Let’s devalue awards! (Part 4,497)
News finally reaches me (I’m 5500 miles away) that D&AD is introducing Pencils for the In-Book and Nomination levels of award.
That’s nice.
But what about the poor sods who entered their work and didn’t get an award at all? What about a pink pencil for them? One that’s been slightly chewed. And then there’s the people that didn’t even make any ads, what about them and their empty shelves? I’m stunned D&AD has yet to launch a compensatory red pencil with a little monster gonk on the end.
I remember when I first arrived at AMV in 1998. Walking around the creative department, stuffed as it was with Yellow Pencils, and even the odd Black, I had something to aspire to. There were only a few awards in the industry back then and these creatives had won the lot, many times over. That was a big achievement because these baubles were rare, very hard to win and judged by the best creatives in the country.
Now there are so many Lions, Pencils and assorted golden figures reaching up towards something or other that they’re worth less (or worthless, depending on your point of view). I can see a good reason for the proliferation of Lions: they are a great money-making exercise that grows ever greater with each additional category. But why the extra Pencils? They can only cost D&AD cash, and it won’t be long before certain creatives have shelves so heaving with wood that they’ll be declared a fire hazard. If your work is lauded in many different categories you could easily get fifteen pencils in one year. Whoopee…
Sorry, D&AD, I can see absolutely no merit in doing something like this. It’s simply a physical manifestation of this sentiment:
Where’s your Friday post… help us avoid doing work, Ben
“Hey everyone, how can we devalue our own brand?”
“We could offer more pencils so they don’t feel so special to win?”
*stuffs another handful of crazy cake in his gob*
Let’s fucking DOOO it!
I entered my website to D&AD last year. It cost £250 to enter. I analyse my webstats regularly and I could see that in the run up to the nominations, I had been visited on 5 occasions by the judges from D&AD. I know this as the referral url is from the admin of d&ad.org. I could tell I was doomed as between all five judges, they spent a total of 9 seconds on my website. That’s right 9 seconds between 5 judges. That’s an average of 1.8 seconds each.
Now I don’t claim to be a design judge of any kind, and my site may well be viewed as shit. But how can you go on a website for 1.8 seconds, click around, view some content, and understand the concept and message in that amount of time?
Let’s look at it from another perspective. Wayne Rooney earns £250,000 a week. Based on a 40 hour week, thats £6250 an hour. Not bad hey?
D&AD based on £250 for 9 seconds earn £8333 an hour.
Several months later I received a call from a large, well known branding/creative agency. They were familiar with work I had done for other clients and wanted me to build their site for them. “Can I speak to their digital guy?” I was asked. Of course. So whilst I was waiting for the digital guy to call me, I looked at their existing website, looked up the guy who was about to call me. Low and behold, he was a judge for D&AD for digital work. When he called, he told me loved my site, he was sure he had seen it somewhere before. Telling me how creative I was etc. I kept my mouth shut. All I can say is bollocks to D&AD.
@Doughball – Is it not possible that this guy looked at the site on his own computer in his own time? I do a lot of work outside my office. I’m not especially tech minded, so maybe I’m just being thick……
I don’t think that D&AD Pencils have been easier to win in the film category. In fact they are pretty fucking impossible. That’s good because there is a very high standard, but bad because we hardly enter anything any more. No point entering something unless it’s got a chance.
Hi George,
I would like to think that the entire D&AD team, wrote down the url to my website, took it home, put on Beethovens 5th, poured themselves a good glass of 1998 Bordeaux and took good look at my site.
The truth of the matter is, that whoever looked at my site from D&AD would have come through from the D&AD admin portal where there will be a whole list of URLs from entrants to view.
Occam’s razor dictates that they simply clicked on my site, closed it, clicked the next one, probably closed that one and so on and so forth.
My gripe is not winning, but with the lack of attention from the judges when you are paying £250 a pop.
@George: it might not be easier to win a film Pencil, but it’s much easier to win a Pencil of some sort.