VBAT`s Creative Director Graham Sturt is jury member for the D`SIGN Awards. He`s telling us more about his judging experience and general observations about the award entries: Last Friday I had the great pleasure to act as Chairman of the jury of the first ever D‘SIGN Magazine awards. The judging of these new creative awards took place over a gloriously sunny afternoon at the Ijkantine in Amsterdam Noord. D’SIGN Magazine, established by Gabrielle Voogt as an esteemed platform for a global creative design community, launched the awards to provide a genuine and competitive platform for designers from four design fields to compete on, and to provide an international audience to which they can showcase their success and talent. As a new competition it promises a fresh approach to the process of awarding prizes to entries from a diverse range of design disciplines. This years invited jury comprised of an equally diverse group of design professionals, none of whom I had met before the day. Amongst the jury were Jack van Dijk - Founder and owner Van Dijk Interior Design, Amsterdam, Sef van der Plas - Designer at Kabaz, Sophie de Vocht - Purchaser and Advisor at The Frozen Fountain in Amsterdam, Huib van Winkoop - Founder and Owner of TopiQ and Monique Willemse - Founder of Momoko Visions Trends Concepts. Although previously strangers the jury group quickly bonded and a friendly, cooperative mood was set for the task ahead. After a brief round of introductions from the assembled group we started the judging of a total of 66 entries in earnest, mindful of the fact we only had three hours to make a shortlist from five categories (Home Interior Design, Kitchen Design, Interior Design, Lifestyle Design and Ecological Design), select the category winners and finally agree on an overall Grand Prix winner. Upfront the jury had been instructed to make their selections on a predefined set of judging criteria: Creativity, Quality of design, Innovation, Relevance, Production process and Ecological development. As a graphic designer by training my personal appreciation of each entry was mostly guided, however, by two criteria - ‘Is this entry born out of a great idea?’ and ‘Has this great idea (if one exists) been translated into an aesthetically pleasing solution?’ By keeping this top of mind I was able to filter most entries surprisingly quickly into shortlist candidates. Of the five categories judged four of them provided shortlist entries of a high standard. Unfortunately all of the Interior Design category entries were deemed of insufficient quality to merit a shortlist and the category will not be awarded. Whilst sad, its not surprising, and I can only hope that as the awards become more widely recognised they will attract a greater calibre of entry into this category next year. With four shortlists and four category winners assembled fairly quickly (all with the minimum of heated debate) the group decided to use the available time left to select an overall ‘Grand Prix’ winner. For me this was the most interesting part of the day as it quite quickly became apparent that there were two great entries competing for this prestigious honour. To conclude on the overall winner each judge was asked to give a pitch on the merit of their chosen favourite design. Interestingly, after a round of lobbying by this eloquent and passionate group two of the judges were swayed to change their choice of vote and the overall winner became clear. The selection made by the jury can be viewed online now at dsign-magazine where the public have the opportunity to vote for their own winners from the juries shortlists. We, as the jury, will meet again for a formal awards ceremony on October 3rd at the Woonbeurs in the RAI Amsterdam where I will be awarding one of the winners. Please feel free to join the public voting at dsign-magazine/nominees/
Posted on: Tue, 16 Sep 2014 13:41:38 +0000
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