Be The Judge With YourNOVA
With the MullenLowe NOVA Awards presentation fast-approaching, the judges are hard at work deciding on the Winner, Runners Up and #Unstereotype Award recipient. But there is still one more award: the YourNOVA ‘People’s Choice’ Award, where you become a judge and can help decide the winner – not an easy task with such an impressive range of high calibre work!
Voting is now open and to help make your decision-making process easier, we caught up with our expert panel of judges for their top tips on selecting a favourite:
Niek de Rooij from Unilever urges voters to truly understand the works before making a decision:
“Take the time to really engage with the work, try to understand it, unpeel it and look at the essence of the ideas because I think there is so much greatness around here but you have to engage with it.”
Catherine Ince from V&A East seconds that with her top tip on placing the students work in a broader context:
“Really look at the work to understand what the students are communicating. Think about their work in the boarder context of that field. And to balance that, go with your gut!”
Hannah Martin from Hannah Martin London provides an insightful tip, reminding us how subjective judging art is:
“Come up with your own criteria and go with instinct because we’re all responding in a different way to different work so you have to trust your instinct about what you’re looking at.”
Cathy Loman from Transition Gallery and Nick Tacchi from sloggi both agree that voters should follow their initial instinct:
“Voters should be guided by something that grabs their attention but when you look closer more is revealed. It’s about recognising the balance of the immediate appeal and the ideas and depth of the piece,” says Cathy.
“Go with something you connect with immediately and find interesting and inspiring. It should challenge your thinking before reading the explanation but after reading the explanation it should make the piece even more interesting,” says Nick.
Laurence Green and Naomi Troni from MullenLowe Group think you should vote for work that moves you.
“Vote with your heart, not your head. We post-rationalise everything in life especially in industry and the work place, so vote for the thing that moved you,” says Laurence.
“Just choose the work that really speaks to you at a visceral level,” says Naomi.
Finally, if you’re still struggling, it could just come down to that age-old gut feeling. Our very own Jose Miguel Sokoloff and Ali Hanson from It’s Nice That both encourage voters to go with their gut:
“Vote with your gut, vote for what excites you, for what makes you smile. Just vote!,” says Jose Miguel Sokoloff.
“Go with your gut. Put the criteria aside and ask yourself, what was the most moving and inspiring piece?,” says Ali Hanson.
It’s time to put yourself in the judges shoes because voting for the ‘YourNOVA’ Award is now open! Vote for your favourite piece of work from the shortlisted students here: https://www.mullenlowenova.com/
