24/07/2026
How Do We Judge an International Design and Creativity Competition?
At the end of 2025, we were invited to be part of the ADG Laus jury, the oldest and most prestigious design and creativity competition in Spain.
The festival has been running since the '60s and is open exclusively to projects from Spain.
So, the festival is divided into categories:
🔶 Art Direction & Editorial
🔶 Typography and Font
🔶 Packaging
🔶 Branding and Identity
🔶 Advertising and Communication Campaigns
🔶 Audiovisual, Video and Audio Spots
🔶 Students & Talent
Each category has its own jury team, made up of professionals in the field. Per category there were about 5-7 jury members, accompanied by 2-3 members of the ADG FAD team (the Spanish industry association and organizers of the festival). In total, 1,200 projects were entered.
This year's festival promotional campaign concept was "Televoting," and it confirmed to us that Spaniards have a genuine sense of humor.
We had the honor of sitting on the Students & Talent jury.
Before the physical judging, each member received a guide covering the rules, prizes, code of ethics, and a table of entered works. In our category, several thousand student projects were entered, across 3 categories — bachelor's, independent projects, and master's — all from universities in Spain.
After selecting the projects that, in our opinion, deserved to be considered for one of the 3 awards — bronze, silver, and gold — it was time for the offline, in-person judging, which took place in Barcelona at Disseny Hub, the same venue that hosts the OFFF conference, one of the most prestigious in the creative field.
The second part of the judging took place in Barcelona and lasted 2 days.
In a huge hall, long tables were set up with the physical projects on them. Digital and audiovisual projects were screened in specially arranged spaces.
Each jury group had its own dedicated workspace.
Before judging each category, every member was given 1-2 hours to review and study the displayed projects. We have to say we were blown away by the level — to put it mildly. The projects presented by students often sat at the intersection of multiple disciplines — for example, object-books that could be displayed in a museum. Every project addressed an important theme, such as human relationships, rights, environmental sustainability, culture, migration issues, etc. We barely saw any design done just for the sake of a logo or for looking pretty. Just like in the Dutch educational system, students are given briefs that try to solve real problems.
After the review and note-taking, jury members mark down who moves on to the finals. Then the assistants compare the votes, and the works that received votes from all or nearly all jury members move forward — this way, subjectivity is minimized.
After this stage, the finalist works are brought to the table, and debates take place, through voting and argumentation. Being the only outside members, we needed some context; but even though at first glance we came from different worlds, when we saw that our votes matched, we realized the world of design has a language of its own.
Bronze is voted on first, then silver, then gold, and finally the nomination for the Grand Laus / Talent Award, the festival's biggest trophy.
Judging a category takes about 3-4 hours. We had 3 huge subcategories... By comparison, the Font jury wrapped up after 2 hours, having only 30-40 entries.
Toward evening, once all categories had been voted on, all jury members and the organizing team gathered in front of a screen, and for 1-2 hours each jury group proposed candidates for the grand prize. This way, all the jury groups got a chance to see a bit of the other categories.
The Works
The work presented by students was on a cosmic level — museum-worthy. No exaggeration: experiment-books, installation-books, object-books. The winning project, Cloud Watching Society, which included print materials + a website + a mental health app where you're invited every day to take a photo of the sky and turn it into a kind of personal calm journal, won all of us over.
In the Font category, the winner was the newly created typeface for the city of Barcelona's identity.
In Video, the winner was Hornback — No Project Without Drama, from HEIMAT / TBWA Berlin, a project that later went on to win 7(!) Lions at Cannes Lions in June.
Thank you to ADG FAD for this extraordinary opportunity, to president Alex Gobbern for the invitation and for agreeing to come to the Festival of Creative Industries in June. By far a small step for mankind, and a big step in our modest career.
Fins després!
