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Judging Creativity 39, First Take
Posted on September 2, 2009 at 4:44 pm
Burkey was one of 12 judges this past week in Louisville, KY judging Creativity 39.
If you’ve ever judged a design contest, you know the work is remarkably uneven. Some pieces are outstanding. Others are so shockingly bad that you wonder why the entry fee was put at risk in the first place. But after days reviewing thousands of pieces, you become intimate with the creative mind at work. You begin to imagine—without even noticing it at first—what the individual looks like, their age, their personality, all of which is somehow embedded in the work itself. Mostly these “individuals” are forgettable. A few you’d like to know, because they are real professionals. They clearly see their mission from 10,000 feet yet do not neglect the ground-level details that turn great ideas and great design into great work. They know what they want the reader to do—join, buy, give, care. They have a purpose for every page, and everything on the page supports the mission. Great work follows a high standard that can only be achieved by practicing it every single day. The great designer, Milton Glaser, said, “Even the worst work by the best designers is better than the best work of those one tier below.” Nothing brings this more vividly into high relief than a careful review over just a few days of thousands of pieces of design.
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Burkey Belser
Burkey Belser, president and creative director, pioneered legal services marketing. He has been quoted on brand design topics by dozens of industry publications and is highly rated as a speaker on topics from branding to information design.