Posted: Mon Apr 16, 2012 5:54 am
I fully agree with NR and what you did as a judge, it's great to see how much effort you put into your decision!
Wow! Vincent - Thanks for that run-thru on your judging. Very nice - and with ideas I would implement were I ever to judge again.
I also tried several ways to try and give each cover the same amount of attention.
First I simply divided the covers per film. Then I began going over each entry looking at the general layout and appealness, was it fitting for the movie, was the images well chosen, image handling, typography; font choices/layout/sizes; how was any blending of images done? Technical level of ornaments, image frames and so on and so forth. I also nitpicked the legal text, checking every entry for spelling mistakes.
When done, with pages of notes on each entry I tried to rank them. That proved too hard. Then I tried dividing them into groups; Top, Middle, Bottom. That way I didn't have to rank each entry at first, I could losely get an overview of the entire field.
Now I had another problem - I had three groups of 3 sub-groups - one for each of the films. How was I to decide which were the better cover? In the end I found myself forced to look at the technical design level, and then try and merge the three subgroups. I have no idea how long this process took, but I had to sleep on it. First thing next morning I ran thru the covers again, adjusting any sub-group placements from the night before I felt was wrong. Trying then to give the two lower groups equal attention I tried to settle the lowest rankings first, leaving me with only my top contenders (plus a few 'extras' the top choices in subgroup Two that could've taken one of the lower places in my top group).
The last group, the top choices was a laugh. All splendid covers that deserved to win. In the end I had three entries which I believed to be worthy winners - then sorted rank #3, leaving me with two. Both excellent covers, that just happened to be for two different movies. I laughed. This was impossible! In the end I had to go with my gut. I chose the cover which made the biggest impact on me personally.
I dunno if this was a read worth, but they were some of the thoughts I had while judging this year.
Oh, and just to mention it. I didn't take part in the guessing of who's whose also because I had tried very hard to clear that from my head while judging, and didn't want it to have any influence on my judging.
Also - After submitting my scores - I really just wanted the comp over with as quickly as possible because I didn't want to find any errors in my judging.
