Why Hugo Base Design Contests Are a Bad Idea
Wait, what?
"But Dave, didn't you enter a Hugo Base design contest?"
Yes, I did, and I am all too aware of how the success of that entry has badly undercut my case. Nevertheless, I believe the headline is quite true.
You see, while I was still in college, my home town city council has a couple of design constest for banners to decorate the downtown district. Since I was studying graphic design at the time, I decided to enter. When I lost the first one, I thought "Oh, well, I guess that's just how it goes." But when I lost the second one, it became obvious that the problem was not with my designs, but with the fact there were factors being used to choose the winner that weren't included in the contest specs. Things like "we really like bright colors," and "even though we said you could use up to the three silkscreened colors on the fabric, we're actually very miserly, so designs with just one color have a real edge."
At that point, I'd already had enough of giving away my skilled, trained labor for free, and decided I would not be entering any more design contests.
I stuck to that, too, until 2008. Because it's the Hugo, which has enormous personal significance. I first got to attend the awards ceremony in 1993, and sitting in that crowd and watching winners picking up their trophies was absolutely thrilling. Even though I was at WorldCon in a professional capacity, it was obvious to me (or so it seemed) that my career path did not lead toward ever being eligible to receive one for my own. "What award," I asked myself, "would be even more thrilling to receive than a Hugo?" It happens to be a very very short list. Nobel Prize, MacArthur Grant, Kennedy Center Award. That's it. An Oscar, Emmy, Clio, Tony, Pulitzer? Not as amazing as a Hugo, not to me.
This hopefully gives you some idea of just how big a deal it had to be to make me break my rule about entering design contests.
But now, you see, I have a Hugo; the one I made. I am, of course, hugely biased as to where it would fall on a scale of "best to worst base designs ever," but there's an awful lot of fairly good evidence that it's somewhere in the top 25% at least. All of which means that I really doubt I'll ever enter another Hugo base design contest. Ever.
Unfortunately, perhaps in part because of the results Montreal (and probably Scotland) got from their contests, having base design contests has become more common. This is a Bad Thing.
"No, no, it's a good thing! We will get to choose from among multiple options, so we can get the best base!" No, you'll get to choose from among a very limited number of options, most of which will be unusuable, and the remainder of which will probably be merely okay. Because what you're going to get from a contest is entries from amateurs. Really good designers don't have to give away their time for free to get work. They're not going to give you designs.
Fortunately, you don't have to just take my word for it. AIGA is the leading guild for graphic artists in the U. S., and they have a handy form letter for their members (or anybody else) to use to help educate people about asking designers to work for free. It's called "spec work", defined as "work done prior to engagement with a client in anticipation of being paid," and here's some of what that letter says: "AIGA, the nation’s largest and oldest professional association for design, strongly discourages the practice of requesting that design work be produced and submitted on a speculative basis in order to be considered for acceptance on a project, [because] successful design work results from a collaborative process between a client and the designer [whereas] design competitions ... result in a superficial assessment of the project. [Also,] requesting work for free demonstrates a lack of respect for the designer and the design process."
They do suggest an alternative approach. "A more effective and ethical approach to requesting speculative work is to ask designers to submit examples of their work from previous assignments as well as a statement of how they would approach your project. You can then judge the quality of the designer’s previous work and his or her way of thinking about your business."
As it happens, AIGA has an unusually mellow take on spec work. The Graphic Artists Guild says "Artists and designers who accept speculative assignments (whether directly from a client or by entering a contest or competition) risk losing anticipated fees, expenses, and the potential opportunity to pursue other, rewarding assignments."
The Registered Graphic Designers of Ontario goes so far as to "prohibit its members from engaging in speculative (spec) work" and goes on to state that "Spec work is universally condemned as an unethical business practice by responsible designers and design organizations around the world."
The Society of Graphic Designers of Canada says "The practice of asking for free design concepts in order to choose the 'right designer' or the 'best design' or the 'best logo' undermines and devalues the professional designer's education, experience, hard work and the entire design industry. GDC members do not engage in contests or other speculative, commercial projects."
There's even a domain dedicated to explaining the problems with spec work: http://www.nospec.com
So the problems with this contest so far are (a) the judges won't even get to see work from the most talented designers, and (b) the designs they do see are the designer's "best guess", rather than something custom-tailored based on interacting with the client. The design firm "artwurks unlimited" neatly summarizes the third big downside: "Speculative requests are often a result of 'I’ll know it when I see it,' thinking on the part of the client. The problem here is that it’s self-centered point-of-view rather than a position serving the needs and wants of the audience."
Not long after Montreal's base design contest, the WSFS Mark Protection committee (I think?) held a design contest for a logo, so that there would finally be some kind of symbol that could go on Hugo-winning book's covers and the like. It's an excellent idea. Unfortunately, the winning logo is not. As a graphic designer, my personal specific field of interest has always been logos and logotypes. Designing the Hugo base was a stretch for me. Designing logos is not.
Had I been hired by the Mark Committee, I know that part of my job would have been educating the judges in what makes a good logo. It's obvious to me why they picked the design that won: it does a very good job of replicating the appearance of the trophy, and the judges clearly thought that was important. Sadly, they were wrong. Most book buyers have never, and will never, see a real Hugo award. Making the logo look just like the trophy is not very important. Making the logo robust (recognizable under a variety of conditions and sizes), unique (not confused with anybody else's logo), eye-catching, and thematically appropriate (it does need to be Hugo-esque), are much more important.
Part of the irony of being so obsessed with duplicating the rocket is that logos are strongest when they're silhouettes: a single solid color, or black; but the silhouette of the Hugo doesn't look like a rocket! That's why the winning logo has to be two-tone black and gray. If you make it all black, the result is just sorta a lumpy vertical line that really doesn't have any "zoom" or "swoosh" to it at all. It would look a lot more like the Hugo if it looked less like a Hugo. It would look even more like a Hugo if it were foil-stamped in silver on a book cover. Alas, because it's two-tone, that's not going to happen. You can't half-stamp foil.
By now, you might be thinking that I'm about to say that no future Hugo awards committee should ever hold a contest again. Actually, no, I'm not. There is one very important consideration that tips me away from being that draconian, and that's budget. Science fiction fandom has never been a big-budget operation, and there's no way an awards committee could
afford a professional at normal union rates.
One of the requirement in Montreal's contest guidelines was that each base should cost no more than $150. My proposal included as part of the price, a modest but reasonable budget for my time, as well as the materials. I found out later that many of the previous bases had not paid the fabricator or artist for their time at all, although it was generally agreed that despite the fact that those people had been quite willing to do that, it was better if there was at least some acknowledgement of the value of skilled labor. For my part, I had put a fair amount of thought into how to keep the materials cost low, and the fabrication time short, in order to free up more of the budget for my own compensation. The Montreal adminstrators, in turn, told me point blank that they were entirely satisfied with the value I'd set on my time.
And yet! In order to make those bases, I ended up working fairly closely with Quiring Monuments, the largest grave marker maker in the Pacific Northwest. They were my source for the granite, and then they were sandblasting the partially completed bases. Naturally, when it was all over, I took my personal display Hugo over there to show them so they could see what it was they'd helped me make. I'd mostly worked with a woman in the front office, but when I was showing off the trophy, an older gentleman from a fancier office came out to see it, and he asked me what I'd been paid to do the work. When I told him $150, he was actually outraged. I was told that I should have received at least $800 for that kind of work.
Maybe so, but I don't think we're going to be handing out $800 trophies any time soon. Ergo, if a Hugo committee wants a great base for their awards, they have to find a competent professional who cares enough about the Hugos to cut them a really sweet deal. If they can't find anybody willing to do it who they believe can do it, that's when it's time to hold a design contest. It's better to pick from amateur designs handicapped by a contest communication blackout, than to have nothing at all.
But that means that a contest should be the last resort, used only if the committee can't find anybody better. Montreal couldn't come up with somebody, or so they told me. I heard the same thing from somebody on the Sasquan committee, but in their case, it just means they didn't bother looking. I can think of two or three intraregional fans who have skills and talents well suited for making a beautiful trophy base, entirely aside from myself, and I can think of at least a dozen more who might. Since I nearly won a Hugo (in 2010) for my 2009 Hugo Base design, and roughly two-thirds of the current committee knows me personally, to have one of them claim that they would have liked to have just appointed somebody except that they couldn't think of anybody to ask is just silly.
"Well, um, Dave? Here you are, kinda shouting and ranting and acting all scornful and stuff. Maybe it's because they know you that they didn't ask." Yup, that's a possibility. I am definitely not a 'people person,' and although I'm not aware of being actively disliked by any of the people on the committee (well, at least not until now), it's quite possible I am. Nevertheless, whether I could have been in the running to design this year's base or not does not change the fact that holding a contest is a bad idea. Nor should you mistake this blog entry as some kind of attempt to get the current committee to change its mind about having a contest and instead ask me to do it. I am no longer interested.
"But Dave, didn't you enter a Hugo Base design contest?"
Yes, I did, and I am all too aware of how the success of that entry has badly undercut my case. Nevertheless, I believe the headline is quite true.
You see, while I was still in college, my home town city council has a couple of design constest for banners to decorate the downtown district. Since I was studying graphic design at the time, I decided to enter. When I lost the first one, I thought "Oh, well, I guess that's just how it goes." But when I lost the second one, it became obvious that the problem was not with my designs, but with the fact there were factors being used to choose the winner that weren't included in the contest specs. Things like "we really like bright colors," and "even though we said you could use up to the three silkscreened colors on the fabric, we're actually very miserly, so designs with just one color have a real edge."
At that point, I'd already had enough of giving away my skilled, trained labor for free, and decided I would not be entering any more design contests.
I stuck to that, too, until 2008. Because it's the Hugo, which has enormous personal significance. I first got to attend the awards ceremony in 1993, and sitting in that crowd and watching winners picking up their trophies was absolutely thrilling. Even though I was at WorldCon in a professional capacity, it was obvious to me (or so it seemed) that my career path did not lead toward ever being eligible to receive one for my own. "What award," I asked myself, "would be even more thrilling to receive than a Hugo?" It happens to be a very very short list. Nobel Prize, MacArthur Grant, Kennedy Center Award. That's it. An Oscar, Emmy, Clio, Tony, Pulitzer? Not as amazing as a Hugo, not to me.
This hopefully gives you some idea of just how big a deal it had to be to make me break my rule about entering design contests.
But now, you see, I have a Hugo; the one I made. I am, of course, hugely biased as to where it would fall on a scale of "best to worst base designs ever," but there's an awful lot of fairly good evidence that it's somewhere in the top 25% at least. All of which means that I really doubt I'll ever enter another Hugo base design contest. Ever.
Unfortunately, perhaps in part because of the results Montreal (and probably Scotland) got from their contests, having base design contests has become more common. This is a Bad Thing.
"No, no, it's a good thing! We will get to choose from among multiple options, so we can get the best base!" No, you'll get to choose from among a very limited number of options, most of which will be unusuable, and the remainder of which will probably be merely okay. Because what you're going to get from a contest is entries from amateurs. Really good designers don't have to give away their time for free to get work. They're not going to give you designs.
Fortunately, you don't have to just take my word for it. AIGA is the leading guild for graphic artists in the U. S., and they have a handy form letter for their members (or anybody else) to use to help educate people about asking designers to work for free. It's called "spec work", defined as "work done prior to engagement with a client in anticipation of being paid," and here's some of what that letter says: "AIGA, the nation’s largest and oldest professional association for design, strongly discourages the practice of requesting that design work be produced and submitted on a speculative basis in order to be considered for acceptance on a project, [because] successful design work results from a collaborative process between a client and the designer [whereas] design competitions ... result in a superficial assessment of the project. [Also,] requesting work for free demonstrates a lack of respect for the designer and the design process."
They do suggest an alternative approach. "A more effective and ethical approach to requesting speculative work is to ask designers to submit examples of their work from previous assignments as well as a statement of how they would approach your project. You can then judge the quality of the designer’s previous work and his or her way of thinking about your business."
As it happens, AIGA has an unusually mellow take on spec work. The Graphic Artists Guild says "Artists and designers who accept speculative assignments (whether directly from a client or by entering a contest or competition) risk losing anticipated fees, expenses, and the potential opportunity to pursue other, rewarding assignments."
The Registered Graphic Designers of Ontario goes so far as to "prohibit its members from engaging in speculative (spec) work" and goes on to state that "Spec work is universally condemned as an unethical business practice by responsible designers and design organizations around the world."
The Society of Graphic Designers of Canada says "The practice of asking for free design concepts in order to choose the 'right designer' or the 'best design' or the 'best logo' undermines and devalues the professional designer's education, experience, hard work and the entire design industry. GDC members do not engage in contests or other speculative, commercial projects."
There's even a domain dedicated to explaining the problems with spec work: http://www.nospec.com
So the problems with this contest so far are (a) the judges won't even get to see work from the most talented designers, and (b) the designs they do see are the designer's "best guess", rather than something custom-tailored based on interacting with the client. The design firm "artwurks unlimited" neatly summarizes the third big downside: "Speculative requests are often a result of 'I’ll know it when I see it,' thinking on the part of the client. The problem here is that it’s self-centered point-of-view rather than a position serving the needs and wants of the audience."
Not long after Montreal's base design contest, the WSFS Mark Protection committee (I think?) held a design contest for a logo, so that there would finally be some kind of symbol that could go on Hugo-winning book's covers and the like. It's an excellent idea. Unfortunately, the winning logo is not. As a graphic designer, my personal specific field of interest has always been logos and logotypes. Designing the Hugo base was a stretch for me. Designing logos is not.
Had I been hired by the Mark Committee, I know that part of my job would have been educating the judges in what makes a good logo. It's obvious to me why they picked the design that won: it does a very good job of replicating the appearance of the trophy, and the judges clearly thought that was important. Sadly, they were wrong. Most book buyers have never, and will never, see a real Hugo award. Making the logo look just like the trophy is not very important. Making the logo robust (recognizable under a variety of conditions and sizes), unique (not confused with anybody else's logo), eye-catching, and thematically appropriate (it does need to be Hugo-esque), are much more important.
Part of the irony of being so obsessed with duplicating the rocket is that logos are strongest when they're silhouettes: a single solid color, or black; but the silhouette of the Hugo doesn't look like a rocket! That's why the winning logo has to be two-tone black and gray. If you make it all black, the result is just sorta a lumpy vertical line that really doesn't have any "zoom" or "swoosh" to it at all. It would look a lot more like the Hugo if it looked less like a Hugo. It would look even more like a Hugo if it were foil-stamped in silver on a book cover. Alas, because it's two-tone, that's not going to happen. You can't half-stamp foil.
By now, you might be thinking that I'm about to say that no future Hugo awards committee should ever hold a contest again. Actually, no, I'm not. There is one very important consideration that tips me away from being that draconian, and that's budget. Science fiction fandom has never been a big-budget operation, and there's no way an awards committee could
afford a professional at normal union rates.
One of the requirement in Montreal's contest guidelines was that each base should cost no more than $150. My proposal included as part of the price, a modest but reasonable budget for my time, as well as the materials. I found out later that many of the previous bases had not paid the fabricator or artist for their time at all, although it was generally agreed that despite the fact that those people had been quite willing to do that, it was better if there was at least some acknowledgement of the value of skilled labor. For my part, I had put a fair amount of thought into how to keep the materials cost low, and the fabrication time short, in order to free up more of the budget for my own compensation. The Montreal adminstrators, in turn, told me point blank that they were entirely satisfied with the value I'd set on my time.
And yet! In order to make those bases, I ended up working fairly closely with Quiring Monuments, the largest grave marker maker in the Pacific Northwest. They were my source for the granite, and then they were sandblasting the partially completed bases. Naturally, when it was all over, I took my personal display Hugo over there to show them so they could see what it was they'd helped me make. I'd mostly worked with a woman in the front office, but when I was showing off the trophy, an older gentleman from a fancier office came out to see it, and he asked me what I'd been paid to do the work. When I told him $150, he was actually outraged. I was told that I should have received at least $800 for that kind of work.
Maybe so, but I don't think we're going to be handing out $800 trophies any time soon. Ergo, if a Hugo committee wants a great base for their awards, they have to find a competent professional who cares enough about the Hugos to cut them a really sweet deal. If they can't find anybody willing to do it who they believe can do it, that's when it's time to hold a design contest. It's better to pick from amateur designs handicapped by a contest communication blackout, than to have nothing at all.
But that means that a contest should be the last resort, used only if the committee can't find anybody better. Montreal couldn't come up with somebody, or so they told me. I heard the same thing from somebody on the Sasquan committee, but in their case, it just means they didn't bother looking. I can think of two or three intraregional fans who have skills and talents well suited for making a beautiful trophy base, entirely aside from myself, and I can think of at least a dozen more who might. Since I nearly won a Hugo (in 2010) for my 2009 Hugo Base design, and roughly two-thirds of the current committee knows me personally, to have one of them claim that they would have liked to have just appointed somebody except that they couldn't think of anybody to ask is just silly.
"Well, um, Dave? Here you are, kinda shouting and ranting and acting all scornful and stuff. Maybe it's because they know you that they didn't ask." Yup, that's a possibility. I am definitely not a 'people person,' and although I'm not aware of being actively disliked by any of the people on the committee (well, at least not until now), it's quite possible I am. Nevertheless, whether I could have been in the running to design this year's base or not does not change the fact that holding a contest is a bad idea. Nor should you mistake this blog entry as some kind of attempt to get the current committee to change its mind about having a contest and instead ask me to do it. I am no longer interested.