Mark Ashley-Wilson’s D&AD Diary: Day 2
Australia’s jury representative on the D&AD Cyber Jury is MarkAshley-Wilson, digital director at Three Drunk Monkeys, Sydney, whoreports daily from London, exclusively for the CB Blog. For moreD&AD insight Follow him on Twitter. Look out for other daily reports from Dejan Rasic and Mike O’Sullivan later this week.
Judges Diary – Day 2
Thismorning was buzzing because the remaining juries arrived and the loungearea was packed. Interesting to note that the interactive jury is thelargest out of any category this year for the first time.
Today was all about getting through the rest of the preliminary work.Now into the routine, we powered through the last remaining 70 sites inabout 6 hours. There was some stand-out work which easily flew throughand some average sites that we wondered why they bothered paying themassive entry fee. I can’t name any sites but think back to thatBorat-like dude’s site a few years ago and you get the picture. Massiveinnovation has not been a feature this year and we struggled to findsites that really pushed into new territories.
Like I said yesterday, the amount of sites using web-cam technology wasamazing and we joked today that there should be a new section next yearjust to accommodate all those sites using cams. Sound has also played abig part in the experiential side of many sites – think about the Halosite from last year – without sound the experience would have beenhalved. Not one site we judged was HTML based – all were flash sitesand many took bloody ages to load – some we had to open in new windowsand let them load while we had lunch which is just plain stupid. Someeven put into the entry description Warning: site takes a while toload. I mean come on… if we are on high-speed broadband in CentralLondon how is a punter west of Dubbo gonna ever see that site. We evenjoked about it in our group photo by all lying down to form a loaderbar (yes geeky but a valid statement).
Next on the hit list is usability. Seriously some sites were so hard tonavigate we all had to group together to figure it out, and we are aroom full of web experts who live to surf sites. I mean many sitesneeded a webcam so you could use your hands to navigate (like minorityreport) were just not thinking when they designed them. How is someone(in today’s world) who wants to book a flight ever going to do so bylining themselves up in-front of a web cam and slide assets around toachieve their goal – NONE! Having to draw symbols and lines acrosspages to reach a goal was another clanger done by a few sites.
The good stuff really stood out amongst all the wannabes. It’s a prettysimple equation – a big idea executed really well. Funny thing was thatthere were so few that when they came up everyone sat up straight awayand started discussing it.
Tomorrow we will debate the final 30 “in-book” sites that have made itthrough from the original 500+. Pencils will be hard to come by as ourdebates this afternoon started to get very heated, and we have a fullday of it again tomorrow.
On a side note, I got a taxi back to the hotel with the legendary Hernán Ponce from Argentina, one of the top CD’s in the world. We chatted about the judging process (he is doing the TV category) and we both agreed that it was hard core and draining but well worth doing. That’s the thing I love about this place, you are always standing next to amazing people like him who are always open for a chat.