As Germany's 16- and 17-year-olds wait for a train these days, they're regularly faced with numerous posters designed especially with them in mind.

The 1,000 posters are part of a nationwide competition to encourage young people to vote in June's European elections.

One of the winning posters has the ambiguous slogan "First kiss, first time, first vote" and was created by media design students Maja Steinbach, Maria Viktoria Junker and Fabian Navarro.

"We want to show that the election is a positive, exciting experience, that you can try something new," they told DW.

"Young people are currently in a phase of life where they are making their first important decisions," they said. "We want to reach them in that phase, and the ambiguity is our hook — the first kiss, the first relationship, the 'first time' — to have a poster that stands out, showing all the benefits of the EU."

This is the first year people as young as 16 can vote in the elections for the European Parliament. As well as the posters, which come in six different versions, the EU campaign is running over a million ads. The goal is to hit the right nerve — to appeal to young people and not scare them off.

Steinbach, Junker and Navarro said targeting teenagers just a few years younger than themselves meant emphasizing individuality, engaging current trends and taking ever-shorter attention spans into account.

"If we can persuade just a few young people to vote in the European elections with our posters, we will be satisfied," they said.........

© Deutsche Welle