Your Annual Report Contest: Awards
January 16th, 2008 by Dan Meyer
- First Place & People's Choice Award:
Iain Campbell
The judges' decision as explained by Nicholas Felton:
It's odd because every year someone will request that I make some sort of online tool that will allow others to make annual reports that look like mine. But what's great about all of your entries is that the design of them is just as communicative as the data.
That said, I do have my biases for clarity of communication, and I was impressed by the submission of Iain Campbell. But it's not just the polish of his entry that I admired. I appreciated how he focuses on the areas that define him, and I am reading a great story in his entry.
- Second Place:
Sameer Shah
The judges' decision as explained by Paul Williams:
A collection of deeply personal but highly interesting data, that was developed into truly thought provoking design. Mixed typography colour, size and font with coloured graphical highlights really worked exceptionally well with such muted and clean backgrounds. The themes of indecision, travel, change and hope all intermingle to give this year in report form give a priceless insight into Sameer's personal journey this year. Overall the fun really stands out in this entry, snapshots of moments that transport us on a path of discovery about music, and friendships (both new and old). Outstanding was the cry from this judge.
- Third Place (tie):
Arthus Erea &
Dave Stacey
Congratulations Iain! It’s sort of sad that computer scientist has fallen off your future aspirations!
These are all such fantastic entries. I have to admit, however, that my personal favorite is Dave Stacey’s. I can’t decide if that comes from looking at the same information in several different ways, which I found fascinating, or if it’s because I feel a connection as a parent of a little one.
Either way, it’s a beautifully done annual report. Congratulations to all four!
What a surprise and an honor to be included in such a fine group of designers.
Congrats to all the winners.
Safe to say — as one of the judges — that a constant theme for me was the “ah, now there’s another little trick I can pocket”.
Well done across the board. A fascinating experience to spending time with all of the submissions.
And I appreciate Nick Felton’s reminder:
“But what’s great about all of your entries is that the design of them is just as communicative as the data.”
Dan — Thanks for including all of the judges behind-the-scenes.
Submittors — Thanks for letting us dive into your information-rich worlds and imaginations.
[...] one that might not materialize but I find interesting is Tom Hoffman’s concern about Dan Meyer’s latest design contest. I won’t even provide much detail here because I’m not sure what I think yet but hope [...]
Fantastic stuff – well done to all the submissions and winners – great challenge Dan!
Congratulations to all winners and almost winners.
The creativity shown in addressing the same task is truly amazing.
Thanks for expanding my visual data bank. Now explain to me how you did it!
diane
How exciting! The two coolest parts of this competition for me were:
(1) seeing everyone’s awesome designs, and going “oh man, that slide/idea/concept/color scheme/etc. is totally sick!”
and
(2) learning how to use a new computer program. I’ve never done anything in a non-paint-like-program before — nor have i ever played around with excel to modify the graphs. But i learned to make nice graphs with excel, and to work in “layers” in the free program i downloaded [http://seashore.sourceforge.net/]. the learning curve for the latter was steep, but worth it! (The first slide took me 2-3 hours, but the subsequent slides took about 1 hour each.)
Can I suggest something? Why don’t we gather tips and suggestions (like Sam’s above) on how to create some of these things on a wiki or PageFlake, or something? Perusing the entries, I saw a good comment on one from someone (I think it was Tom), on stacked bar graphs. ESPECIALLY for PowerPoint users, I think people need some ideas that will allow them to effectively create graphs outside of PP (or its graphing tool), and how to bring them in (cause it sucks donkey eggs imho). I’m willing to pitch in myself to help this effort.
Wow! This is completely unexpected. I nearly had a heart attack when I opened up my feedreader and saw my name. Thank you all!
If anyone’s interested, I used Keynote for the bar graph and Illustrator for everything else.
Yeah these were great actually. I liked Iain’s. Well done for all.
Great work winners! I’m proud just being in your company.
Loving your work!
–
Simon Aronson
http://www.yourannualreport.co.uk
Check out the graphic analysis of the State of the Union:
http://www.nytimes.com/ref/washington/20070123_STATEOFUNION.html
Awesome. Great link.
[...] Stop 5: Decide to learn how to deal with sound, images, and video. I want to go from having learned to do this… [...]
[...] on the Feltron Report, this contest by math teacher Dan Meyer featured amazing infodesign from teachers and [...]
[...] can view the winners and read the judges analyses, the other entrants, and the initial competition [...]