If you look at design competitions one-by-one, they will inevitable be ultra subjective nonsense based on viewing work in the wrong context. Success in a single competition is an honor but ultimately doesn’t mean anything on a cosmic scale. It is the aggregate of many such successes that adds up to something meaningful. Both continued success and the averaging effect of multiple judging panels favor accepting a record of many competitions even if one rejects the significance of each of them.

Alternatively, one could get over the whole “competition” part of competitions and see it all as a sort of conversation where designers put forth visual ideas and judges respond, with the annuals books or websites bringing the conversation to a broader group who, in turn, join the conversation by entering their work. In this sense, competitions are to visual ideas what blogs are to another sort of ideas. Neither is a full explanation of design or any individual designed object.

Obviously the real winners are always the organizers and that’s a great point. I would love to know what the Cooper-Hewitt is getting out of this in the way of traffic and/or publicity. Because personally, I think discussing the merits of the Desperate Housewives set actually takes attention away from the great honor of the National Design Awards.

And no offense taken, because as you can see, I love air quotes!

With that in mind, here are two thoughts to consider: 1) As someone who as organized, judged, entered, won, lost and written critically about design competitions, I can tell you that the real winner is always the organizer. Competitions are money in the bank and they generate legions of evangelists to promote organizing body. I’m looking forward to your Eye article and those that accompany it. I hope this aspect is addressed.

2) Isn’t your email from “CommercialArt45″ for the requisitely ironic un-designed t-shirt design commenting on how design is “so over” just another “look at me” self-congratulatory entry? Does the “anonymous” contributor of the design not hope to gain notoriety for their entry, and are they not using the same methods as everyone else to promote themselves? I kind of get that this is the point of the whole thing, but if they win do we really expect these “bad-boy” outsider cynics to keep mum about how they exposed awards for what they really are. News flash: we know.

“It is our responsibilities, not ourselves, that we should take seriously.” Peter Ustinov

Are awards really that important Bill?