47th Annual Show—Judges Interview
What they said about using the computer for design...

John Korpics The one thing I've been noticing for a long time now is that the computer tends to take away from the classic design sense. People aren't paying attention to things like letter spacing, classic typography, the rules of classic typography. And what they are doing is relying on the computer to be the designer, they are using special effects and shadows and 3 dimensional things to try to carry the piece across and the pieces we chose this year have a lack of that and instead relied more on just a good sense of design. That is my initial reaction.
     JoAnn Tansman I think it is difficult to blame the computer, those pieces that we chose were probably produced on the computer. The pieces that were outstanding were outstanding because they had good content and good ideas and they held together as one unit and they were well thought out from beginning to end as a solid entity. And so they probably thought out what their idea/concept was first and then however they technically chose to execute it then followed suit. So I think it is difficult to blame it on that. But I think a lot of people, probably have as you said, used the computer as their thinker and they need to think more and execute less.
     Seymour Chwast We see a mix of styles here in many of the pieces, inside the pieces, seeing one direction on the cover then halfway through we see other things thrown in and that might be the fault of the computer where you were working and not seeing the piece as an entity. I thought the weakest categories were posters and annual reports. We chose very few.
     JK That suffered the most in the way you were talking about. Annual reports tend to have either an interesting cover and were boring inside or vice versa sometimes.
     JT I think there was a lot of the same sort of sameness. "Oh no, not another collage/montage!" You know? There just wasn't a lot of innovative fresh thinking. There wasn't anyone piece that I could say I have not seen this before. We always want to delve and find some new territory which would inspire us. And there wasn't a whole lot of that.
     JK I found that when we found something humorous we were drawn to it. There were so few of them in the show to begin with.
     JT Yeah, yeah.
     SC There was not very much wit.
     JK When it was there they stood out and attracted our attention.
     JT Definitely.
     SC As a whole the very style of design is very derivative it seems to be all of the popular mainstream now and very few pieces stood out as being original in terms of the design which means a lot of underlaying, a lot of still layering which has already been around for too long, images are being used because they can be used instead of reflecting of idea.
     JK I think you right about style being most important thing nowadays people don't concentrate...When I was first learning about design, the designer or creative director was thought of as somebody who came up with a very interesting concept and also carried it across visually to get that concept over. Albeit if it was a funny thing or a serious thing they came up with an effective visual representation. Nowadays its a matter of which style are you going to rip off, or which style are you going to copy to get your idea across. There is not a lot of thought about it.
     JT It's a trend. People don't feel they can be successful if they don't fit into what is going on now, today and that leaves us with no tomorrow. If you follow everybody else then you have nowhere to go. You have to search and try.
     JK Those pieces that showed a lot of thought stood out to us I thought.
     JT Absolutely.
     SC Too many bands too many colors...
     JT Yes, definitely.
     SC Too little white space.
     JT Too little white space!
     JK That ought to be the title of your autobiography.
     JT Drama, lack of drama, too much drama makes for no drama. Too little drama makes for no drama. Lack of focus and attention.
     SC Well one of you mentioned scale here as being absent from most of the pieces.
     JT Except for the ones that we picked as the winners.
     JK I think we found some good examples of what we are talking about with the winners. The ones that we chose are a pretty good representation of what we are talking about. The thing is that I guess after you've judged 1300 pieces you are more overwhelmed by the amount of stuff that didn't work than you are by the few that did work.

What they said about the use of white space...
     JT It is positive and negative space, it is not white space it is what you do with the space that you have. You don't have to cram it in. You can cram it in every corner and still have white space. You work with leading an you work with where the type lays on the page, its a sense of proportion, you know you have space and how that space is divided up. White space doesn't mean that there has to be a whole lot of space and a tiny bit of type it depends on how you treat the space within which you work But it would have been nice to see a big white page with a tiny piece of type.
     SC It seemed to me that some of the designers were running away from any white space they could have used by adding bands of color arbitrarily. But also when the copy is long the tendency is to use a lot of different typefaces here as a way of somehow trying to illustrate the piece in a way that doesn't make any sense.
     JT I think that is probably coming out of this computer thing where you push a button and you see a pretty shape on a letter and I think "I'll stick it next to that other letter," with out really understanding the characteristic of that font which every font has one.
     JK You also have a 1000 fonts at your beck and call and they are trying to let the design of the font do the design of the piece for them rather than using the font in a simple ways to illustrate their own ideas.