The winners of the 2013 Brand New Awards have been posted on the Winners page of the BNAs’ site. Judging took place this past Friday, March 28, 2014 here in Austin, TX — pictures of the day can be found in this Flickr set. Read on for additional notes, thoughts, and a peek at the big-ticket winners.

Entries

411 entries submitted
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363 Professional / 48 Student
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152 Logos
108 Basic Identity Applications
151 Comprehensive Identity Programs
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229 U.S. entries
29 Canada entries
24 Australia entries
24 UK entries
105 entries rest of the world

Winners

46 total winning entries
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39 Professional / 7 Students
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35 selected by Judges / 11 selected as “Salvage” by UnderConsideration
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8 Logos
17 Basic Identity Applications
21 Comprehensive Identity Programs
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15 U.S.
3 Canada
7 Australia
7 UK
14 entries rest of the world

Observations

This was a tough year. Literally and metaphorically. The entries dropped by 300 from last year’s 714 — and we will make a specific post to see if we can figure out why this was — so there was less to choose from. On top of that, this year’s judges couldn’t have been more different in what they reacted to or how they reacted to it: They either had extremely positive reactions or extremely negative and they were rarely on the same side of the table. So there was a lot of convincing to keep stuff in or take stuff out. The judges were particularly hard on projects that were almost there, and where they might have passed previous juries, this jury was having none of it.

The first thing we tell judges is that we have no quota or a minimum number of entries that have to be chosen. The only prerogative is that they have to be excellent. In the second round, where we bring out all the entries that got three votes or more in the first round it was like watching Kill Bill, with entries falling to the ground, bloodied.

This should give the winners a good sense of accomplishment as every win was well earned.

Of particular note was the logo category. It was a very weak year. Even as we poured through those entries not selected by the judges to see if we could salvage anything, we came up empty-handed in this category. Time to step up, designers!

As usual, the Comprehensive Identity Programs category was the best. Interestingly, it’s also the category that saw the smallest drop in entries submitted from last year. Where Logos and Basic Identity Applications were each down by 150 to 200, Comprehensive Identity Programs was only short around 12 from last year’s submissions.

Next

We will be working on producing the annual in the next three or four months; it will be available as an on-demand book. A high-res PDF will be available for free and a website with all the winners will be open to all.

Congrats

Seriously. This was a hard-earned win and your work stood out from a really competitive field.

Sneak Peek at the Top Winners

Best of Show

Judge’s Picks