Currently doing a product that would be ideal for this award, under consumer products or possibly design explorations. When are the general due dates? Mid-summer?
If anyone has submitted designs to this contest before, do you happen to have any suggestions? I sometimes wonder how many entries there actually are. Maybe it’s just coincidence, but have you noticed how some of the same companies continue to receive the awards? Oddly enough, they also tend to place ads in the magazine…
they are usually due in late february, and the awards are announced a few months later.
The competition usually opens mid-November with entries due by mid-February. Jurying usually happens mid-March and Businessweek publishes the issue in June.
The total number of entries varies every year but figure it’s about 1,500 +/- 300.
I was a juror in 2000. All of the jurying is blind throughout the process. The preliminary round is done in pairs so there’s no way one person can submarine a project. Later rounds of jurying are collaborative and involve groups of 8-10 jurors. The jury process is pretty intense and the jurors can get into pretty heated ‘discussions’ about the entries. Everyone takes it very seriously.
So, here are my suggestion for your entry kit: First, answer all of the questions on the kit - and answer them in well thought out ways. Second, tell a compelling story about your design. Often, your kit will contain the only knowledge that the jurors have about the work (unless you’re entering something like the iPod that has already had great, popular commercial success.) If you tell a compelling story, it’ll be easier for the jurors to become your advocate. The first pair of jurors who review the work have to convince the larger group of jurors that the project is better than anything they’ve (the other jurors) reviewed. That’s a VERY simplistic overview, but it captures the general gist.
As for the link between the winners and the ads . . . well, Businessweek knows who all of the winners are as soon as the jurying is complete. Note that BW does NOT participate in the jurying and no BW representatives are present for any of the jurying. The winners know they’ve won pretty soon after the jurying as well. The ad sales group at BW knows who to target and they put the press on the winning design firms to buy ads in the issue. The winning design firms want to buy the ads because they know they’ve won and their product might be one of the ones featured prominently in the article. Cause and effect. After the ad group has taken a run at the IDEA winners, they solicit ad sales from other members of the design community as well. Anyone who wants to pony-up can have an ad in that issue.
Hope that helps. Good luck with your entry![/b]
WOW!!! Thanks a million!
See? You can always come to Core for good advice and if you want to purchase a cheap cell-phone or make thousands working from home (a dig at the current plethora of SPAM.)