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Ten Images for Ithaca (Greek: Δέκα Εικόνες για την Ιθάκη), is an international poster competition aimed at young and professional artists (graphic designers, photographers, illustrators, painters). Founded in 2002, the competition has been held annually in Ithaca island and Athens, Greece during summer. At first, it started at a local level in Ithaca, by the years it evolved into a national competition and has finally emerged into an international event with numerous participations from all around the world. Until now, the participants of the competition are more than 5000, coming from more that 70 countries. Since 2004, the competition has been complemented with Parallel Shows and 2010 was the first year, that Design Workshops took also place during the competition. The 9th competition Ten Images for Ithaca 2010 took place from 17 July to 31 August in Ithaca and 22-26 September in Athens.

Organization
The organizing body of Ten Images for Ithaca is Fimios-Ithaca Municipal Cultural Events. The idea for the competition and the exhibitions belongs to Dionysis Livanis, the Creative Director of the creative agency ‘the design shop’, who arranges the organization every year. The expenses for the international poster competition "Ten Images for Ithaca" are covered by "Fimios". To realize the exhibition in Athens, the last three years the design shop has asked for the support of the City of Athens Cultural Organization, the commercial companies Apeiron Photos and Carteco, as well as the printing companies Kontorousis Bros, Diastasis SA and Davias, who either providing money or free services cover the additional expenses of the exhibition, so that Fimios is not charged with extra costs for the Athens exhibition. The competition is also supported by +design magazine and Don't Panic free press. The competition Ten Images for Ithaca operates under the auspices of the Greek Graphic Designers Association (since 2005) and the Thessaloniki Design Museum (since 2007).

Purpose
The aim of the competition Ten Images for Ithaca is:

a. To continue the cultural tradition of Ithaca and establish it as a cultural center.

b. To strengthen the interest for design in Greece.

c. To give new artists the opportunity to present their work and communicate with the wide public.

d. To make the public more familiar to the art of visual communication (graphic design, photography)

e. To reinforce the tourism profile of Ithaca and the attraction of cultural tourism.

The theme
The theme is different every year and is always a concept that prompts the creators to express their ideas. Previous years themes: "I" (2009), "Dream" (2008), "Game" (2007), "Future" (2006), "Mediterranean" (2005), "Time" (2004), "Journey" (2003), "Where is Ithaca?" (2002).

Participants
Participants have the opportunity to send up to two projects. Participation is open to everyone, regardless of age, nationality or profession.

The project submission
While during the first years the participants sent the projects by mail, from 2008 the competition website is designed and programmed in such a way, that the projects are submitted and the selection process takes place through the web. The website has the ability to store all participants’ data and projects and also has the infrastructure so that the judges are able to vote via the web. This method is more environmentally friendly by reducing paper consumption, makes the competition directly accessible to a much larger number of artists from around the world and finally allows the organization to invite an international jury.

The jury
The jury has a different composition each year and consists of seven well-known Greek and foreign designers, artists and journalists, with considerable knowledge on their subject and contribution to their scope of activity. Examples of participants to the jury during recent years:

• Andrew Ashton (Australia). Graphic Designer, president of the Australian Graphic Design Association (AGDA) and member of the Alliance Graphique Internationale (AGI).

• Sadik Karamustafa (Turkey). Graphic designer, professor at Mimar Sinan University, Istanbul.

• Bettina Schulz (Germany). Chief Editor of the International Magazine novum World of Graphic Design. Independent columnist and editor in German and foreign magazines and co-founder of «Creative Paper Conference» (www.creative-paper.de) in Munich.

• Andreas Angelidakis (Greece). Architect, theorist, artist, university professor.

• Aleka Papadia (Greece). Art Director in the advertising company Upset! She has worked with companies, such as Nestle, Lever, Volkswagen, Seat, Vodafone, Tim, OPAP, Hellas on Line etc.

• Jonathan Barnbrook (England). World-renowned designer, type designer, owner of Barnbrook design.

• Farida El Gazzar. (Greece). Illustrator

• Janetos Petropoulos (Greece). President of the Greek Graphic Designers Association

• Dimitris Fakinos (Greece). Publishing Director of +design magazine

• Fotis Pechlivanidis (Greece). Graphic designer, art director of Áthens Voice free press.

Winners selection
The voting process takes place in two stages:

a. Each judge registers to a specially formatted page of the website with a personal code and password, studies the list of all entries and selects with a YES and NO the posters that should pass to the second stage.

b. The posters that pass to the second stage are marked by the judges with a point from 1 to 10 (with 10 as the highest point)

Awards
Τhe above procedure leads to the selection of the posters with the highest scores, the 3 winners, the 7 awards and the 100-150 finalists. These are the posters that participate in the exhibition. The three winners during the last years of the competition were awarded with the following prizes:

1000 € (first prize)

600 € (second prize)

500 € (3rd prize)

Exhibitions
For "Ten Images for Ithaca" there are two major exhibitions organized every year.

Ithaca exhibition & Prize Awards
It takes place annually in July. The 10 winner posters of the competition are printed on banners with dimensions 200 x 60 cm which are exposed along Vathi beach for two months. The posters of the 100 finalists are exposed in the Municipal Gallery of Ithaca, where Prize Awards are given by the Mayor of Ithaca during the evening of the opening day.

Exhibition in Athens
Athens exhibition was established to promote the contest and Ithaca to an even greater audience. It started in 2007 and takes place every year in early September. It includes the 10 winners and the 100 finalists.

Parallel shows
In the context of "Ten Images for Ithaca", the design shop organizes every year a parallel group project which is always related to the theme of the competition. Therefore, the competition is framed by a comprehensive art program. The parallel exhibitions of the previous years where the following:

• "Look, don’t judge" Group poster exhibition(2010) with the participation of ten designers from Brazil, Iran, Poland, the United States, Germany, Switzerland and Greece.

• "I see you" Photo Gallery (2009) with the participation of eight photographers from Greece, America, England, Japan and Lithuania.

• "20 Years to Know" Poster Exhibition (2008) in collaboration with Apeiron Photos and with the participation of twenty distinguished creative groups from the area of graphic design and advertising in Greece (Beetroot, Cream, designersunited.gr,Frank, Upset!, K2 Design, Busybuilding etc.)

• "My favourite game" exhibition (2007) with posters by designers serving what is now called "experimental design". Xavier Antin, Sara De Bondt, Company, Eric Ellis, Oded Ezer, Jare, Richard Niessen and Andrea Tinnes gave for the exhibition an entirely personal response to the theme "My Favourite Game".

• "The Present" exhibition (2006) with works by internationally renowned artists, specially designed for Ten Images for Ithaca: Cordula Alessandri (Austria), Dimitris Arvanitis (Greece), Franco Balan (Italy), Peter Bilak (Slovakia), Cao Fang (China), Fernando Gutierrez (Spain-M. Britain), Radovan Jenko (Slovenia), Sadik Karamustafa (Turkey), John Karlopoulos (Greece), Alain Le Quernec (France), Yossi Lemel (Israel), Rico Lins (Brazil), Ian Noble (UK), Sabina Oberholzer - Renato Tagli (Switzerland), Niklaus Troxler (Switzerland), Stanley Wong (China).