Folio: Magazine had one of the industry’s most respected awards programs. One for design and one for editorial. Called, respectively, the Ozzies and the Eddies, they have been around for decades. COVAD has bitten irrevocably into the revenue model, which is dependent on social back-slapping and industry glad-handing, both elements pretty much verboten in the last year or two.
Of course, the publishing industry has other distinguished award competitions. For longer than 40 years, PRINT has published winners of its regional design awards. Communication Arts has separate awards competitions for design, photography, and illustration. The Society for Publication Designers, an association that doesn’t even publish anything, hosts an elite contest dedicated to magazine design. Its winners are almost exclusively designers of big-budget and large-circulation titles from the top tier of publishers.
Many people do not realize that awards competitions essentially exist to create revenue streams for these organizations. They all do. For example, everyone loves to watch the Oscars, and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences generates most of its income from the Oscars.
Their awards follow a pattern that most programs, big or small, follow. Potential nominees enter the competition by paying an entrance fee, and members make the nominations. The members vote for the winners from their nominations, the actual trophies (which are often paid for by the winners) are given during a lavish event that the members and invitees also pay a premium to attend and to sponsor. Finally, for the Oscars, AMPAS also collects a hefty fee for the rights to televise the event.
When the public complained about the lack of diversity in the Oscar winners, you only need to look at the membership— overwhelmingly white, male, older, and dominated by large studios which help their employees become members and pay entrance fees. When you understand the process, is it any wonder that the winners are the logical outcome of politics, partisanship, and promotion instead of—well, what? There are no rules about how to vote on something.
How do you define “best” without providing a list of qualities to evaluate objectively? It becomes about personal politics, professional prejudices, and The same model is used in these design competitions (without the hefty TV rights.)
At least income from the Oscars fund worthy programs for the membership and advance the industry’s prestige. Another more insidious wrinkle to the model—award programs can be so lucrative that they create businesses whose only purpose is to hold for-profit awards competitions. These contests share the same model as the Who’s Who books—publications whose buyers are primarily those solicited to appear within them. The promotion, submissions, judging, presentation, and events are all for profit, without pesky affiliations or associations to get in the way. And maximizing book sales meant anyone could be ”a distinguished nominee.“
When I worked with Folio: I was also a judge for the design competitions. At first, I enjoyed the camaraderie of evaluating the entries with fellow volunteer judges. As the program grew, it became impractical for the judging to be a social event. Organizers delivered piles of submissions to each judge for appraisal. They added more and more categories to generate more and more entries.
A few publication design studios submitted dozens of entries—sometimes three or more for each category. It wasn’t that the work was unprofessional. It was just that the apparent strategy of winning through sheer volume made judging arbitrary. Submitters never had any criteria for what constituted an award-winning entry, and the judges were never given any instructions on what principles should guide judging. One year, I evaluated two categories (each had more than 50 entries.) In the end, the only way to judge an entry was if it “looked nice” since there was little context or explanation as to how much of the work was the result of that design or the publication’s template. We were supposed to write comments on the evaluations to critique the work, but few judges did.
Having your work reviewed by legends in the field was more of an honor than a bunch of peer reviewers. The Art Directors Club of Metropolitan Washington would bring renowned professionals to judge the entries of their shows. I recall having dinner with Milton Glaser and Paula Scher on their visits to judge and present.
My experiences as part of a dozen different awards programs as a judge, a marketer, or a presenter perhaps made me cynical about the whole process. I realize that winning can be a morale booster and that it is a resumé enhancement and a marketing tool. I also do not disparage legitimate associations for building awards programs.
We never got to the third year of FPO, but an awards program was part of the business plan. I had a clear idea of what the program would entail. Entrants would explain the merits of their submissions based on clear descriptions of what constituted outstanding work. Judges, chosen for their experience and skill, would explain their winning choices. Major awards would require multiple judges to agree. And much more that never happened, or perhaps was too impractical to achieve.
I hoped to create an awards program that encouraged designers and made them better. Although, honestly, I did want the program to make money. I just wanted to feel like I deserved it.
