Review / DESIGN AWARDS ALSO NEED REDESIGN
National Design Award – Communication Design 2018
The National Award for Communication Design is now in its second year in a new format. This text will not be about the award winners, but about the fact that design awards also need a redesign.
First things first. The biennial setting is good for the award, there is more space to approach designers and more time for the production of works. It also benefits the communication of the award towards the public. The new visual (for this year by Samuel Čarnoky and Matej Vojtuš) worked well in different versions and held together. The award has its own website – admittedly just a tumbrl, but it has and is all there (check it out if you want to see all the final works) and is active on social media. It is guaranteed by an international jury. The award is not just a gala and an exhibition, but also a series of different parallel events. It’s good that this parallel programme and exhibition had one curator this year. It was the designer Eva Kaššáková (she was also the main juror). And it is clear that she mainly influenced its character. There were lectures, presentations, discussions, In the midl design forum, workshops. Thus, there was a clear effort to reflect the current creative space, to specify the discussions – for example, the topic of architecture, author’s design, or guided tours. More foreign guests were missing (they were from the Czech Republic). And the attendance at these events was certainly positive. I attended three of them, in addition to the gala dinner, and people were there.
What has changed from the previous (first new) year are the competition categories. Here is where the snag occurs. The new category setup has made the award less transparent. I understand that with categories in such a broad spectrum in which communication design operates, it’s not easy at all. For example, the well-known RED DOT Award has up to 17 categories for communication design. But it’s all the more important to set them up well on our smaller scale. Some categories are clear and fine. For example, the jury award, the student design award, even the cultural contribution award. Worse is the value-added design award and, consequently, the fact that there are up to three awards in the main professional design category, in order from third to first place. Value-added design is perhaps the most problematic – as if there is no added value in professional design? The origin is probably in the phrase that the design itself is the added value, but it’s contentless and people don’t seem to have much idea what it’s all about. I’ll admit that I don’t either. (Although yes, you can look up the explanation on the SCD website.) The original experimental design label was more fitting. Also, giving three awards in professional design is both a bit boring and a bit of a stew (author’s book, cover design, campaign for a literary festival). It was especially jarring during the awards ceremony. Perhaps a better format would have been to announce the known superfinalists and announce the main winner during the gala.
But the most prominent problem of this year’s prize was unmasked in text by Patrik Garaj from Denník N, and that is the fact that almost no works from the field of design for the Internet and digital media, the design that is currently most dominant and with which we are most confronted, made it to the finals and the overall selection of works for the exhibition. Which is a strange signal to the public and a paradox, since the award has communication in its title. Perhaps the situation would be different if a separate category were defined, and perhaps this is just a reflection of the fact that the prize has not yet fully mastered communication towards the design scene.
Let’s talk a bit more about the scene, as it is the one that is most affected by this award. Slovak graphic design today is a vast and very diverse space. It is a very specific scene, which is, to put it mildly, sensitive to both communication and treatment. This makes it all the more challenging for the organisers to reach out to designers across the spectrum and show them that it makes sense to apply for the National Award for Communication Design at all. I don’t know if it’s enough to reach out to designers with a mass email. Although the increase in interest is really noticeable it is clear that there are groups of designers who are closer to the SCD. These are mainly designers with a more artistic agenda and operating more on grants or crowdfunding, i.e. designers of books, art exhibition catalogues, type designers, campaigns for art events, and less so those who operate in the “hard” commercial sphere – i.e. in advertising, corporate visual culture, internet, app design, etc. National Design Award should be a place where they meet and confront each other. So far, it doesn’t quite work that way. And it won’t be easy to change that.
Finally, something about the gala evening and the exhibition
The gala evening in Nová Cvernovka was well managed thanks to the witty moderation of Tomáš Hudák. The lightness, spontaneity and civility of these events are a testament to the event. At times it lost its dynamics due to the lack of clarity of the awards. A topic for real reflection, however, are the awards for the winning designers. The trophy is missing (at least this year it was an adjusted diploma). The awards for Vladislav Roztoka for lifetime achievement and cultural contribution, namely a subscription to Designum magazine and advice from the Industrial Property Office of the Slovak Republic, sounded rather sad. And then the situation when the director of J&T Bank (the main partner of SCD) shook the main winner’s hand was sadly embarrassing. And nothing more. At least a symbolic financial reward would have been in order here. On a positive note, I appreciate the attendance tickets to graphic design conferences that the winners received. That makes sense.
The exhibition of the finalists was held this year at the Faculty of Architecture of STU. This decision was not the happiest. Paradoxically, the levitating installation of oversized posters in the entrance foyer as a spatial invitation to the National Award for Communication Designs was the most representative. The exhibition itself, in the unattractive basement space and in the not very successful installation by Peter Liška and Matúš Lelovský (as I learned it was plan B and not enough time, so for the sake of explanation they did the upper, more successful part), whose supporting element is crumpled black paper, sounded like a presentation of school work. And that’s a real shame for this type of representative exhibition of Slovak communication design.
One more (developed) question in conclusion. Isn’t the name of the award itself problematic? The National Award for Communication Design? Isn’t the word national in 2018 already an outdated word with an inappropriate 19th century patois? And in fact, can Hungarian and Roma designers, or other nationalities living in Slovakia, apply for the prize?