I recently applied to be a part of the annual Cut&Paste competition in SF. The premise is that you have 15 minutes or so to design something—live in front of an audience—based on a theme provided to you 1 week in advance, giving you enough time to prepare an idea. On the day, they have 8 competitors going at it tournament style with 2 rounds to decide a winner. In order to qualify to be one of the eight, you participate in the test round 2 weeks before the event.
I went to the test round this past Sunday held at Bolt|Peter’s office in SF. Our theme for the evening was “Bliss;” here is my take:
Also see Kyle’s take, and Devin’s take.
Designing in this format presented some interesting challenges. Much of it is not that different than any other kind of design experience: you concept it however you want, you establish a mood and visual direction, and you go for it. Then that’s where it got interesting: you practiced designing it until you got to the point where you could finish in 15 minutes. Staying within that 15 minute window may require that you cut back on your original concept and lose some detail, or in some circumstances require you to do the opposite to fill up the entire time.
By the time I settled on a final design, the time it took to create the graphic went something like this:
1st time: ~30 minutes
2nd time: ~20 minutes
3rd time: ~16 minutes
4th time: ~15 minutes
When it was time to do it live in front of the judges, I felt comfortable enough to add a few flourishes to the design and still finish early by about a minute or so. Which was bad, so I learned. When designing in front of a crowd, you never want to appear to be doing nothing. I had neglected the showmanship aspect of the format.
I guess they were right, this wasn’t just design, it was a performance. Even the most clever punchlines get old after you stare at it for a while. Audiences like the big reveal, and no matter how objective you try to be it’ll probably be the crowd-pleasers that walk away the winners.
