Last fall I got a call from Steve Dorsey, who works one of the Detroit papers, asking if I would be interested in being a judge for the upcoming SND awards (he was the coordinator or something). At first I thought, why in the world would I want to do that. Stuck in Syracuse, NY in the cold of winter, cooped up in a hotel with a bunch of newspaper folks and being critical of other peoples hard work.

Then again, why not. Figured I could incorporate it into a road trip and visit one of my childhood homes while checking out the goodwill's and salvation army's of western NY (some of the best, found a great book "Andy wants to be a cowboy"). So I said yes. Also figured, that since I have spoken at their conferences, won some awards and lost even more, if I did this, when I shoot my mouth off about SND I would be speaking from a position of knowledge and not speculation.

First off, the experience was far better than any of their conferences I have attended. I got more out of seeing all the entries both good and bad. And spending time with all the other judges (some who were friends, some who became friends and some whose work I had admired and had hoped to meet) catching up on gossip, arguing over design beliefs (not really a whole lot of that), drinking too much and just generally talking crap.

How does this judging thing work? There are two cups in front of each page (red and blue), and five judges vote yes or no. Four or five yes's and the page gets put aside for discussion for a medal. It wins at least an award of excellence, that is the worst it can do. It gets a gold if all five of us agree and a silver if it's four of the five. Sometimes when the vote is 2-3 (two for, three against) if one of the judges feels really strongly about a design, they can make a quick pitch to try and change one of the no voters. All 3-2 votes get awards of excellence.

If a category is especially large, there is a kind of prejudging before the yes or no vote. They lay out all the entries in a category and we walk up and down and place a cup on pieces we think should be considered. If none of the five judges puts down a cup, the page is out, out and out. So all that time you spend convincing your managing editor to shell out enough to enter four or five of your best pages and there is a very good chance the judges take two or three seconds at most to ignore it.

Main question is, is the judging fair. Nah, not by any means. You see so much stuff and can't really spend any time with the thousands of pages. So many entries in languages you don't speak. Everything starts to blur together. So you end up going with either things you are familiar with or with bold items that stand out from all the rest. You notice other judges stopping and considering a page, so you stop at that page too. Some designs are so much better than any other. Those are easy... it is the borderline ones that are the most difficult, you know. They are usually good, solid well designed stuff, but award winners? Sometimes. If you had five different judges you would have a different set of winners.

There was this one illustration that appeared in the National Post out of Canada by the french illustrator Sophie Dutertre that I thought was outstanding. A multicolored wood cut looking image, with a naked woman at the edge of a bed, crying a flood of tears, a rose on the floor and a man leaving the frame... a beautiful emotional piece, colorful and wonderfully rendered. Possibly my personal favorite of the judging. Voted out at 2-3... and if I hadn't pitched it to one of the other judges, could have easily been 1-4.

And what is the deal with the European papers... especially Spain and the Scandinavian countries. Why do they win more than the American counterparts? Bottom line, they are better. More innovative, more compelling, more thought provoking, less prudish and feel more complete. Most American publications feel cookie-cutterish and safe. You know that chain mentality. Strive for mediocrity!

So, would I do it again? Definitely. Does the book represent the best of newspaper design? Well, partially. Some good stuff gets in, some even great, but a lot of not so great stuff also gets in. But is it a pretty good overview of all the pages we looked at? Most certainly. So take it for what it is worth. Whatever that is.