I.D. magazine awards

ID magazine cover
The ID Magazine Annual Design Review page shows last year’s cover while the Current Issue page show’s last month’s cover.

Old media acting very very old. Is it any wonder that the Business Week/IDSA IDEA awards have been all over the blogosphere for a couple of weeks and I’ve seen nothing about these? I thought at one point the two awards were equally prestigious, but I dunno about ID mag. They aren’t online, so they’re hard to blog about. Is that the only reason?

But let’s look a little at some of the content. The jurors (and editors) did a good job at pointing out good and bad things about selected items. Although I began to wonder at what point do these negative aspects of a design become absolute deal-breakers?

Veneerware Disposable Plates – Design Distinction

Conceived as an alternative to paper or Styrofoam…made from bamboo taken right from the cane. They’re meant to be tossed away but at $11 for a set of eight, “That’s some costly disposability,”…the plates raised a larger discussion about garbage. “They are biodegradable but that doesn’t mean they’l find their way to a place where they can actually biodegrade.”

Z-Series Ironing Board – Design Distinction

Polder’s new ironing board has thin, flat legs, made of two sheet-metal panels sandwiching a polypropylene core, which end in protective nonskid bumpers…But as much as the jurors liked the product, they raised aneyebrow at the price. At $130, “it feels a little untenable,”

American Red Cross Preparedness Start Kit – Honorable Mention

Chan unfortunately injured his finger trying to open it.

What the hell is wrong with this picture? These are award winners? More expensive disposable plates, a first aid kit that injured a juror, and an “untenable” ironing board?

Elsewhere, the Sony Handycam HDR-HC1 Video Camera gets an Honorable Mention, “Granted, it’s only 3 megapixels,” as if that’s insufficient for most uses? The Birkis Pro Clog received an Honorable Mention even though they only had a photograph, saying “Maybe it’s more comfortable on the foot.” They gave a design award to a shoe that they couldn’t experience?

I appreciate the skepticism of the jurors – the Nike Considered shoe that they don’t believe is actually purchasable, the W Line tennis racquet that offers a bigger sweet spot, a claim that the jurors saw as something that every manufacturer makes – but why do those ones win?

The furniture jurors decided that they would consider price in their judging. But they selected a $9450 couch, and a felt material assemblage that “at these prices – $850 per yard for rugs, $1,680 per yard for cushions – the pieces are more likely to become heirlooms than landfill.” Doesn’t seem like they stuck to their guns.

Meanwhile, the equipment jurors (specifically Ted Selker) sneer “All of these things have a real purpose and solve a real problem. These aren’t consumer products that some people are buying because of some ad. These things have to be reliable, honest, and serve a serious function.” How ID could publish that line when elsewhere in the same issue they are judging award-winning consumer products is beyond me. Where Selker gets his contempt for “consumers” who just watch ads and do whatever the fuck they want, I guess, is another question.

Being cynical about design awards (or hell, any form of awards) isn’t novel. My concern is not so much with what things deserved to win, I honestly don’t care, but the hypocrisy of the decision making process, which they reveal in some lame attempt at transparency.

It’s hard to have much interst in this magazine from this point on.

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