A student at Dar Al-Hekma University has won a prestigious poster competition in California.

Yara Al-Suraihi, who won the Tiburon International Film Festival Poster Competition, will have her work featured at the 13th Annual International Film Festival, to be held between Apr. 10 and 18 in Tiburon, California.

Al-Suraihi is a junior graphic design student at the Jeddah-based university.

“The contest’s requirements happened to match a project requirement in one of Al-Suraihi’s major courses, entitled ‘The Art of the Poster’,” said Cordula Peters, Visual Communication program director at the university. “I had announced the opportunity to all the students in the program.”

Sylvia Shapiro, the course instructor, motivated students to participate in the contest and recommended that they submit the poster designs to the competition. Shapiro supported Al-Suraihi throughout the process and she was able to submit her design on January this year.

“I knew it was an award-winning work,” said Shapiro. “Yara used a combination of concepts. She created the image with traditional watercolors. She then digitally completed it with imaging software, adding film reels and designing the placement.”

Al-Suraihi said that the judges favored her entry and asked for a few additions to be made to her original submission.

She was then notified that the judges had finalized their selection and that hers was the feature poster at the festival.

“Yara’s work gained the judges’ attention because her concept was aligned with the intention of the film festival,” said Suhair Al-Qurashi, university president. “The figures that she featured on her poster were clearly multicultural.”

Al-Suraihi’s poster portrays the whole world in one poster.

“This is award I have ever won and it really means a lot to me,” said Al-Suraihi. “Winning this award has raised my expectation of myself and will push me to work harder and participate in every contest I come across.”

“I used in my illustration to depict African, European, Asian and Indian figures because each race has its own unique identity that represents a different part of the world,” said Al-Suraihi.