Thursday I had the opportunity to judge the Square One design competition for the second year in a row. It’s a competition that’s 50% “shoot-from-the-hip-and-see-what-you-can-do” and 50% “welcome-to-the-real-world.” This is a voluntary competition where design students meet in a computer lab at 8:00 am Sunday morning with zero prior knowledge of the subject matter or assignment. They are given a design brief, a list of items they are required to produce and a few pages of required text (and optional text) to be included. This year, unlike past competitions, photography was supplied giving students additional time to focus on their layouts.
Now for the fun part: they have 8 hours to develop their concept, design each required item (four in all) and then print and mount each item for judging. This year’s fictional client/product was a documentary featuring the ups and downs of amateur Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) fighters and their families requiring a poster, DVD + case, media kit and flyer.
What was produced had a high quality of finish to it. Quite a few of the poster concepts would be right at home at your local theater. They all looked the part, but the strategic target of expanding the viewership/interest in this movie beyond the 15-30 male audience already hooked on MMA was missed in quite a few, sparking some interesting discussion among the judges and faculty. Here are a few boiled down lessons from the afternoon that apply to anyone, at any age and in any profession.
The first, most obvious discussion, circled around the manifestation of our need for speed and stimulation and what get’s lost in the rush. Fully understanding the objectives of a project is far less exciting than actually doing the project. I’m not going to go so far as to look for societal factors in why this happens and how widespread this issue is in business (cough, PowerPoint, cough) but I will say that in my experience, taking the time to fully comprehend a project’s goals and objectives and digesting all the relevant information you can get your hands on is the difference between a great looking idea and a durable idea that will take the punishment doled out in the real world.
The second theme with some gravity was how visual artifacts influence everything we do. We all KNOW what an MMA poster looks like. We all KNOW what a bank ad should say. We all KNOW how a car dealership should function, right? Finding a balance between “understandable” and “revolutionary” is a constant struggle, in fact, it is the struggle most defining of design. It was mentioned that in the middle of the work session a few students looked around and saw that their concepts were not in the same vein as their compatriot’s (read: like a typical MMA poster) and walked out thinking that since their concept didn’t “fit the category” they didn’t have a chance at winning. If you feel like you missed something take a step back, read the objectives again and verify that your idea meets the broad objectives. Whatever you do, don’t leave your award winning/game changing work unfinished. Not coincidentally, the posters that looked least like MMA posters were favored by the judges for picking up on the strategic objectives overlooked by the vast majority of entrants.
The third discussion taking place was really a brainstorm on how to break an academic working style that thrives on consensus. It would stand to reason that the top students would be the top competitors in this type of situation. Wrong. The top students work the best in the vacuum of a classroom being led by a professor and with mountains of time to perfect their work. When faced with making decisions on their own and trusting their gut in banging out a couple explorative ideas, the top students crumbled. The kids that come to class unprepared 50% of the time and pull it all together in a couple all-night sessions before a project is due had no problem handling the pressure; “What, me worry?” Time management and the business world are often at odds, but the academic slacker who keeps their cool and works efficiently is worth their weight in gold… that is, if you don’t have time to wait around for Perfection to show up.
The most commonly asked questions by exhausted students in the competition was: “Is this what a real job is like?”
The response from the faculty and judges: “No, of course not. If it were a real job the objectives would have changed twice and you would have gotten half the time to work…”