It was mentioned before we began judging that the process would be very quick. No kidding. It's similar to judging by other organizations such as SSND and POYI, but I don't understand why it has to be so quick. It's very difficult for a judge to get a sense of a magazine by looking at it for only a couple minutes, let alone decide whether it's better or not than the ones sitting next to it from a different publication. Why does it have to be under a strict time constraint? I don't think the excuse that the judges aren't getting paid for their work should suffice. It's an award, and I feel it's unfortunate that the designers on the non-winning publications are out of luck just because a judge looks at a magazine for less than a minute and decides its fate. Awards help attract talent to magazines, and I believe a slower process should be in place to decide these kinds of things.
How much slower? Frankly I don't know. It seems like the judges could take home the magazines for a night to read them, and then decide the next day. But even if each judge had one issue from each magazine with him or her, the judge would not be able to see continuity of design between issues. So, as much as I am an advocate of changing the existing system of judging, it doesn't seem like there is a feasible solution to fixing the current situation that would allow for more thorough and complete judging while allowing the judges to see more than one example per magazine. But it was fun to be a part of this year's CRMA judging, nonetheless. It was a real eye opener for me and it also gave me some ideas for future designs.
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