Judges at work – President of the jury elected

The Malofiej-judges reportedly manages to keep up with the record number of graphics – 1356 entries from 151 different media and 29 countries. (They work by quickly discarding/voting out a lot of the graphics, even before the discussions start). To oversee the work of the judges, they have chosen to pick Chiqui Esteban from Lainformacion.com as President of the jury.

-’The decision was really Joe Wards work’ grins Chiqui, when I ask him about the presidency. Well – regardless who proposed Chiqui, I’m sure they have made a good choice. Chiqui knows online- as well as printed graphics very well – and even run a popular infographics blog (read it here), so he will know what is going on in the world of infographics.

I have promised not to attend the judging process this year – and well, as long as entries are split into categories, laid out on tables, and voted upon by judges wandering about with voting-chips in their hand, there really isn’t much to write about anyway.

Why not let go of the categories?
I did hear an interesting proposal this year though. Why not let go of the categories and simply choose the 100 best graphics entered? I understand it would have some implications on the economy of the competition if media didn’t have to pay several times for entering the same graphic in a multitude of categories, but it is certainly worth to think about the contest-format all the time.

It will of course be interesting to see what the judges have come up with on friday – if they choose the same graphics for gold as the Society of News Design-judges did in the newly finished SND32. I doubt they will pick the same, as the SND-infographics-contest is no longer judged by a dedicated infographics team. The selection here at Malofiej could be more challenging.

In the video below you see a couple of the judges, as they leave the sunshine outside to go inside and keep on with the judging: