D&AD Awards judging

11/04/2011 15:06:50

As you probably know, judging started today on the D&AD Awards, to be presented on June 16. I'll be there tomorrow, judging Writing For Design, as I did in 2009.

There are lots of good innovations this year, notably the introduction of guided tours of the judging process. This can only be good for opening up the process.

You often hear awards muttered about as old-boy networks where a bunch of mates give awards to each other, and ignore everyone else. Having done this once before, I can testify that, at the very least in my jury, this wasn't true. (And what are the odds of me happening to be in the single untainted jury?)

Letting people come in and nose around seems a good idea. They can't learn any results – not even the judges know the results, only the shortlists. And hopefully they'll go away impressed at the organisation and professionalism of the whole business, as I was when I judged for the first time.

Other Good Innovations include combining Professional and Student awards in one ceremony, and rewarding judges with a year's free membership and a 50% discount on the ceremony ticket. (I'm especially happy about the latter two, obviously.)

You can see the judges' tweets by following the #DandAD2011 hashtag on Twitter. And to make that really easy, I've made a page showing just those tweets (as seen above). You're welcome.

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