Hi Ken
Being mentioned in this post, I thought I would comment about this kind of government project and competitions.

As a design professional, I have always disliked the competition format. Not only because of the reimbursement issue, but because of the lack of dialog space between client and designer. The client has intimate knowledge of the organisation, product or service, in addition to insight into the history and vision for the future of the entity that is to be designed. In my way of working, this is always a fundamental starting point for the creative work.

When you have a well-thought through strategy or vision, then the problem is clearly defined and the dialog and design work can start from there. But this is not the only approach - research about how designers work show that often the problem is not well defined. The client may not be skilled in creating a good design brief, or - more problematically - they might not have a clear idea of their own strategic vision for the future of their product or organisation. Sometimes sketches in different directions can help kick-start a dialog, illuminating possible futures and facilitating reflection about what is the best direction forward. This can then have brand-strategic consequences that encompass much more than the visual design choices. 

I wonder sometimes if people who decide to create logo competitions do this partly because they really don't have a strong sense of what their strategy or vision is. They want to be flooded with sketches of possible futures, because that will help feed a reflective process about where they could be/should be going, help define their problem.

In reading about this Canadian competition, I found myself wondering if maybe in this particular instance a competition format plays a role of not only generating a lot of (inexpensive) logo suggestions, but also opens up for many young voices to jump in at an early stage, before too much strategic problem-definition has been done. The product/organisation in question is a whole country, celebrating their past (and implicitly their future). Who should be authoring the brief for this kind of design space? Everyone in Canada, possibly.  This isn't like a private or other public organisation with a finite set of stakeholders. Maybe asking a group of many young people who at least have some design experience is an appropriate way of striking a balance between opening up for a multitude of voices about how to define the vision or values for this event, and securing some degree of design quality. Or maybe not.

When working on the '94 Norwegian winter Olympics, we (a team of four designers who developed the visual identity program) had a fantastic starting point - a thorough and thoughtful vision document produced by a group of stakeholders that provided us with the core values and vision for the Games. The leadership had already approved and embraced these as the foundation for the whole event. In addition, we had an extremely knowledgable project manager from the client side - Petter Moeshus, design director for Lillehammer'94 games - who gave us the right mix of guidance, perimeters and freedom in this work, based on his earlier experience with participation in the design department of the Munich summer Olympics.

I have to admit - I know nothing about the background for the Canadian competition. Perhaps some bureaucratic committee made a very strict and professional brief, outlining the vision and values of the event on behalf of all of Canada. But it is worth considering whether the competition format can have some merit in particular instances like this, especially if the competition invitation leaves the visionary direction open for interpretation. Just for the sake of letting in many different voices. And in this case, young voices.

Sarah Rosenbaum

Ps. For the record - the visual identity program for the Lillehammer Olympics did not take years or cost millions. We sketched for about 1/2 year, we created the manual in the next 1/2 year, and the pay was about the same per hour as other jobs we worked on in the same time period. Some of the design partners lost money in the late stages of the design manual production.


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Sarah Rosenbaum | PhD | designer/researcher
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