What They Said
By Derek Barnes and Rick Aleman

You sit in your office in front of your computer, working away like a good little drone, pretty much cut off from other designers. If you get any feedback at all about your work, it probably falls into one of two categories:
     1) Feedback from co-workers which is, of course, extremely valuable, but it comes from within the same closed office system and consequently lacks a measure of impartiality; or,
     2) Feedback from clients which can range from moderately well informed opinions to the arbitrary bleatings of a design dyslexic.
     For a variety of reasons, many designers are reluctant to discuss projects with people from other studios making it difficult to find the kind of objective critiques of our work some of us became accustomed to in school. This is what makes the remarks of the ADCMW show judges so important. They are an annual dose of objective commentary by nationally recognized talent. They remind you that after you've done your billing, balanced the client's budget and installed the latest computer upgrade, there's still that artsy, creative urge within you that needs to be considered and sated.

As in previous years, the club was lucky enough to secure the services of three great judges: Rick Binger of RBD/Creative Services in San Francisco, Eric Baker of Eric Baker Design Associates, Inc. in New York, and Pat Samata of SamataMason in Chicago. The trio looked at more than 1100 entries in a variety of media and selected 154 to be in the show. Judging can be a fairly grueling task, but our three guests met the challenge with considerable fortitude and even hung around long enough for the customary post-judgment debriefing.

Generally speaking, the judges were impressed with the sampling of Washington area design we presented to them. In past years, the judges have always been particularly excited about the pieces they singled out for special recognition and this year was no exception. "The things we're looking at here," said Pat Samata referring to this year's medal winners, "on a national level... to me this is CA material... the top stuff. In every show you go to there are usually a lot of things you have to get out of the way before you get to it. When I've judged other regional shows, the Best of Show wasn't this good."

While all three judges agreed that there was a lot of praiseworthy work being done in the D.C. area, they also agreed that we were not above criticism. "I think the caliber of work is up," said Eric Baker. "The one thing that I would say is that people need to work a little harder."

Continue with Eric warned against what he called creeping mediocrity