Isabel Uria, designer at Structural Graphics created complex 3D paper design for LOUIE awards gala last week.

Isabel Uria, a designer and paper engineer at Structural Graphics, a 3D marketing design shop, created a complex 3D paper design for the LOUIE awards event, last week.

Uria describes the LOUIE awards as “what the Oscars are for film; the LOUIE awards are for greeting cards. It’s the most prestigious award for my field and for people who make greeting cards for a living.” This year’s show had the theme: “The Artist & the Card”.

The LOUIE awards – now in its 25th year – is an official international greeting card awards competition named for Louis Prang, who created America’s first Christmas card. The event began in 1988 as a way to recognize top paper designs and designers. Ceremonies are held each year in New York.

Uria began working on the piece after months of planning and sketching. She was inspired by both the event’s theme and branding. “The strongest visuals [were] a blue and red frame that looked like an old mailing and the text, [which] was very flowy with lots of beautiful, elegant curves and birds. I started looking at bird patterns and movement, and flying. I wanted to reference a little bit of romantic idealism,” she says. “I am a hopeless romantic about many things, especially stories and fairy tales. This year’s theme made me think of when people used to write to each other. For example, how pigeons were used to deliver messages at times of war. The flying birds became symbolic of messages, and in my piece I freely try to interpret flying birds becoming flying paper airplanes, which are equivalent to flying messages or cards.”

Her piece honored nominees and applicants while entertaining guests as they arrived at the gala. Its incredible size and scale, gave guests the sensation of walking through a tunnel and embedded throughout the design were approximately 200 paper airplanes, each one honoring the names of companies representing the artists who were nominated for an award, as well as those who won.

“There were a lot of people that kept looking for their planes to take a picture. They were entertained by that. It definitely made it special for them.” says Urias.

After months of laboring, her design was on display for one evening and after the event, disassembled to remove. “The piece is no longer in existence. I kept a few pieces but that’s all that’s left,” Uria says. “It was well-documented; it lives on in photography.”

A graduate of the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), Uria worked as a freelance graphic designer and paper engineer in Baltimore, when she met design engineers from Structural Graphics at an event in New York in 2011. The meeting led to a job offer nine months later and she officially began at Structural Graphics in May of last year.

“Each project is a thing of its own, [but] a project of this magnitude always spirals, and gives me ideas for other things I could do,” Uria says.