Best of CASE District III Award
 

Institution: Georgia Institute of Technology

Title of entry: "Inspired By Nature" Spring Cover

About this entry: Georgia Tech’s 2020-2030 strategic plan sets out an ambitious plan with a core mission to develop leaders who advance technology and improve the human condition. Over the next decade, that plan will focus on key strategic areas, including championing innovation, amplifying impact, and leading by example. With the spring 2022 Alumni Magazine, our editorial team aimed to capture these strategic focus areas by illustrating the innovative ways that Georgia Tech researchers think about problems and produce real-world solutions that have an immediate impact on the human condition. The “Inspired by Nature” cover illustrates how Georgia Tech researchers and engineers seek solutions from the natural world and apply their discoveries to robotics, medicine, and machine learning. The cover includes an illustration of an example from the main feature “Wild Tech,” which includes the story of a researcher who studies elephant trunks for their applications in soft robotics. It turns out, elephant trucks are an impressively muscular and versatile multi-tool that, like soft robotics, contain no hard joints or parts.

Over the course of two months, our magazine editor and art director commissioned and collaborated with illustrator Linda Richards to create a seamless illustration that blends “muse” —the elephant’s trunk— with its real-world application in soft robotics. Using Georgia Tech-branded gold on one half of the cover, the vibrant artwork is divided to show where nature ends and where innovation takes off.