I enjoyed the in-class judging. It definitely helped me realized what many people are drawn to when it comes to when it comes to print design. At the same time, I realized how much winning a contest is all about chance.
The experience also made me wonder if that's how many publications go about picking journalism interns. Just the thought seems eerie. Because even though a person maybe be a good designer if they competing against someone that doesn't have a degree in print design or art but has awesome or outrageous designs, that person that has a degree in design may lose.
From the judging, I realized that many consumers are drawn to designs that are different or aren't widely known. Honestly, I never really voted for the Texas Monthly design throughout all of the designs. I glanced at it once, but I was more prone to voting for colored layouts like the "Bad Parents" layout or layouts that had typographical hierachy. That experience helped me better understand the opinion in the reading about how as soon as new design or typography becomes widespread, it quickly becomes cliche and overdone.
Texas Monthly tried something different with text and the fact that it was consistent helped it to win the judging contest. Many didn't understand how it worked but one must first understand the audience. Yeah, many Texans like guns (I'm indifferent.), but they are also proud of their history like many Missourians. I think that many couldn't accept the spread because they didnt understand the concept of Texas Rangers and bad guys. But if the spread had discussed The Arch and Lewis and Clark, I believe that more judges would've been convinced.
In order to have a memorable design, one must take an older idea, put their spin on it to make it "pop" and engage the reader. I was particularly drawn to one design that used tons of text but instead of being overwhelming for the reader, the designer used diagrams, illustrations and colors throughout the layout. I believe it was a layout created by Chicago Magazine.
This experience also allowed me shed more light on the theory that images are important to a publication. Whenever someone says images, the first thing that comes to mind are photos. In actuality though, more often than not what sells are illustrations. True, most photos are pretty breathtaking, but illustrations seem to sell just as well as photos if not better. Now that I know this, I will probably take this into consideration for future projects. Instead of being afraid of Illustrator, we must embrace. Illustrator is good. Illustrator is our friend. *nods*
From performing this judging session, I developed a new respect for city magazines and their editors. I know that it has to be difficult for them to constantly come up with fresh and new things every year when talking about the same subject from day to day. The city publication that worked for this summer,
Houston House & Home, I believe had reached that point of stale-ness. They created a calendar for what they talked about every year but struggled to keep things fresh because they limited themselves to a conservative crowd. Whenever I'd tried to give suggestions for how to draw in younger readers, they quickly responded that could push them to lose their readers. Or when I tried to change up things on their layouts, they responded that I could only make minor changes to their page designs. This takes us back to an aforementioned point: One must be willing to be different. This stands for editorial and design. If one isn't willing to do so, how can they expect to attract more readers or retain the ones they do have?
