The past month has been, as most Decembers are, bursting at the margins of the calendar with things to accomplish, buy, or attend. Earlier in the month I volunteered with the GDC Graphex awards, which seem to be THE design award for Canada. I had intended to write about my experiences but then class projects (including my grad project) were due, and then Christmas shopping. Now it’s almost the end of the month, and I finally have time to write about what happened. If only I could remember…
What I do remember: Marian Bantjes stole the show at the judges’ evening both for being witty, timely and apt and for being the only one to come in under the time limit (the whole show ran 2+ hours over). She was more than a little iconoclastic, and showed some simply smashing images. (Get it? iconoclasm, smashing images… hilarity.) The gist of her speech was that designers need to own up to the creative “art” of what we do. We’re too obsessed with talking about the practicalities of communication, and don’t want to admit that sometimes it’s all moonbeams and divine voices. This was a splash of cold water after the parade of previous speakers, all of whom wore holes in the word “communication.”
It seems that many designers spend lots of time preaching to the masses, trying to convince clients that yes, design really IS worth paying for. So when they have to talk about their craft to other designers, they end up recycling the same sermon. And then the choir goes: “No duh.” But Bantjes is unique: she could talk the choir into a Buddhism class.
Besides the judges’ evening, I also volunteered with the judging itself. It was very cool to get a glimpse into the state of Canadian design—not just the best things, which anyone could check out after the awards are given, but the run-of-the-mill stuff that you’d never ordinarily see all gathered in one place. Of course, I’m sworn to secrecy about all that, but I can give general observations. Number one: most design is mediocre. Number two: polish doesn’t matter, if it’s spiritually empty. Number three: the competition is never as fierce as your imagination makes it. I had assumed that there would be dozens of entries in each category, all with a very high level of accomplishment. While there were very few bad pieces, there were piles which were unremarkable. Lacking in moonbeams, maybe.
