Some may view awarding self-promotional work as acceptable; others believe that it's just insular—designers staring at reflections of themselves and flexing. How often do we see an Academy Award for a movie about a movie?

If you can't give out awards for masturbation, what's the point? Spec work will make you go blind.

I see your point. And if it inspires designers, then that's okay. Right?! Or wrong?!

Great question, Jason.

Are annuals judging design purely as an end-product to be looked at?

Are they judging design in the context of a business environment, which includes a client, a client’s need/problem, and a client’s budget?

Are they judging design on something else altogether?

Whether or not self-promotion pieces are included, I wish most design annuals would do a better job of including information on the problem being solved, or the need being addressed with the winning design solution.

I realize that when judges face a conference room full of work to be reviewed, they won’t/can’t spend much time on these issues.

But, IMHO, unless some kind of effort is made to address the context of a design and how it solves a problem, design annuals will never generate much interest beyond the design community itself.

Which is OK, if we just want to talk to ourselves.

YES! I think awards/recognition for self promotion should be acceptable.

Awards, in my opinion, help seperate recent grads, junior/entry level designers and good designers alike from their peers and the majority of the crap that's out there. Our industry is so over saturated, everybody and their brother seem to be a graphic designer. Anybody can build a website, design a logo, set type on a page, design flyers, business cards, etc. However, few can do it on a professional, quality level. Especially when it comes to self promotion!

For example, I work for a design studio in Orlando, FL and we receive portfolios on a weekly basis. The majority of these are awful, i.e. poor typography, layout, contrast, etc. It is very seldom, in fact, that we ever recieve a self promotional piece that is award worthy!! There are exceptions of course, but few and far! Awards distinguish good design from all the other crap that get's put out there. Self promo ESPECIALLY!!!

In my opinion it is more difficult to design an "award" winning self promotional piece than it is to design an award winning client piece (b/c nothing is "given" to you and ideas are the sole property of the artist, designer, etc. and not that of a client). Also, because there is so much freedom in self promotional design, you are your own client and this means significantly more freedom and less limitations. Therefore, it's difficult to focus on a solid direction that will successfully sell you and your talents in such a competitive industry.

You truely have to seperate yourself and your designs from the standard and/or ordinary promotional pieces. See also: Stefan Sagmiester. To end that, if one can win an award or design a self promotional piece that is worthy of an award (in the true sense of the word, not crappy webby wards or the like) than I truely believe that this person can continue to develop and produce award winning design(s).

Therefore, YES, I do believe self promotional awards are and should be acceptable. Awards for self promotional work can indeed be very beneficial, helping to provide a bit of leverage for junior designers and students looking for a way to seperate themselves from this saturated, competitive industry and help promote good designers.

1

I love looking at self-promotion pieces, so I would hate to see them dropped. (The self-promotion annual?)

2

Self promotion is not only about showing off to other designers. Every piece that I have done has been strictly for the purpose of getting actual clients. I'm guessing that is the case for most folks, except those trying to get a job or some freelance work.

3

A very interesting set of awards is The Design Effectiveness Awards from the Design Business Association in the UK.

Three of the FAQs:

Who can enter?

A unique feature of these Awards is that clients enter jointly with design consultancies or with their company design teams.

What can I enter?

Any design projects; either re-designs or new products that demonstrate the effectiveness of design in significant situations for your client's brand or company.

What are the judges looking for?

Judges are looking for designs that prove beyond reasonable doubt a cause and effect between the new design and business success through results.

This year's call for entries

Past winners

Design, regardless of whether its self promotional or not, is all about problem solving right? Self promotion is just another problem in need of a solution so why shouldn't it recieve the same kind of attention as any other type of design work?

i didn't know they did (give awards for non-comissioned work), apart from the tokyo tdc.

which annuals/organisations do this?

I believe self-promotion, & the design community in general, has much ego involved. Not surprising considering the insane amount of effort & dedication good design requires of us. I think the self-promotion annual should stay only because, like Ryan pointed out, they are very sticky design problems. Especially, when you begin to address issues like mass-production with personalization or modular systems for the packaging/mail. I’ve done it — it’s a huge pain, but well worth it — so yes it should be recognized.

All good points. I agree that it's both inspirational and valuable, furthermore, it paints a picture of our time—the zeitgeist, if you will. Still, I wonder about separating them from the shows, annuals, and exhibitions. Why not just have a designer award show?

> How often do we see an Academy Award for a movie about a movie?

A movie about a movie is the same as a self-promotion mailer? A self-promotion is — to continue with the analogy — a movie about the editors, the writers, the directors, the work that these people have done, the locations where they have done it, the awards, or whatever, they have gotten because of this work, by these people. Self-promotion is not design about design… well, in a sense it is, but not really. A self-promotion should talk about how the design gets done and show the design pieces but it is not about design.

> others believe that it's just insular—designers staring at reflections of themselves and flexing.

This is bullshit. Awful, stinking, tired bullshit. "Designing for designers", right? Design is design is design. Sure, it's easier to get away with things, stylistically, that you wouldn't be able to with some client. But so what? You still need to communicate certain things in a specific amount of space within a limited budget that ultimately must serve a predetermined goal and as its ultimate reward it must, somehow, be a somewhat satisfying return on investment, right? The criteria that changes and the one that confuses us is that the audience is designers, sounds incestuous or Freudian, but it isn't, we are all people that need to communicate and that need to be communicated at; it just happens that we communicate in a similiar language that we find attractive and amusing so we give it awards. That's not wrong, as long as we understand what the self-promotion category stands for: self, promotion. Nothing more nothing less. There is nothing wrong with it.

> Awards, in my opinion, help seperate recent grads, junior/entry level designers and good designers alike from their peers and the majority of the crap that's out there.

The problem is that they don't. There is a lot of crap that gets awards, and a lot of it is done by hacks and junior/entry level designers.

> i didn't know they did (give awards for non-comissioned work). which annuals/organisations do this?

Graham, I think you may be thinking of another type of work... this is about a brochure, a web site, a ding dong, whatever, that solely serves to showcase a designer's work. It's not non-comissioned work as you think about it. I think.

Pretty much every magazine annual has a Self-promotion category. And HOW has a special annual devoted to self-promotion, which I still don't how, when and where or for whom they draw the line of what is and what isn't self-promotion.

So, to answer the question: Should design annuals continue to give recognition/awards for self-promotional or designer-driven work? Why or why not?

Yes. Because it's design.

The only time I object to recognition of self-promos is when they eclipes work done for clients.

A couple of years ago, a design studio's self-promo made Best in Show in a local design annual in Seattle. But that very same year, that studio folded — which is an indirect testament to the failure of that very self-promo piece. It was a mistake of the design judges to give that much merit to a self-promo piece, I don't care how wonderful it was.

I disagree Armin. Not all design have equal merits.

We should keep it in perspective. Self-promos, while they can be incredibly creative and entertaining, aren't as nearly difficult to design — and thus, should be less valued — than work for clients.

Graham — every magazine and org in the US does it. CA, Print, HOW, AIGA, you name it. Doesn't the same go for Europe? I'm pretty sure it does.

> I agree that it's both inspirational and valuable, furthermore, it paints a picture of our time—the zeitgeist, if you will

Jason, sorry, I don't mean to just disagree with you about everything today, but…

That's absolutely not a real(istic) assertion. Self-promotion work by designers rarely touches on the zeitgeist. Maybe trend-wise visually, but not even then. Designer self-promotion is about the designer's work and nothing else. It seldom touches on culture, politics or sociology. They are not commentary on anything but design work done in the past.

>They are not commentary on anything but design work done in the past.

Wrong Armin. Good self-promos are marketing tools. Some may have past work, some can be purely self-indulgent manifestos of the design firm. Some are just teasers, targetted to a particular audience, with the pure intent of getting a direct response.

Past design work is the no-brainer in a self-promo I think. No one should get design recognition for that.

>aren't as nearly difficult to design

I take this back. Self-promos can be incredibly tough to design. I guess what I mean is that self-promos are free of the restrictions and shackles that must often be overcome when dealing with work for clients. Self-promos have no excuses to keep it from being the most amazing thing that a designer/design firm produces.

That difference in restrictions is everything.

The zeitgeist can come through the way the self-promo addresses the problem visually. Visual traits will surface, and when compared to other work by other designers/firms/agencies, one can draw a total picture of the trends, styles, or phenoms designers are conscious of. Ouí?

And here's where I see the conflict, designing self-promo pieces is far easier than taking on work for paying clients (or those pro bono jobs out there).

P.S. Armin, no problem about the disagreement(s). And keep them coming. You're opening this thing up beyond my myopic viewing.

Tan, I'm glad you took back your comment about the difficulty of self promotion.

To me this is one of the most difficult projects.

If I'm designing for a client that makes widgets, my audience is the people who buy widgets. They have similar needs and similar profiles. I can probably do a couple of hours of homework and hit widget buyers pretty accurately.

But if I'm trying to promote myself as a designer I have to use the same design promo piece to hit people who sell widgets, people who consult, people who program, people who court investors, the list could go on forever.

And diverse audience is only one of many aspects that make self promo difficult.

Should a project be recognized with an award if it does this well? You bet.

Designer self-promotion is about the designer's work... not culture, politics or sociology.

Well, there goes the Push Pin Graphic, which I would argue changed our graphic landscape if not merely from within.

Funny, I remember someone named Armin who narrated this very lecture here in NYC.

btw- Did Armin just say Zeitgeist? Urgh. Sweet.

> Wrong Armin. Good self-promos are marketing tools. Some may have past work, some can be purely self-indulgent manifestos of the design firm. Some are just teasers, targetted to a particular audience, with the pure intent of getting a direct response.

Cool. Agreed. Self promos are not just past work. But would you say that a self-indulgent manifesto or a teaser are representatives of the Zeitgeist? (Which is what I was trying to get at with that comment, I guess). I can't think of many design firm promos that truly deliver on that aspect.

> Visual traits will surface, and when compared to other work by other designers/firms/agencies, one can draw a total picture of the trends, styles, or phenoms designers are conscious of.

Meh… I mean, yeah, they could, but they rarely do. This pessimistic view on my part comes from thinking of the Zeitgeist as something more than visual styles.

> I disagree Armin. Not all design have equal merits.

So, in essence, a capabilities brochure for Widget Inc. has more merit — maybe I'm misunderstanding how you are using the word — than a capabilities brochure for Design Inc.?

> Well, there goes the Push Pin Graphic, which I would argue changed our graphic landscape if not merely from within.

There are, of course, exceptions Mr. Licks.

> Funny, I remember someone named Armin who narrated this very lecture here in NYC.

?

Armin? Did you really do a lecture on this? What gives?

armin sorted it out . . . i was thinking about something else, stories, photography, film, writing, image/music/performance, sculpted form, books, shadowplay, trompe l'oeil and the zoetrope etc.

i misunderstood.

I guess the real trick is to make everything you do *first and foremost* a self promotion - like Sagmeister.

There's no such thing as bad publicity...

>So, in essence, a capabilities brochure for Widget Inc. has more merit — maybe I'm misunderstanding how you are using the word — than a capabilities brochure for Design Inc.?

In many respects, yes. "Has more merit" can perhaps be better worded as "is a more difficult achievement." Another way to think of it is as a "degree of difficulty."

Why is this so blasphemous? Designing a cool business card for my own firm would be a thousand times easier than designing a cool card for Microsoft. A student designing a BFA poster for his/her graduate show is a far easier challenge than a firm designing the poster for Ocean's Eleven.

Granted, design is design — but we all work in the real world, and there's something to be said for context and degree of difficulty in every project. I just don't see self-promos on the same level as client work.

>But would you say that a self-indulgent manifesto or a teaser are representatives of the Zeitgeist?

Agreed. It is not. Jason's just using fancy words.

Fancy? I like to think of them as $2.

IMHO self-promo is a valid award category as it does represent what drives any given designer or studio. However, when it is that designer's or studios only work worth mentioning, the award fails. As we have seen many an award winning designers or studios fall into oblivion, what's for certain is that awards in general carry only certain weight.

Self-promo speaks only to design. An award for a client's design more wholistically reflects the studio's or designers relation not only to the finished product, but also to the design process that is required to pull off a award winning design.

...designing a cool card for Microsoft. hehehe. a kazillion inch thick brand book and franklin gothic (tweaked). go to town on that one.....

Of course they should. That's how they generate revenue.

And is that bad, Darrel? Magazines are a business as well. And, as luck would have it, designers are more than willing to pay the fees for annuals. You could even say that they are filling a void in the marketplace. They are not conning us out of our money.

Who said anything about being bad, Armin? I'm simply stating a basic fact of business.

In the past, and even now, you make it sound like it's bad… Maybe just my interpretation, or maybe it was a lack of one of this ; o )

> A couple of years ago, a design studio's self-promo made Best in Show in a local design annual in Seattle. But that very same year, that studio folded — which is an indirect testament to the failure of that very self-promo piece. It was a mistake of the design judges to give that much merit to a self-promo piece, I don't care how wonderful it was.

Disagreed.

Why? Because no one can be exactly sure of why this studio folded. Maybe it was due to lack of funding to fully market and dispense their promo properly. Maybe they targeted the wrong market for that particular promo. Or, maybe, it didn't have anything to do with marketing their self promo piece at all. Maybe their drive or motivation or whatever the F*@K was exhausted all together!

Regardless, I don't believe it had anything to do with their self-promo piece. You can't blame a self-promo piece, good or bad, for going out business. If your a good designer or a good design studio/team, then your good. Period. You'll make it through all the hard times, ups and downs, etc. You'll design another self-promo piece and hit the streets . . . again! But don't blame a self-promo piece, award winning or otherwise, of putting your self out of work! C'mon on now!

Then again, I could be wrong? But I highly doubt it! ;)

hmmmm......

no one can be exactly sure of why this studio folded

usually it's because they ran out of money, which usually means thay had no clients, which usually means no one wanted to hire them, which usually means clients had no use for their ideas - award not withstanding.

but what the F*@K do I know.

>You can't blame a self-promo piece, good or bad, for going out business.

Of course the sole blame can't go to the self-promo piece. But honestly, what is the purpose of a promo-piece in the first place? To get w-o-r-k.

Its effectiveness, content, design, whatever you want to call it either works or it doesn't. Therefore, if a studio ends up closing because of a loss of work, the owner choosing to do something else, maybe indirect personal problems...whatever — then it still indirectly reflects upon the ineffectiveness or needlessness of that particular piece of promotion.

If it wouldn't have helped, then it shouldn't have been produced in the first place. If it was a last gasp, then it still failed in its function. Anything having to do with self-marketing and self-marketing dollars in a firm has an effect on a firm's operations.

But this is a different argument tangent to the point of discussion.

Originally, I was just making a point that self-promos sometimes aren't as deep, relevant, or effective as client work. I used that example, perhaps somewhat errantly, to point out the futility of design recognition for a self-promo piece.

In a sense, by also saying that a self-promo has no responsibility for its ultimate function, you've provided further proof of my point. N'est pas?

Ouí. En outre…

A self-promo gets work. And how many self-promos have you seen that are engineered for design annuals first, with little consideration of getting a client/contract? Too often, I've witnessed students fresh out of school look down that path. With little knowledge of marketing or direct mail, they want a slick piece of work shoved into an annual that puts them on the radar.

Convenu, en effet.

I've worked with a few award winning students over the last year, magna cum laude from prestigious design schools, that fell completely apart when confronted with a real world client project....

I've had great luck with students - and the ones who are smart enough to call attention to themselves anyway they can deserve my respect. It's a tough job market out there and if they get my attention, I'll always take a second look.

Competitions suck.

I never compete, or judge.

Never ever. Man. Maybe we need an anti-competition annual.

"a lot of it is done by hacks and junior/entry level designers."

Another stupid ignorant comment, its comments like this that bog the entire industry down and have no value what so ever at least to me. Where do you consistently come up with these crap blanket statements? are you really that uninspired? is this whats passing as "design criticism" these days?

what a bloody bore.

Nancy, girl, take it down a notch, will ya?

I consistently come up with this crap blank statements by looking at our industry magazines, at designers' web sites, at work done inhouse (wink), books, other blogs, listings on eBay, reading Fortune, The New York Times, plastic bags floating on the street and stupid ignorant comments, etc... Call it ignorant, call it uninspired, call it what you will.

<sarcasm><irony>Man, I missed you… </irony></sarcasm>

>Maybe we need an anti-competition annual.

At which point I can put in a plug for the TypeCon Gallery, where all entrants are exhibited.

In the past, and even now, you make it sound like it's bad…

Hmm...maybe I have.

It's certainly not bad for the publications. Like I said, that's how they make revenue.

The annuals, themselves, are useful and fun for the consumers. I always like having a design annual on my desk to thumb through.

My typical gripe about them, though, is that they are usually *not* design critiques...just subjective opinions on the aesthetics. This is more true with interactive work. ID's annuals being the typical exception to the rule.

what a bloody bore.

Yet, oddly, interesting enough for you to post a comment on it. ;o)

Does anyone have any thoughts on work that is great but the client doesn't like it, or the project manager doesn't sell it, so it doesn't get published and therfore can't be entered. Clients… PMs… what do they know?

>Does anyone have any thoughts on work that is great but the client doesn't like it, or the project manager doesn't sell it, so it doesn't get published and therfore can't be entered.

Ah, but who says you can't enter work that wasn't published or chosen by the client?

Actually, this is a very controversial subject. I know for a fact that there many studios that submit work for awards that wasn't chosen by their clients. These days, it's easy to make a comp that's indiscernable from a real printed piece — especially so if the awards competition only requests a photo or digital photo of the submitted entry, instead of a real printed example.

No one checks. Ever.

In any given awards book, you can be sure that there are a number of logos and ID systems published that don't exist outside of those pages. Even complex categories like annual reports have fake entries. I knew a nationally reputable design firm that submitted their own version of a client's annual report — with a different cover that the firm had printed just for awards submission. The owner wasn't even shy about admitting it — citing that eventhough their client chose "wrong," their work deserved recognition for what it should've been.

In another instance — a few years ago, a large local coffee company used to farm out their annual reports to a number of local firms. The firms all got paid to produce a design concept and finished comp for the annual. The coffee co. would choose one to finish out as the real annual, but they technically paid for all of them. Well, lo and behold, just by coincidence, I spotted one of the non-chosen "annuals" in a regional awards book from another state. No one ever bothered to check to see what the coffee co. had actually done for the year.

Fake entries happen much more often than people realize. I've judged design shows before where all of the judges have strongly suspected that an entry was a fake. But since they paid for the submission, and since no one officially checked — there's nothing that a judge can do but to treat it as if it was indisputably real.

In the advertising world, it's not much different. To qualify for an award entry, an agency will self-run a chosen version of a client ad — usually some outrageous/scandalous ad that no client in their right mind would ever run — in some obscure small town newspaper, or run a commercial at 3am on a college public television station. Once it's been technically "published" or "televised" on public media — they can submit to any and every awards show they want.

As unethical as it may seem, there's nothing technically wrong with these practices — as it pertains to competition rules.

In the process of designing for a client, sometimes the better solution isn't the one chosen —so it's discarded. But technically the client has paid for that discarded solution, just as they have paid for the chosen design solution. It's real work, not fake. It's paid-for by a client, not self-made. It just wasn't chosen as the final solution.

To me, it's still very wrong — but you can decide for yourself. Is it?