Stories From The Field design competition

Chris attended to the Stories From The Field design competition: The United Nations Documentary Film Festival" logo competition. He was among the finalists with two of his designs. Unfortunately no one won the 5000$ price.

"It is with much regret that we announce that we are unable to award a winner in our "Stories from the Field: The United Nations Documentary Film Festival" logo competition." it says on the Design 21 web page: http://www.design21sdn.com/design21/news/1158

All we can do is to be honest. I'd like to tell you what happened, and how we came to this conclusion.

The Stories from the Field festival is presented by Media Communications Association International, New York Chapter (MCA-I NY) in partnership with the United Nations Department of Public Information (UNDPI) and The New School. They had agreed to our judging rules and procedure.

The day before the final selection was to take place, we were contacted by a representative of MCA-I NY who informed us that during the public vote they saw some designs that they felt strongly about and that these were not in the field of finalists who were selected by our panel of judges (whose names you can see at the bottom of the Brief). They requested that we add them.

This was not fair in our minds. All our entrants, judges, organizers had agreed to abide by the rules, and to change them in the middle of the game was not an option. This has been the most successful competition for us so far in terms of the number of entries (1604 from 78 countries), and we were more excited than anyone we know. But we also work very hard to execute a fair, honest and ethical competition.

Over the next 3 days, we conferred with UNESCO, our distinguished judges (who are also on our Advisory Board), and experts inside and outside the organization, trying to see if there was any other view or way to handle this situation. We of course agreed with MCA-I NY in that they should have a logo that they were really happy with. It was a matter of how we could accommodate that without bending our own rules. Unanimously, everyone agreed that their request jeopardized the whole concept of a juried selection.

In spite of our protest, MCA-I NY announced to us that their panel of judges including UNDPI, UN Graphic Design and New School selected a design from outside the field of finalists that we had sent to them. They are free to go with the design of their choice, but we feel that to declare that person a winner is an insult to the finalists. That is why we do not have an official winner of this competition.

We will take this experience to heart and make sure that we have a proper mechanism to avoid such a situation in the future. We are very sorry for any ill-feelings this may have caused, but please know that this does not make us any less appreciative of all your talent and effort.

The unawarded prize money will be added to the prize pool for our next competition. We hope that you will continue to be the creative force behind our community which is united by the single goal of promoting better design for the greater good.

Sincerely,

Haruko Smith

Director

DESIGN 21 Social Design Network

So it was kind of a flop. 1604 designs from 78 different countries. I bet there are lot of people who are a bit dissappointed about this. At least Chris put lot of time and effort to this and I'm sure many others did too.

Here is one of the comments they got. More you can find here: http://www.design21sdn.com/organizations/201/posts/1099

My 2 cents

As one person so rightly put it,

The most satisfying thing here as designers, above money, would be to know who |really| made the cut for MCA-I? Lets have that short-list pritty please!

I think this would satisfy all our apetites =)

Thank you,

CC