Usually, at the start of the year we open the call for entries for the Brand New Awards. Not this year. Nor the next. And most likely not again.

We’ve made the decision to stop doing the Brand New Awards. It wasn’t an easy decision, mostly because we feel we had a unique enough approach to make it relevant.

The biggest factor in our decision was the steep drop in entries submitted in 2014 (411) compared to the amount submitted in 2013 (714). This turns the BNAs into a potentially detrimental financial loss for us. Under 400 entries it starts to become a losing proposition and it’s not a gamble we were willing to take.

Because of the way we do our judging — flying our five judges to Austin so that they can be in the same room at the same time and have an active investment in reviewing the work — right off the bat we are committing at least $7,500 to the project. This is also one of the most time-consuming projects we have every year, so the hours add up quickly. Unless we are receiving 500 entries or more, the BNAs are not a good return on investment.

There is also the sense that things have changed in the design industry since we first did the awards in 2010 – 11: Awards and competitions just don’t have the same weight and significance the way they did then and even back then it was already a dubious endeavor to launch yet another awards competition. Getting thousands of “appreciations” on Behance or getting featured in design blogs — Brand New included — renders more immediate satisfaction and possible positive repercussions.

We understand some of you will be disappointed with the decision and we thank everyone who entered one, two, three, or four of the BNAs competitions. This opens up the door for us to tackle other projects this year (and years that follow) that will hopefully be of interest to many of you.

The online galleries for the past Brand New Awards will remain active and we will still be selling old inventory.

In the meantime, plans are going strong for the Brand New Conference and interest is already in high spirits with plenty of pre-sale tickets. So don’t worry about BNConf. As long as that stays well attended we will keep doing it.