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2006 Sports Designer of the Year
We're bringing to a close the very first Best of Sports Design awards with the 2006 Sports Designer of the Year, as selected by a panel of editors and designers from every time zone and region of the country.
The musical accompaniment for this is none other than John Prine's noted folk number "Dear Abby." It was chosen for three reasons: One, it's the only newspaper song I think I own, and we needs us a newspaper song here; two, I won't get arrested for including it; and three, it's the right length. Enjoy.
Yes, that video is WAY too low res. Click here for a higher-res,clearer Quicktime version of the entire thing. In this version, Mr. Prine has been replaced by some random soothing clip-music that came with ibooks in 2004. Think of it as an elevator ride with better visuals.
That leads me to this disclaimer: I'm just old enough to be unnatural with multimedia journalism. I'm making a concerted effort, but it's not an overnight process. So, yes, my apologies for the poor quality of the above YouTube. Please click the Quicktime version for one that won't cause nearly the headache.
Congratulations to the Sports Designer of the Year, all the finalists and nominees in the inaugural Best of Sports Design competition. ... Until next year ...
Posted by Josh Crutchmer
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| February 22, 2007 | Permalink
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Comments
I kept his name out of the post, but no way does he not deserve to be congratulated here.
Nice work for 12 straight months, Vince.
Posted by: Josh Crutchmer | Feb 22, 2007 11:33:02 PM
He's so dreamy!
Seriously, awesome work all around. Vince, you don't need anyone to tell you your good but dude you've had a couple careers in the last year. Simply stunning stuff.
And to Josh, a really nice way to cap the whole contest off. Congrats to all the winners and big props to Josh for getting it off the ground.
Posted by: DesignHawg | Feb 23, 2007 2:39:46 AM
Yes. Great choice and entirely deserved. The best of SD went great, I think, and the video was a great touch. And again, props to Vince!
Posted by: Josh Bohling | Feb 23, 2007 7:39:35 AM
Congratulation on a well-deserved victory. As a colleague, he's a great guy to be around, and to have around! Great job, Vince!
Posted by: Jack Weibel | Feb 23, 2007 9:39:04 AM
Excellent choice. Terrific work all the way around. Smart, thoughtful and arresting. Congrats Vince!
Overall I thought the contest was successful and enjoyable. I hope it grows in the coming years. Thanks for all your efforts Josh. Perhaps next year we could include some comments from the winners on how & why they did what they did. I always find those types of insights constructive and it would elevate the contest from the SND approach of merely showing attractive pages. (Where did Ryan get all those rings and when did he start?) Although the industry is struggling, I'm encouraged by the caliber of work being done by so many of my talented colleagues. Nice work everyone!
Posted by: Scott Minister | Feb 23, 2007 10:42:50 AM
Hey Scott. That's an excellent idea.
Posted by: Josh Crutchmer | Feb 23, 2007 10:56:06 AM
I second Scott's idea. I'd love to know what goes into making one of these great pages. Why wait until next year? Make it a regular feature where you ask a designer how they made a great page happen.
Posted by: Dave | Feb 23, 2007 11:10:37 AM
In a year of jaw-dropping work all around, Vince definitely stood out. Congrats to him on the award!
Posted by: Luke | Feb 23, 2007 12:12:34 PM
Congrats Vince! And a big thanks to Crutch, too, for making this happen.
Posted by: Geoff Pinnock | Feb 23, 2007 12:27:47 PM
Agreed, congrats to both Vince and Josh for winning and running a great contest.
Not Ryan, but all those rings can be found on the SuperBowl.com site every year.
Posted by: Harrison | Feb 23, 2007 1:25:33 PM
Congrats to Vince - he's very, very deserving. And a fine job by Mr. Crutchmer - I'm looking forward to next year.
Posted by: Trudell | Feb 23, 2007 2:16:00 PM
Flattered and honored would be an understatement to how I feel right now. That slide show got me a small standing ovation in my newsroom. There is nothing better (including SND awards) than having the respect and admiration of your peers. I've always felt the sports design community contained some of the industry's most talented people and the competiton is tremendous. I am truly thankful for every comment and e-mail that I have received from all of you. Special thanks to Josh and Rich for creating the contest. And thanks again to everyone who selected me as the first Sports Designer of the Year.
Posted by: Vince Chiaramonte | Feb 23, 2007 2:26:05 PM
Congrat, Vince. Outstanding work as always
Posted by: Joe Engel | Feb 23, 2007 2:54:21 PM
Many congrats to Vince on an outstanding year!
Posted by: tball | Feb 23, 2007 3:05:28 PM
So many talented sports designers, but Mr. Chiaramonte is absolutely the perfect choice! His creativity is consistently outstanding, not only with special pages but routine daily covers as well. Forgive the plug, but come to the SND conference in Boston in October to see Vince's presentation about the process behind his designs.
Posted by: Brian Gross | Feb 23, 2007 4:33:28 PM
congrat vince we are all proud of you and the outstanding work that you did.
Posted by: Grace | Feb 23, 2007 4:53:33 PM
VC is the man.
Posted by: Olds | Feb 23, 2007 9:17:49 PM
I'm glad to see this go to Mr. Chiaramonte. Whenever I find myself stuck for an idea, I almost always find myself looking at his stuff for inspiration. Congratulations. Maybe someday I'll be half as good as you.
Posted by: James Royal | Feb 23, 2007 10:35:52 PM
Oh, and much props to Josh for this whole thing. It was an awesome undertaking, but I hope to see it back in the future.
Posted by: James Royal | Feb 23, 2007 10:36:54 PM
Well deserved Vin...great job.Big fan of your work,especially Faces of a Nation
Posted by: AC | Feb 24, 2007 10:54:04 PM
Sophisticated, dynamic ... and fresh. You definitely earned it. Congrats.
Posted by: Wayne Kamidoi | Feb 26, 2007 8:17:04 PM
I've been away from sports the past six months, so I lost a little touch with sports design and especially Vince's portfolio. But when I did take a peak at his work I really had one of those moments, pretty akin to when I saw Janet Michaud's Roger Clemens' strikeout page in 1997 (if you don't know the one, I've got a jpeg). In an age where visual plagarism creeps up at almost every turn and the "box in a box" was something we all thought about — or did — try this year, his work seemed incredibly fresh. It made me want to do some sports design, right then. In short, his work made me want to be a better journalist.
Posted by: Rob Schneider | Feb 27, 2007 6:50:38 PM
One ... Cut a hole in the box.
Two ... Put a box in that bo-x-x-x.
Posted by: Josh Crutchmer | Feb 28, 2007 9:54:26 AM
This page should be named "US sports designer"... all i see here and your contest and the wining pages are all US-style design, have you people notice other countries sports design? I dont want to be rude, but maybe you should put a disclaimer explaining that this a "US-Only" web page. Pardon me, but all US sports pages (an many others) look the same over and over again, year after year... its always great pictures, some concept art and thats it, the layouts are always the same... its just a sugestion, but maybe you guys would really break some ground if you open up to new things. Thanks for the comment space. Cheers!
Posted by: Horacio Pruneda | Mar 3, 2007 4:01:59 PM
An excellent page from the Times of India, winning in a very difficult category:
http://sportsdesigner.blogs.com/photos/uncategorized/dhoni_1.jpg
The world was invited. No nominee was turned away, nor will any nominee be turned away at any point in the future.
Posted by: Josh Crutchmer | Mar 3, 2007 10:11:53 PM
Josh, you missed my point i think. I was not saying that sports designers where not invited, i was saying that, based on the winning pages (by Vince), the judging was done by US standards, US taste and what US sports designers. Im not saying they are bad pages, i'm saying they are conventional US-style pages and that you should have more "international standards" if, in fact, the world was invited. But then again, i hope you dont make the same mistake the SND does all the time, wich is to judge pages in languages they dont understand making it a "fake" judging, because we design news, information, so how can you judge a good information design if you cant understadn the information?
But i recognize your effort, its something no one else seems to be doing in other countries.
cheers!
Posted by: Horacio Pruneda | Mar 4, 2007 3:44:07 PM
Horacio, I don't know what country you work in, but please, please encourage your designers to enter this contest. I would love nothing more than to see a competition between U.S. sports sections and foreign ones.
You can't even qualify this contest "best US" because there were a bunch of US papers that do very well by our US standards but didn't enter anything in this contest. It's an Internet voluntary first-year competition, so I don't know what you expected. I was really happy to see the one foreign paper that actually entered win their category.
And, not to set off an international incident, but there's a lot more commonality to foreign sports sections than you might think. I think there's a ton of similarities in Mexico sports sections, for example. Obviously, they are way different than US sports section and way better, because we all know all US sports sections suck, but there is a consistent, family "feel" to them.
Same with Brazil, England, Scotland, Germany, India, Australia. I can't claim to see all of the papers in the World, but I have seen quite a few (I was one of those "fake" SND judges a couple of years ago even though I can read Spanish and German and English, but ....). There's definitely a common set of standards set by the trend setters in each of those countries, it just so happens that the US sports sections have a lot more trend follower sections than the rest of the world, or at least that's the way it seems.
Posted by: Rob Schneider | Mar 4, 2007 6:41:27 PM
Rob is spot on. Pigeonholing "U.S. style" into a corner doesn't make any more sense than me saying all non-U.S. style is the same and therefore lacks innovation.
I really hope that we do have worldwide participation if we do this again, and I hope the best work is simply that, with no qualifiers or adjectives.
On the other hand, it's a free contest that relies primarily on Web-res jpegs, so if we want to call its credibility in question, we should start with that and not by lampooning the winners on the basis that they're not groundbreaking or open to new ideas.
If it's possible to agree with your premise -- that a guy in Omaha and a guy in Seattle can't possibly be the endall to worldwide sports design, and that there SHOULD be other sportsdesigner sites and blogs across the globe, perhaps even linked/networked together -- and detest your allegations, I think that's where I fall.
These winners don't represent what's wrong with "U.S. Design" or fit some convenient stereotype in arguments that cannot be won. These winners represent what's RIGHT with this country's part of the industry.
I fully understand where you're coming from, and will jump in front of a train to defend your right to that opinion, but I don't think the winners of this contest are the jumping-off point for a "pardon me but all U.S. pages look a certain way" debate.
We've digressed to a point where we somehow accept: "U.S. bad, rest of world good," and it's just not that simple, objective or clear.
And I really don't know what is gained by pandering to that assumption.
Good design is good design. And it can happen at any paper, with any tools, as can bad design. If we're all doing all we can to best present our content, then we're doing things right. Until then, there's no place for elitism.
...
So, yeah. You're right that more needs to be done on SD and in its contests beyond the borders. But calling out these winners to make that point is your right, and one I detest.
...
Here's the bottom line. Go back and find the very first post about this contest, and its stated goal:
Just have fun.
In a subjective contest, the absolute best that truly can be hoped for is that more people had fun with it than didn't. I'll continue to hope that.
Don't know what else to say about it, really.
Posted by: Josh Crutchmer | Mar 4, 2007 7:16:34 PM
I agree with Josh, Rob and Horacio... i think you are all right, but WE are all wrong at the same time. think is really impossible for a non spanish speaking person to judge information design, i think that is a fundamental problem with the SND for example.
What this web site is doing i think is excellent, something we in México are not doing. And what Josh suggests about a global, linked network of web sites is a great idea
What if we have our own contest here in México just with mexican pages, some guys in India do the same, Germany, England, etc etc.. and the winners of all those contest go and compete for "the big one"... but we must accept the fact that we cant judge pages we cant understand, so lets be honest and open about it and say out loud that we would judge this pages by visual impact and layouts only, and not by storytelling or anything like that.
I think the SND should be honest to about it, we cant really judge a great news design of a newspaper if we dont know the audience, the local taste or history. So i think we should "cut the crap" and just judge pages for what they visually look and more universal things like grids and type, photos and photo editing... dont you all agree?
Besides, we are all designers, we shouldnt be fighting each other, we should be fighting editors!! :D
Quick note, i didnt send pages for your contest because i dindt know about it, i stoped looking at this blog to be honest because every time i got in i would see a US page, so i thougt it was only-US thing.... plus, we have a really shitty internet conection and the page is too heavy!
Saludos a todos!
Alexander Probst
Posted by: Alexander Probst | Mar 5, 2007 10:52:38 AM
This is a good conversation to be having. I think we're underplaying it here on a comments thread.
If nobody beats me to it tonight, I'm going to take the above discussion and move it over to VizEds. It'll get better play there and generate more discussion.
Then the four of us who have posted on the topic here can all duck out of the way and watch the fireworks.
Posted by: Josh Crutchmer | Mar 5, 2007 12:05:23 PM
I copied this discussion over to Visual Editors. Here's the link to the post:
http://www.visualeditors.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=38600#38600
It seems like something that can generate easier-to-follow discussion and debate there.
Posted by: Josh Crutchmer | Mar 5, 2007 8:09:03 PM
Horacio:
I just wanted to clear up some potential misunderstandings. I understand your frustration with the SND competition. But I wanted to give you the benefit of having some more complete information so you fully understand what you're being critical of.
When it comes to Spanish-language newspapers, we have plenty of Spanish translators available at the SND judging EVERY SINGLE YEAR. Yes, I realize that someone who is not a Spanish speaker hearing a translation is still not as good as speaking Spanish as your native language, but we still provide as much translation as any judge would like. And that's REGARDLESS of the language.
Secondly, we take great lengths to ask non-English language papers to provide as thorough of translations as they can with their entries. Horacio, if you or any of your colleagues believe you don't get a fair shake because the majority of judges speak English and your paper is printed in Spanish, then PLEASE provide as complete of a translation as you feel necessary. And please realize that it will be used.
At some point, the SND competition sort of hits the wall when it comes to translations of non-English languages. We provide translators, and we will provide a FULL translation of ANY language at a judge's request. But we can't force non-U.S. papers to provide translations, and we can't force English-speaking judges to ask for translations.
The fact that this competition continues to exist at the level that it is run at -- 14,000 entries a year, of which probably 40 percent are from outside of the U.S. -- is nothing but a miracle.
We want it to reach perfection someday, but we need help from folks like you -- folks who see problems with the competition and who have reasonable suggestions on how to correct them. We'd welcome those ideas on the Competition Committee. So please feel free to e-mail me at matterickson23@gmail.com and offer up your suggestions and I would be glad to take them to the Competition Committee.
Thanks for your input, Horacio.
Posted by: Matt Erickson | Mar 6, 2007 7:16:41 AM
Perhaps with time we can introduce more sports designers from all over the world. That would be a wonderful outcome from this site.
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