So you think you’re a designer?

Urbis is getting organised ahead of time – by launching a design competition to create the new visual ID for the 2009 Awards.

The competition is open to any design agency based within Greater Manchester, with the ‘prize’ an £8,000 contract and the chance to work with Urbis on the marketing campaign for the 2009 awards and associated exhibition.

‘The Best of Manchester Awards are about much more than an awards night,’ says Vaughan Allen, Urbis’ Chief Executive. ‘They are about supporting the creative industries in Manchester and helping an emerging generation of creative practitioners step up to the next level of their careers. For 2009, we wanted to extend that support to Manchester’s enviable graphic design community, by inviting designers based in the city to work with us. The end result of this competition will be some great design – and the chosen agency will not only get a paid contract in return, but the chance to work on one of the city’s most creative, and creatively fulfilling, projects.’

The competition runs until 17 December, with the chosen agency contracted to work with Urbis before the Christmas break. If you’d like to find out more, get your skates on. Email c dot ashworth at urbis dot org dot uk ASAP.

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Let the judging commence

That’s it – time’s up. The competition for this year’s Best of Manchester Awards closed at Midnight on Monday. All that art, imagery, music, composition, photography, design and fashion is now winging its way to the judges. They’ll take a broad look at the entries prior to the judging sessions at Urbis next week and we have a feeling they’re going to be busy: the number of entries is up by 65% on last year’s competition (phew).

We’ve had a sneaky peek at what’s been entered and, to be honest, we’re pretty impressed by what we’ve seen. What we’ve ended up with is a very mixed bag, but in the best possible way. In music, for example, there’s everything from contemporary classical composition to hip-hop, jazz, heavy metal – and a fair few entries that defy categorisation. There are plenty of intelligent, clever, innovative and witty entries, and, it has to be said, a couple of downright hilarious ones (we’re assuming that’s intentional…).

And that’s the whole point of the Best of Manchester: it’s all about work that doesn’t fit neatly into boxes (oooh, we almost said ‘work that thinks outside the box’ but that would be a terrible thing to say outside of a corporate team building event). Best of Manchester is a competition that has no rules and regulations. And our judges, who are about to roll their sleeves up and start shortlisting, are only really expecting the unexpected.

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