissolved, or reduced to silhouettes, echoing Visconti’s exploration of fading identity and unattainable longing.
The brand name, Marina Sfakianaki, is treated not as a logo but as a signature anchoring the work without dominating it.
The inclusion of suppliers, collaborators, and selected clients at the bottom of each poster mirrors the hierarchy of film credits, subtly positioning professional relationships as part of a shared narrative.
Each poster measures 70 × 100 cm and is designed to fold, functioning simultaneously as a wall poster and as a brochure. As a brochure, the texts on the reverse side can be read in full, extending the life of the object beyond the exhibition wall.