The Annual Design-a-Brochure Contest
Brilliance on display
by Corel-wielding artists
With Corel no longer sponsoring its annual design contest, there are few avenues left in which graphic designers and illustrators can showcase their talents in public. So perhaps it is no wonder that we received over 75 entries to this year’s contest that we hold as a precursor to the CorelWORLD User Conference.
The contest is more than just an easy way to expose how cheap we are and that we would do anything to get our brochure designed for free. It might be that, too, but it’s much more. Our contest has practically become a little cottage industry all to itself. We have had contestants submit entries all four years that we have held it; we have seen some submit three, four, and five entries in a year; we have witnessed unbridled joy by those who won and tears from those who didn’t; we have had creative disagreements and disputes over the merits of entries; we have had controversies over and allegations of stolen design themes; and we have been accused of interfering with the judging process.
This year, we had representation from 15 countries outside of the United States, including four from India, two from Australia, Brazil, Finland, Hungary, Iceland, Poland, and South Africa, and our winner from Davao City, Philippines.
Usually, over half of the entries never make it to your web browsers, because they are simply too bad or too ugly to be considered worthy candidates. But this year, there were very few that actually sunk to that level—none, in fact. We hope that the author of this piece doesn’t hunt us down for this, but here is an example of one of the relatively weaker entries. It uses too much clipart and its use of DRAW’s special effects are a bit gratuituous. But it’s inoffensive and even quite charming. It is many leagues better than some of the entries we have seen in past years—it might have made our final 16 of 2001!
The strength of this year’s field posed unique challenges for us, as we had to make very difficult decisions about which entries to put out there for you. For instance, here is one that you did not see. A lot of effort went into it and it has some nice elements. It lacks a central graphic element and it uses an obsolete logo for Corel Corp., and in general, it just didn’t quite rise to the level that would make it a candidate for one of the finalists. But you can see our dilemma: we had to reject some pretty good pieces.
The entries came in all shapes, sizes, and themes. We loved the “Be There or be a Wireframe” slogan from Ilpo Alanko. Contrast that with Richard Anand’s softer, gentler treatment of the tools of the artist’s trade. Dennis Cain came up with one of the most attractive logos, and Bruce Larsen created a majestic panorama (the judges didn’t mind one bit that it is actually of a Northern California beach, not Southern...). Ana Maria Mottin showed unusual creativity in converting a photo into a collection of vector objects. We can only imagine how many hours that took. Ditto for Bronwyn Tweedie’s use of legos as the conduit between creativity (pieces of a puzzle) and locale (San Diego’s Legoland). Linda Woodrow also took a page out of San Diego culture with a nice rendition of the popular downtown Gaslamp District. And Marian Wynn produced a perky postcard, complete with a “Wish you were here!”
In early-February, 35 entries were whittled down to 11 and showcased at corelworld.com for one week. While the entries were shown, we invited any and all visitors to the site to cast a ballot for their favorite ones. Over 200 of you offered up your votes and opinions. One week later, we did it all over again: We culled from 40 entries and produced eight more entries. Those eight entries produced another 150 ballots cast.
But the judging process involves much more than just the voting at the website. It has to, because you wouldn’t believe the kind of ballot-box stuffing that goes on! We have no built-in safeguards in place to prevent double-voting and we do not insure against people changing their name and/or email address to vote again under a different identity. Therefore, we had a good laugh when 30 ballots all arrived within two minutes of each other, proclaiming “Glenn Grazie’s entry is by far the best one!” Every year, someone calls his or her parents, siblings, and 15 cousins and asks them all to go to the site and vote.
So in addition to all of you, we commission a panel consisting of members of the conference presenting team, long-time users, and others with deep ties to the Corel community. This group must take into account how well a design will hold up in a variety of scenarios—brochure, website, t-shirt, generic logo—and how well it will age.
We can tell when we have received ligitimate well-thought-out ballots, and it is invaluable to the judges to see the trends that emerge from what the user community thinks. And it has happened on several occasions that an entry that wasn’t considered for a spot in the final eight was reconsidered when many users explained in their ballots why they liked it.
From the 19 entries that were showcased on the site, the list was pared to eight, and the judges produced a Final Four:
Ted
Bell of Modesto, CA
Pregi
Govender of Johannesburg, South Africa
Benjamin
Jacobs of Sun City, CA
Ray
Rubio of Davao City, The Philippines
Ted was late to the party, finding out about the contest 48 hours before the close of entries. But that did not stop him from firing up Bryce and producing a sunset that almost won the whole thing. His use of the swirling logos are stunning.
Jacobs is the proud owner of the most polarizing design. His surfer dude was tres cool and many loved his juxtaposition of the sharp modern vector edges with the bitmappy treatment of the “WORLD.” An equal number of dissenting opinions cited it as distracting and jarring. We think it would make a killer poster...
Govender’s entry is the most conservative of the four but also the most elegant. Several of us were very glad to see it early on in the contest because it signified to us that there would be at least one entry that we knew we could work with. There is always a sigh of relief when we reach that stage, and before it happens, the conference host trots out his own entry, under a pseudonym, just in case there are no good entries.
We usually get at least one entry with balloons in it—either because they are easy to do or to harken back to Corel’s early legacy—and usually it does not get very far. When we first saw it, we had the customary “Oh, another balloon entry...” reaction, before realizing that this one was a good design, easily worthy of reaching the final eight. We were not really sure how far it would get past that, but we knew that it would break through the potential stigma of just being “another balloon entry.”
And then the voters went nuts over it. And it wasn’t just ballot-box stuffing. Voters from New Zealand, Japan, Eastern Europe (and yes, a few from the Philippines) remarked on how upbeat and lively it was. Other entrants were voting for it over their own—a sure sign that we had a good thing here.
“I was captivated by the simplicity of the design and the vibrant colors,” notes David Huss, one of the judges. “ Having lived in San Diego myself, I thought the artist captured the intensity and the creativity of what we have come to expect in both the West Coast and the CorelWORLD conference. Lastly, as one who has been with and around Corel for more years than I am willing to admit, I appreciated the homage to the Corel balloon. Ray proves that you can convey the image in a purposeful and stylistic manner without the general clutter that became so associated with the Corel ads in the old days.”
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Now comes the fun part: taking it from an entry in a contest to an actual brochure cover, then into a landscape cover for the half-fold. And then into a website logo, a t-shirt, conference guide cover, PowerPoint background, and a dozen other destinations. We’ll show you the evolution at our home page, where the piece is being showcased for the month.
The conference is indebted to all who honored us with their entries and their participation. It is one of the times of the year when we really feel like a community having come together. We are already looking forward to next year’s contest...