We recently looked at Helsinki's design-celebrating coins, and now Finland is the source of another award-winning design on a round piece of metal—though this time, the design is an award in itself. Artist Tapio Kettunen, from Vesilahti in western Finland, has designed the medals for the forthcoming Ice Hockey World Championships.
Kettunen's entry, which won a design competition held by the International Ice Hockey Federation, pushes the 2D boundaries of traditional coin/medal design by depicting a mid-flight hockey puck straining against a goal net that appears to stretch up out of the surface of the medal.
Kettunen's artsy approach opts for abstraction over a pictographic illustration that tells the whole story; the simple linework triggers the viewer to conjure up the unseen before-and-after images of a slapshot and a flailing goalie, the buzzer and the rotating light.
"I was about to turn in another, more traditional design, as well, but when I heard [IIHF Vice President Kalervo] Kummola mention the Helsinki World Design Capital year, I thought that a more modern design would be the way to go," says Kettunen.
