Q&A with an SND judge

The Society for News Design held its annual awards retreat in Syracuse earlier this month.
Results won't be announced for another few weeks.

UPDATE: NewsDesigner has the list of Gold winners, including the San Jose Mercury News' Olympics section!

Five judges, still officially unnamed, took part in the "long-form" section of the contest.
One is featured here.

The following Q&A is not about specific awards yet to be revealed and it's not about dirty details, but it should tempt your taste buds.

• 1. Is there communication between the judges on what design ideals will win? Was "stately" a theme?

"I have no idea where this 'stately' thing came from. We gave awards to papers that were restrained in their use of type, photos and color and awards to papers that were way aggressive in their use.

"If it reflected the content, was interesting and engaging and had great photos and graphics, it won.
If those things didn't happen, it didn't win.

"I'm going to steal this line third-hand from one of the judges, who said, 'Communication happens.' That's exactly true, either a newspaper expresses an idea to me that is interesting and effective (just like it would to a reader), or it doesn't.

"I could care less what style they did it in or whether it was stately or not.

"For example, I remember three papers taking three distinctly different styles of visually telling the story of the Olympics. One was restrained in its approach and mostly used black and white. The second was a lot more aggressive in its use of photography, type and color. And the third about as out there as you can get in use of photos (lots of live cutouts, type on live photos, etc.), color and type.

"All three won awards in the same category."

• 2. Technically, does everyone get an even vote? No one is worth two votes as a leader or in their area of expertise, etc.?

"We had five judges and each vote counted as one. If it got 3+ awards, it won. If it got 2 or less, it didn't win — end of discussion.

"I couldn't vote for my paper or my competition. In those cases, a conflict judge voted in my place."

• 3. As a sports person, did you get more say in those categories?

"I voted on the sports entries in my categories, which were quite a few.

"My vote counted the same, but when we talked about whether pages were worthy of gold and silver medals (4+ votes), I obviously spoke up during the sports stuff, and I think the other judges respected that.

"I talked up some sports pages and pointed out flaws with others. I distinctly remember passionately pitching one sports entry for a gold medal, but in the end, the other judges pointed out some things they thought were deficient (remember gold medal is basically a perfect entry) and I completely understood their argument."

• 4. With NewsPageDesigner and other internet resources nowadays, it must be awkward judging pages you probably have seen before.

"The Internet is a great question, because I'm sure it has dramatically changed a lot of the competition.

"For example, there were very few American sports pages entered in my categories that I hadn't already seen on NPD or on your site.

"So I guess it could be looked on as a bad thing that I've already drawn a first opinion of those pages, but the flip side is I can draw an even better understanding of what the designer was trying to do than if I had first seen it in Syracuse.

"There's good and bad about that. I will say seeing pages in newsprint as opposed to on a computer screen made me change my mind about pages on a couple of occasions."

• 5. Any further comment on Hartford and why it was honored.

"The World's Best Designed competition happened a week before we were there, and we had no contact with those judges.

"We don't know why they made the choices they did, although a lot of the same great work showed up in our portion of the competition as well.

"I'm not going to speak for those judges, but I will say that the papers that I did see that were really successful were worrying just as much about A6 and C22 as they were A1.

"I think it's easy to judge a paper by its look on A1 or its design style, but commitment to great photography, storytelling, graphics and a consistent visual approach on all its pages means so much more.

"And I'm sorry to say that ads matter too, especially positioning of ads inside a section, which really could make a huge difference in the pace of a section."

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There you have it from the anonymous judge, who will be revealed in a followup Q&A after the winners are announced.