site.btaArtists Worldwide Invited to Capture Bulgaria’s Spirit in First Ever Bulgaria Travel Poster Contest

The International Triennial of Stage Poster - Sofia in partnership with the Ministry of Tourism announced a Travel Poster of Bulgaria Competition. It will take place with the support of the Union of Bulgarian Artists, the National Academy of Art and the Bulgarian News Agency (BTA), the organizers announced on Thursday at the BTA National Press Club in Sofia.

The aim of the competition is to design a poster revealing the beauty of Bulgaria and its positive image as a year-round travel destination. The mandatory text is: "Bulgaria". There are no other requirements for a logo or slogan. The results of the competition will be announced by the end of July. The competition has a purse of EUR 10,000. A first prize of EUR 3,000, 3 equal awards of EUR 2,000 each, and an incentive prize of EUR 1,000 will be awarded. The jury reserves the right to distribute the awards depending on the quality of the proposals received within the announced prize fund, the organizers said. An exhibition will be organized with the award-winning and nominated posters.

“The International Triennial of Stage Poster is in contact with many artists all over the world who work in the field of poster art. I hope that we will receive some very interesting posters related to Bulgaria, because I would be curious to see an artist’s perception of what he has heard about Bulgaria. Many artists are yet to open books or the internet to try to find something interesting about Bulgaria, to see what they can find here. This is how Bulgaria is unintentionally advertised,” said Prof. Bozhidar Yonov, co-founder of the triennial.

During the Thursday event, a media partnership agreement was signed between BTA and the International Triennial of Stage Poster – Sofia. The document was signed by Kiril Valchev, BTA Director General, and Prof. Bozhidar Yonov.

“The Bulgarian News Agency has partnership agreements in the artistic field with various organizations to date, with the National Academy of Art we have a long-term partnership. We owe the new look of the LIK magazine to the work of our partners from the Academy. We announced a competition for students, who, with the help of their teachers, suggested this rather bold concept, which has already gained ground. In addition, thanks to the Academy, we have a new Cyrillic font, especially made for BTA, called LIK again, based on the Bulgarian letters, inherited from the disciples of the holy brothers Cyril and Methodius from the 9th century. We are now imposing this unified look everywhere, and we are also providing it to other institutions. I take this opportunity to tell you that today we will provide it to the St Cyril and St Methodius National Library,” Kiril Valchev said. 

He recalled that other partners of the Agency in the field of artistic creativity are the Academy of Music, Dance and Fine Arts in Plovdiv, a number of universities that specialize in the field of fine arts, design, graphic web design, visual arts. “We have contracts with the National Vocational High School of Printing and Photography, as well as with the National Art Gallery and the Sofia City Art Gallery,” Valchev said.

"BTA will spread the information about the international competition among its partners. We have bilateral contracts with 50 news agencies, so through our English Services, this opportunity for authors to participate in the international competition will reach a wide range of countries," Valchev added.

This is the first international advertising poster competition ever dedicated to Bulgaria, Albena Spasova, co-founder of the triennial, said.

“Looking back, we tried to reconstruct the picture of what is happening in the field of tourist poster advertising. We were extremely enthusiastic about the bold idea of ​​the Ministry of Tourism to announce a competition. We insisted that it should be international. Without the cooperation of the Ministry, such a competition would not have been possible, because for the first time in Bulgaria there is a guaranteed prize fund, EUR 10,000, which makes the competition absolutely comparable to those happening around the world, organized by colleagues from Finland, France, Spain, etc. We have several challenges. The status of the competition is completely liberal on purpose. We do not want to point the participants in any given direction, cultural tourism, culinary tourism, the idea is for a synthesized, impressive image. We hope that in the next two months this will provoke the attention of international and Bulgarian colleagues. The competition is open, students can also participate in it,” Spasova added.