Response: Judging

In class yesterday, we got the privilege to judge several locally-based magazines on their execution of design for the City and Regional Magazine Association (CRMA) preliminaries. As a senior in college, it's pretty amazing to think that my design opinion matters... well, at all. To me, the whole process made design as a career more realistic.

Personally, I was a little disappointed in the outcome of the rankings. If I could have it my way, I would have ranked the magazines like this:

1. Boston Magazine
2. Los Angeles Magazine
3. Texas Monthly

The other magazines were all really impressive, but those three were the ones that stood out to me the most. Boston Magazine is so well designed, it made me even consider applying there. Their TOC design (Table of Contents) is completely different from others I've seen before. They used cropped pictures to display what page to find the article. In addition, whoever their illustration artist is, kudos. You have found yourself a new fan.

I thought the Los Angeles Magazine was well-designed and had a fresh look to it. After all, it's a magazine about the famous L.A. and all of it's celebrities, it has to look good too. With Texas Monthly, I feel like the magazine completely captured the personality of the city and the state in general. As a Texas native, I believe that the magazine was able to depict the western and the urban characteristics.

In the short amount of time we had to judge, I really did learn a lot. There were several of my classmates who had completely different opinions. The judging experience showed me that everyone has their own pet peeves and fetishes for design. Not everyone is going to like your work, but it's a matter of reaching out and attracting the biggest audience.

Hope to do something like that again, especially since it's not everyday you get to judge magazines from across the nation.