City of Westminster College lecturer Pravin Dewdhory is among the winners of a national competition organised by Royal Mint, and his winning 50p coin design for the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games Sporting Collection will go into circulation next year.
 
Pravin - who lives in Hackney and works as a freelance graphic designer and part-time lecturer for the BTEC National Diploma Art & Design programme - was inspired to enter because he lives close to the site of the London 2012 Olympic Park. He says: “I’ve watched the site develop into something amazing and have grown to really like the logo and branding I see all around me.”
 
All the coins focus on specific Olympic sports and Pravin chose rifle shooting because it gave him the opportunity to incorporate the segments from the London 2012 logo and make a play on the visual connection with an exploding clay target. He felt this would create a contemporary coin design to reflect the excitement and energy of the Games. 
 
Pravin says: “I haven’t entered a design competition for years, but I enjoyed the creative challenge of taking the elements of the logo and turning them into something else for such a small-scale and everyday object. It was also great to enter such an inclusive competition and feel I was playing my own small part in the build-up to London 2012.”
 
Pravin’s coin is one of 29 winning 50p designs to mark individual Olympic sports. Prior to this new launch, there have been only 16 designs on the back of the 50p coin since its introduction in 1969.
 
This was the biggest competition ever undertaken by the Royal Mint and received 30,000 entries. It is the first time members of the general public have been given the opportunity to design coins for legal tender. Coins were shortlisted by Royal Mint and a judging panel from the London Olympic Committee. After this many were sent to the national sporting bodies to ensure accuracy of the sport depicted. Finally the winning designs received approval from the Chancellor of the Exchequer and The Queen.
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