A 29-year-old graphic design student at the University of Louisville in Kentucky was awarded $25,000 for a design that sustainable resin supplier Cereplast hopes will become  "a new icon for bioplastics." Laura Howard's bioplastics symbold was chosen from three finalists in the Make Your Mark competition, with the winner announced April 21 at the Herman Miller Showroom in Los Angeles, CA.

Cereplast, which manufactures proprietary biobased, compostable, and sustainable plastics and is headquartered in El Segundo, CA, initiated the contest as a means to create a new symbol that would help consumers readily identify products and packaging made from bioplastics. Cereplast said it was sent more than 1500 design entries and received 2.8 million public votes, which determined the top 200 designs. A panel of judges narrowed the top 200 down to three contenders and, after a multi-tiered judging process, selected the winning symbol. The other finalists were Ryan Ford, creative director at deviantART (Huntington Beach, CA), and Silas Pandori, a graphic designer at Iron Design (Ithaca, NY).

Howard's design is intended to be easily identifiable on products, even when embossed on a clear plastic bottle, since it was created to be both single color or colorless. Judges included Gary Anderson, creator of the recycling symbol, Dr. Michael Thielen, publisher of bioplastics MAGAZINE, and Karim Rashid, a well-known industrial designer, among others.

bioplastics symbol