PDR’s Jarred Evans on becoming an iF Design Award juror
At PDR, we’re well versed in entering the iF Design Awards - it’s one of the select few global awards we submit our work to, due to its prestige and the high calibre of work entered.
This time around for 2022, our involvement is a little different! We’re pleased to share that PDR’s director Jarred Evans has been selected as a juror and has been busy rifling through some of the world’s best design completed in the last 12 months from across the globe.
Working with fellow jurors Claudia Freidrich and Johanna Loomis, and calling upon the extensive experience of chairperson Fritz Frenkler where needed, Jarred’s team helped judge some of the more than 10,000 entries this year.
Looking at iF Design Awards 5 essential criteria of idea, form, function, differentiation and impact, the jurors selected the entries they felt most impressed with and impassioned by. The next stage takes place in March, when the jurors will reconvene in Berlin to judge the qualifying entries and select the final winners (including Gold award recipients) who will be announced during the iF Design Award Night on 16th May 2022.
“Along with the 5 criteria, I asked the questions ‘Is this iF Design Award standard?’, ‘Have they communicated it well?’ and ‘Does it genuinely make a difference and have the impact desired?’. Ultimately I asked myself, ‘Is this piece of work worthy of sitting in that iF awards book?’,” Jarred explains on the judging process.
I asked the questions ‘Is this iF Design Award standard?’, ‘Have they communicated it well?’ and ‘Does it genuinely make a difference and have the impact desired?’. Ultimately I asked myself, ‘Is this piece of work worthy of sitting in that iF awards book?’
Jarred Evans | Director | PDR
At PDR, we firmly believe the iF Design Awards and its contemporaries - the IDEAs, the Good Design Awards and the Red Dot Design Award - are vital to the development of better design across the world, because they force ‘design’ to be the sharpest and best it can be.
“On their own, design awards don’t prove a great piece of design. There are lots of brilliant pieces of design that either don’t get entered or somehow won’t win,” Jarred continues.
“But what other mechanisms are there for getting a piece of design work assessed and judged independently by design professionals at the top of their game who you really respect? This is the ultimate sense-check of quality and that’s why these awards, for us, are so critical to helping to challenge and inspire us to stay at the top of our game.”
Judging awards like the iF, you want to contribute because there’s a standard and a level of development you want to help maintain.
Jarred Evans | Director | PDR
Asked to be a juror back in the autumn of 2021, Jarred was no stranger to judging design awards - but it was his first time with the iF awards.
“Having won 2 Gold awards and 23 Design awards so far with iF, becoming a juror felt a little like ‘giving something back’ to a system that we’ve been so happily involved with since 2007. Judging awards like the iF, you want to contribute because there’s a standard and a level of development you want to help maintain - and who doesn’t want to work alongside people you really respect?”
The team at PDR would like to wish Jarred and his fellow jurors the best of luck as they continue to select the winners of the iF Design Awards 2022. With our own submissions in the running, we’d like to say good luck to all our fellow entrants too!
Next steps
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