Rant: AGDA Poster Annual 2009

Inside the fortress like walls of the Australian Graphic Design Association you find the AGDA Poster Annual 2009 [posterannual.agda.com.au]. It’s an ace competition and one well worth supporting if AGDA gave people any way of sharing it around. Once on the site you’ll find a mixed bag of entries, the majority are pretty ace, only a handful are truly abysmal. If you can be bothered to wade through an over-elaborate registration system to officially become a ‘non-member’, you can also register your one unique postereal pleasure by submitting ‘a’ vote (just one, we can’t have you going too crazy) for the poster of your choice.

Posters being one of the most immediate routes of communication a graphic designer can employ, you’d think this would be a chance to for Australian designers to show the public their metal. Unfortunately all entries are treated as anonymous so you can’t find out who submitted them from the site and all images are protected so you won’t be able to download them and share them around to show people how ace or abysmal they really are. In a country where Graphic Designers should be jumping at every opportunity to talk up their profession (cause those opportunities are waxing and waning), this seems like yet another misfire. Here’s hoping they get it right for 2010 cause time’s a-wasting.

Posters will eventually be on display, dotted around Melbourne as part of the State of Design festival [stateofdesign.com.au] (which Linefeed hopes to cover over the coming couple of weeks. Check for updates via twitter by following me at @bojkowski). Short-listed entries will also be available to view at the No Vacancy gallery in Melbourne from July 16 [no-vacancy.com.au].

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BTW websites that don’t believe information wants to be free and try to protect their imagery online I have one word for you. And that word is… screenshots. Hello! Here are some of my favourite entries below. Come forth to claim your anonymous design by leaving a comment below…

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Update #1: Eatin’ Words Okay, so I was a bit grumpy this morning when I wrote this. There are still a few problems with the way this competition has been presented but after my comments about this on twitter you can now share entries via ‘Share This’. How about that for responsive. I’m blown away. Nice one AGDA for listening and responding in such a humble manner. It’s not often I have to eat my words but that’s awesome. Now about the rest of the site… kidding! …ish

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Update #2: Quite Good The exhibition is actually quite good so, if yer in Melbourne go see it and don’t forget to have a scribble on the wall. Some pics here [twitgoo]

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