Class Response - SND Contest

Watching the judging for the design contest provided more insight to how these contests work. The cup and token system was interesting. It took me a while to figure out that the different colors meant different things, but once I had determined this it was even more interesting to watch (and try to see what color they were dropping in even though they were trying to hide it). I was slightly frustrated by their heavy focus on photography. This is all well and good when you're talking about the photography spreads, but in the other categories they seemed to prefer spread with photography. They also were attracted to unique typography; illustrations were either rare or ignored...I couldn't tell. It was interesting to see how the order of categories may have affected the results. The judging for my subway feature design took place immediately after they had judged the covers (Elisa's Subway cover won second place- congrats Elisa!). When they were looking at my feature design, they noted that it went along with Elisa's winning cover, but didn't like that it didn't directly relate to the cover's content. I am not disagreeing with the judges decision, but I would just be curious to know how they might have thought differently had they not just judged Elisa's cover. Overall, though, I thought the judging was well-organized and fair, and it taught me not to be affected by the results because so many factors come into play.