The day after Judgement Day

Fig 1: The initial elimination round goes well.

It was a real privilege being part of the D&AD Writing for Design judging yesterday. The results have just been announced: a total of 13 entries in-book, including four nominations.

The nominations were for: The Jupiter Drawing Room (a range of rock-music-themed packaging); Royal Mail Group Limited (the Royal Mail Yearbook); Abbott Mead Vickers BBDO (a D&AD Call for Entries long copy ad); and Innocent Drinks (the latest major refresh of their packaging).

I'll probably say more about the work itself at some point, but here are some more general thoughts:

1. Foreign language entries
We found ourselves in the surreal position of judging long-copy entries in foreign languages. I think this is a big, big problem. The translations provided allow you to understand the concept and content, but there's no way to judge the craft of the writing, or whether it's littered with spelling mistakes and clumsy turns of phrase. We did our best to be fair and leant towards assuming the best rather than the worst, but it's ultimately a bit of a farce.

It's right that D&AD should champion the best creativity around the world, but when it comes to the writing categories, it surely has to be English language. Even if you invite a bilingual judge in specially, it leaves the other judges relying on second-hand information. (We actually sought out a Spanish speaker in the hall to shed some light on one piece, but it's hardly satisfactory.) The policy has to change next year.

2. Entries down
Only about 80 this year, compared to 150-odd in previous years. Message to writers and design agencies: enter this category as much as possible. There's a lot of good writing out there and the door is wide open.

3. Quality good
Nearly all were worthy of serious consideration, so maybe people are exercising their own quality control before entering.

4. Mostly
That said, there were a handful where you wondered why on earth they'd entered. One entry had two words on it, and not very creative ones.

5. Scam
May be nothing in it, but I was suspicious about whether one entry had ever made it into the real world. I reported it and D&AD promised to check it out – good that they take it seriously.

6. Not a scam
One thing I can vouch for is that every entry gets its money's worth, in the sense that the judges had time to consider each item at length. There is still a problem with the seriously long-copy entries (books and so on). Although there may be practical difficulties (availability of file copies?), it would be nice to receive the longer pieces a couple of days in advance.

7. Great minds don't think alike
I was surprised at how often I ended up disagreeing with my fellow jurors, but the discussions that followed were the most enjoyable part of the whole experience. I was determined not to go away feeling I should have said x or y, and managed to achieve that, which is good.

8. D&AD is a very good thing

There's no disputing the thoroughness of the judging process. It's a system involving human beings making subjective judgements, so it'll never be either perfect or perfectly consistent. Work that does well one year might not have been so lucky the next. But the way the system is designed goes about as far as it's possible to go to iron out these difficulties and uphold the standards. And they are very, very high standards. I was really proud to be part of it.

UPDATE: I should point out that one of the foreign language entries did actually make it in-book (Espacio David Puente, by virgen extra). The decision was based on what was clearly an interesting, nicely presented concept and copy that read well in translation. I just hope it reads as well in Spanish (and feel slightly ridiculous admitting it).

Comments

[Jim]

The foreign entry issue is really interesting. On the one hand you want to be inclusive, but how can you possibly judge the quality of writing if you only read English? I've been on the Writing for Design jury twice, and this has never come up. I suppose it's inevitable given D&AD's international remit... I guess either you need jurors who speak the relevant language, or confine it to just English.

[Nick Asbury]

I'd certainly like to have all languages included if there was a practical way of doing it. But I can't see how it's possible unless you have a jury of about fifty people.

The only workable system I can think of would be to have an extra 'clearing stage' for foreign-language submissions.

The judges would assess each piece as normal, based on the translation (exactly as we did). But then a native speaker (a writer themselves) would be asked to check over any in-book or nominated entries.

The work would already have been judged to be good enough, so their brief would simply be to let the judges know if there are any obvious reasons to mark it down again. (Glaring spelling mistakes, clumsy phrasing...)

This would still be a slightly unsatisfactory compromise, but at least it would be an extra check to ensure nothing embarrassing gets through.

(Like I say, none of this is meant to cast a shadow over the Espacio David Puente piece – it's really good and I'm 99% sure it's worthy of the prize. Just not 100%.)

[David Airey]

Stopped by after Ben's recommendation on Noisy Decent Graphics. Thanks for the write-up, Nick. I enjoyed the little insight into the judging process.

[JNSim]

I was Foreman of the jury at D&AD this year. What a fine jury it was, we had some great debates and all parted friends. One of the debates was over Spanish. For myself, I speak a good Spanish menu but claim no expertise in that language. This did make it difficult. We did all we could to check the meaning of the words. There were translations that read well in English, and my Spanish was good enough to check that they were reasonably literal translations rather than English inventions. We got a Spanish speaker to read a poster in Spanish - it sounded great, one of the highlights of the afternoon. But obviously I can't judge the quality of writing in Spanish.

I felt we were right to allow the Spanish entries (only one of which was voted into the book). First because it was ambitious and showed a lot of confidence to enter these pieces, taking the rather high risk of wasting your money completely. Secondly, and much more importantly, D&AD awards are about ideas. If a brilliant idea had been submitted that contained only one word, we might have awarded it. The Spanish work that did get voted into the book had more than one word, but only short paragraphs to represent four different approaches, all based on the same idea. You could judge the quality of the idea and I was happy to see it in the book.

[Nick Asbury]

You're right about the ideas, John, which is what D&AD is really all about (no matter what the category.) My worry is when it comes to the craft categories, you need to be able to assess the wordsmithery first-hand, because good ideas can be badly executed.

That said, I think there's a problem with my position – because, while I'm criticising the process, it did lead to a great result. A fine piece of work got recognised that otherwise wouldn't have. Like you say, it was brave of them to enter and there was something quite heart-warming about watching us all, as judges, doing our best to grapple with it.

I think the kind of compromise I talked about above would make me happier in future (it's effectively what we tried in the hall), but I'd be interested to know what other people think.

PS: Glad you enjoyed it, David. Nothing like a link from Ben to get people dropping by.

[Sebastián Cangiano]

Hi, I'm Sebastián, creative director of virgen extra. First of all, thanks a lot for your words and appreciation related to david puente's campaign.

...now that I think about it I really have nothing special to comment, I guess I just wanted to let my "thanks" get close to the people that enjoyed reading the work.

I love reading, I try to write, and still believe advertising and design is a place where good writing can and should, really should, find a place.

Hope I could meet you one day.

Sebastián.

[Sebastián Cangiano]

Sorry, I just remember one thing that I did wanted to comment and forgot.

It's related to the doubts generated on english speakers on how the campaing's copies are read in spanish.

I really believe that there's certain melody in the way a copy, or better said, a simple text is written and read. My english is ok, far far away from being bilingual, but good enough to make sure that the translation was as close as it could be to the spirit of the original text.

So I can imagine the problems of judging writing craftmanship in a different lenguage. In this particular case, the "spanish version" has all that "melody" and rithym component. I guess that if I'd had seen that the translation didn't get somehow close to the original pieces, we would have probable decided no the send the work.

Thanks again.

[Nick Asbury]

Hi Sebastián - great to hear from you.

I know exactly what you mean about the melody and rhythm of the language - nice way of putting it. I think we could definitely get a feel for that from the translation. We could also tell it was a great idea (in any language). My worry is whether we're really able to do justice to the copy on the basis of a translation, and whether this will create more and more problems in future years.

But there is a big plus side – it gives us a chance to celebrate great pieces of work that we wouldn't otherwise encounter, which can only be a good thing.

¡felicidades!