Core 77 Design Awards

Design Discussions general design discussion
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I think it is wonderful that CORE77 is holding these awards and I applaud what I’m sure was an enormous amount of time and effort spent on behalf of the people organizing it. It’s very exciting.

I would like to apply, but something is bugging me which I’d like to share, and that is regarding the application process. The thing is, I get exhausted just reading the requirements, let alone completing them. There are the six questions to consider (which are not superficial questions), AND a video, AND a website. It’s a lot. I have applied for public art projects with budgets in the thousands of dollars that require less work. I realize that it isn’t necessary to do all of these things, but doing anything less than all of them to the best of my ability, feels like I’m not giving it my all.

I think it is the addition of the video and website which take the wind out of my sails. I consider myself pretty technologically adept - I can design a website, but it’s not like I do that every day, and I’ve never produced a video (other than using my phone or my webcam). I am certainly capable of doing those things, but since I don’t do them every day there will be a learning curve. The problem is TIME. I am busy and I work (as a self employed designer), and I don’t have a lot of spare time. From my perspective, narrowing down the requirements to just ONE (either questions or website or video) would be fine. I don’t mean that applicants should be able to choose their medium, which would not offer be a level playing field, and would be an organizational nightmare, but rather that there would be a SINGLE medium required, instead of three.

For example, asking designers to apply using a video is a great idea. In that single format one could easily present all of the information that judges need to see and understand.

A website, ditto.

Written questions accompanied by JPEGs would be my last choice (less interesting/flexible), but would get the job done.

I realize it’s too late to change things, but I hope CORE will consider my feedback when designing next year’s competition.

For fellow applicants and readers, what do you think? Is the request for written+web+video content too much?

Thanks,
Julie

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Thank you for taking the time to write this. We will definitely take all your points into consideration when we go to plan next year’s awards. Building this from scratch, we knew that it’s going to be an iterative process to get the right balance with all the various aspects of the program. We put a lot of thought into the crafting of the questions (consulting designers with plenty of experience answering award entry form questions and getting their feedback). We were very conscious about the time it would take to answer them so we kept them down to just 6 (we originally had 10!) and adjusted the word lengths to what we felt was sufficient to work with while not creating too much work. With the optional video, we recommend entrants take the low-tech webcam route and stress that the video execution is not what’s being judged – we simply want to give entrants the means for more direct expression. The website url is also optional. It’s primarily for those who already have a site with more information or longer videos on the project - if it exists we provide the ability to point to it. Now, an entry, especially if it’s strong, won’t necessarily be at a disadvantage if it doesn’t come with a video and we trust (and will remind) our judges to make these distinctions. All this said, the last thing we want is to discourage people from entering by making it sound complicated or imbalanced or too onerous, so we take your points, and your suggestion to simplify it down to one requirement, seriously. We will factor your comments into the decision making for next year’s awards so please know your time spent on sharing your thoughts with us has not gone to waste. - The Awards Team

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3 images + supporting document. I assume the images are suppose to be a single graphic and not boards with text?

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When will winners be announced? I couldn’t find dates (besides registration) anywhere.

Deadline extended… Good luck to all that entered!