Almost 90pc of entries to this year’s Irish Advertising and Design 2003 awards were made for the first time in a digital format on CD-Rom and judged over the internet and next year the award entries will be submitted over the internet.
This year marks the 45th year of the Institute of Creative Advertising and Design (ICAD) awards, which cover design and creativity in the print, poster, web, TV and radio, brochures, book covers and a multitude of other mediums. It is understood that more than 200 pieces of creative work have been selected out of 800 for nomination for the ICAD Awards, which will take place on 3 December.
The only difference is this year almost 90pc of entries were made and judged in digital format, explained Garrett Stokes, an ICAD committee member and the managing director of Catalysto, which developed the technology behind the awards system.
“This year 90pc of the work was digitally entered, supplied on a CD-Rom. We are planning to move this format onto a full online system next year,” Stokes said.
“The 300 members of ICAD sent in their work in various formats. The print members sent in their entries in PDF format. The radio commercial element submitted its work in MP3 format and TV entries were submitted as MPEGs.”
Stokes said that the remaining 10pc of entries that remained in hard copy formant were traditional design formats such as packaging, catalogues and book covers.
“We built a computer program that creates a searchable catalogue of entries that allows the three separate juries to search through the 800 items in 71 different categories. We then developed an interface that allowed the jury to interact online and apply a value to each piece of work which would enable specific works to get shortlisted for nomination.
“In total there are three juries with five ICAD members on each one,” Stokes said.
Another advantage to making the awards digital, Stokes continued, was that because everything was submitted in CD-Rom format, it was possible to reproduce the various creative works for the ICAD exhibition that runs for the next two weeks at the National Print Museum in Beggars Bush Barracks on Haddington Road, Dublin. “In the past we had to scramble to collect the individual pieces and it was hard to prevent pieces getting marked or smudged. This year we had the digital files all in one place and could reproduce them ourselves in time for the exhibition,” Stokes said.
By John Kennedy
