Friday, February 27, 2009

Exhausted, But With Complete Consensus



Yesterday I spent the entire day at the offices of ID Magazine, judging the Annual Design Review for their Interactive category. Boy, did we see some amazing work. It was exhausting, spending about 11 hours there, but any day that I can not be chained to my desk making commercials, but rather meet and converse (and debate with) some of the brightest minds around is a pretty great day indeed.

I was supposed to have been one of the 3 judges for this particular category on this particular day, but a last minute cancellation by one of the judges (illness, apparently) left us scrambling at the 11th hour to find a third person. Everyone I suggested was too "close" to me (Alicia, Mike Essl, etc) and some of the other big-wigs I suggested are too busy to drop everything (Emily, Scott, Cadin) and one of the big-wigs was already judging another category another day, so it was pretty much a bust. But we soldiered on, the two judges that we were, and we ended up having a fantastic time! My other Judge was Neri, a brilliant Artist and Architect from the MIT labs, who lectures at every major university in the world and who's work has been shown at the MoMa, among many many others.

She was a joy to converse with, and inspiring to debate with and compare and contrast the work. I can't talk too much about the work until the issue comes out, just rest assured that it was (mostly*) jaw-dropping, and our top 3 were decided unanimously and instantly.

The Issue should hit newsstands in June, where not only will you read our commentary and see our choices (and reasonings behind it) but you will see a picture of the 2 of us as well... some of the photos they took of us looked like the prom! Ha!

I look forward to hearing what you guys have to say about our choices, and hope that our decisions hold up to the test of time. I think we did our best, and sure met some fun and interesting people in the process. Thank you again, ID Magazine, for the honor of allowing me to participate!


* There was some crap, and some by people Alicia and I knew too! Ha Ha Ha... At least nobody there knew I worked on Botulinum Toxin**... that is an Alan Smithee project for sure!

** Speaking of Botulinum Toxin, the project is wrapped, the witch is dead, and we are drinking ourselves into oblivion tonight after work... 7:00pm at the Rodeo Bar... Be there, or be square.

1 comment:

Geoff said...

I might have to pick this issue up! How exciting.