The Hoshi Awards are named after Shinichi Hoshi, one of Japan's leading science fiction writers. They are presented each year to authors of science fiction short stories whose work exhibits a high level of creativity and imagination. As in past years, we needed to create materials with an overall thematic consistency that made them suitable for both advance promotion and display at the awards ceremony. But for the awards’ 10th anniversary year, we wanted to do more than just capture their spirit — we also wanted to salute past award winners and encourage aspiring writers to submit their work in the future.

Some 2,000 science fiction short stories are submitted to the Hoshi Awards jury for consideration each year. Our idea was to visualise these entries as passengers waiting to depart on a journey to the future, and the Hoshi Awards as the departure terminal from which that journey begins. To emphasise the significance of the role the Hoshi Awards play in helping people imagine a countless variety of possible futures, we designed iconic characters inspired by award-winning stories of the past to represent the passengers gathered at the terminal.

Great care was taken in executing each element of poster design. Each of the 'passenger' icons was inspired by one of the possible futures imagined by a previous Hoshi Award winner. One, for example, was inspired by a story in which humans survive through photosynthesis; another was inspired by a story about a world where men can conceive and give birth. Overall, the imagery is active and dynamic, evoking a sense of continuous forward movement. Pastel colour tones predominate, and our iconic passengers move through a fresh, light-green landscape that imbues their journey with a sense of hope for better things to come. At the exhibition venue, a large, landscape-format poster was displayed to emphasise the scale of the awards and the outsize role they have played in promoting interest in science fiction over the past decade.

Our posters played an important role in promoting awareness of the awards in advance of the awards ceremony and exhibition, resulting in a 106% increase from the previous year in the number of entries received. They also helped promote the exhibition, and in concert with other similarly designed tools and exhibition venue décor served to honour the award winners and raise public awareness of the Hoshi Awards as ‘a place where diverse future possibilities converge’.