The impossible is only impossible till it happens. On board Vostok 6, Valentina Tereschkowa was launched on the 16th. June 1963, on an almost three-day journey into space. She orbited the Earth 48 times. In June 2013 she announced at a press conference in Russia that she would be willing to undertake a potentially one-way flight to Mars.

In 1754 Dorothea Erxleben was Germany’s first PhD female physician, and thus the pioneer of university studies for women. Frederick the Great personally gave special permission for the granting of the doctorate to a woman. Not until 150 years later were women officially admitted to universities.

In 1911 Melli Beese received in Berlin the flight licence number 115. But Germany’s first female pilot was not welcome. She had to put up with open hostility and acts of sabotage.

Also strong-willed and brave were Junko Tabei, the Japanese climber, in 1975 the first woman to reach the summit of Mount Everest, and Christiana Sanchez, who in 1998 as the first woman in the world’s most important bull-ring, the „Plaza des Las Ventas“ in Madrid, was officially recognised as a „Matadora de Toros“.

These and other strong women are introduced in the calendar. Each of them fought for the right to have the same opportunities in their field – and thus for gender equality. For it was, among others, these passionate women who paved the way and encouraged others to keep fighting against structural  discrimination. Neither in the past nor today do women want to be privileged or better than their male colleagues – it’s simply a question of equal opportunities.

It is thanks to the far-sightedness and fine intuition of Cornelia Glanzmann Schöne, an entrepreneur with vision and courage, that she takes up this theme so delicately and realises it so powerfully. The art of calendar­ design lies in guiding each single month individually and yet consistently through all the calendar sheets.

One feels the intensive contest with the material. Each sheet thrills us with sensitively co-ordinated illustrations and collages.

From the idea to the fine graphics, the printing and the appropriate finishing, this calendar is a themati­c, creative  and haptic pleasure.

Glanzmann Schöne Design is an agency in Germany and Switzerland whose focus is on packaging design, corporate publishing and corpo­rate design. In its work the agency is guided by the sentence: „One eye sees; the other feels.“

Production of the calendar took place at Hornberger Druck in Maulburg. The firm sees the annual calendar project as a recurring techni­cal challenge for creative and high-quality solutions. The individual sheets of the calendar are refined with embossings, gold colours and special ones, as well as hot-foil stamping.

A calendar project offers creative freedom, and one senses here the joy of experimenting with possible printing techniques. The impossible is only impossible till it happens. There’s no better way than this joint calen­dar-project, with its very high quality standards, to convince customers and please them a whole year long.

And so the jury’s decision was unanimous: the 2018 Gregor Prize goes to Cornelia Glanzmann Schöne and Hornberger Druck. Congratulations !

Anette Ahr, Ministry of the Economy, Labour and Housebuilding
Baden-Württemberg / Haus der Wirtschaft / Stuttgart, 20th. January 2018