Mobile Unlock
Liebig & Jirschik


Jury Statement

The mobile phone is now only 36 years old, yet it has changed our communications drastically. Today we no longer write, we type. We do not call, we WhatsApp. We look at our screens more than 100 times every day, and live more than 4 hours in the digital world. The smartphone is our new home, our own world where we store memories, inform ourselves, work or just have fun. We scroll through the news, click on the links and slide with ease within digital worlds. Simple hand movements become gestures with big impact—and, therefore, assume a large part of our current communication.

10th grade students Vivien Jirschik and Nico Liebig explore smartphones and their uses. Through a closer look at the gestures of locking and unlocking, they have visualized 45 variants of blocking patterns of an Android phone. With their simple, clear symbols, the German team reveal the often invisible and seemingly insignificant sliding movements of a finger on the screen, which are ultimately complex key movements of our communication today. With this magnificent work, they have not only unlocked smartphones, but have also opened the door to a new category in 45 Symbols for pre-college students. Congratulations!

Mobile Unlock Symbols

Communication, communication, communication, all around us. WhatsApp, FaceTime, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram… data, data and more data. Only a few people look out through the window to enjoy the view when they are on the bus or the train. Everyone is looking in one direction, down at their smartphones, tablets and BlackBerrys. Right now in these uncertain times of hacking and data protection, it is more important than ever to deal with this theme. This is the reason why we have chosen 45 different lock/unlock patterns for an Android smartphone screen.

Nico Liebig & Vivien Jirschik

Vivien Jirschik and Nico Liebig are 10th grade students at the High School of Weixdorf, Germany.