Award winners: Tatsuki Ikezawa, Yusuke Ono and Ren Takaya
JAGDA Annual: “Graphic Design in Japan 2012” published on 25 June 2012.
Award Ceremony: JAGDA General Assembly 2012 on 9 June, 2012 at Toyama International Conference Center

Exhibition:
Tuesday, 5 June to Friday, 29 July 2012 at Creation Gallery G8, Tokyo
Monday, 9 July to Thursday, 19 July 2012 at Paper Voice Osaka, Osaka
Friday, 28 September to Sunday, 14 October 2012 at Gallery Art Site, Seian University of Art and Design, Shiga
Thursday, 18 October to Sunday, 28 October 2012 at 2F Gallery, The Niigata Prefectural Museum of Modern Art, Niigata
Wednesday, 27 February to Monday, 4 March, 2013 at Design Gallery, International Design Center NAGOYA, Aichi
Saturday, 30 March to Wednesday, 3 April 2013 at Noh-Box, Miyagi

Selection Process of the 2012 JAGDA New Designer Awards

Among the 210 “new designers” (JAGDA members under age 40 as of October 31, 2011) who submitted their works into the Graphic Design in Japan 2012, 23 persons (21 entrants including group entrants) were nominated for JAGDA New Designer Awards. These consisted of entrants with one work garnering 22 or more votes in a given category (with full marks being 28), or two or more works each receiving 16 or more votes. (Because the full marks for Interactive Design/Motion Graphics were 5, the number of votes of the Posters category, which had the largest number of entries, was used as the standard, and scores were computer-adjusted accordingly.)

All featured works by the nominees were grouped together by designer, and the 28 members of the General Graphics Selection Committee undertook the preliminary round of voting, with each member allowed to cast up to 5 votes in total. (They were not obliged to cast 5 votes. The names of nominees were not displayed.) The Committee members unanimously selected nine designers garnering 8 or more votes as finalists.

At this point, some members commented, “the entry works all look alike” and “there are few who deserve to be selected as New Designer Award winners.” Then, the members discussed a selection method for the second round of voting. As a result, each Committee member could cast up to 3 votes, indicating the ID numbers of the nominees on a form giving 3 points each to their 1st place candidate, 2 to the 2nd place and 1 to the 3rd place. Like in the first round, they were not obliged to use all their votes, and the names of candidates were not identified.
This round of voting produced the following results: Mr. Takaya 38 points / 17 votes, Mr. Ono 36 points /16 votes, Ms. Miyata 17 points /11 votes, Mr. Ikezawa 16 points / 8 votes, and Mr. Shirai 14 points /5 votes. As both numbers of points and votes for the upper two places were more than double of the rest, a vote was taken, and Mr. Takaya and Mr. Ono were decided as the winners with 26 votes.

Next, the Committee discussed how to select another one according to the rule to select “not more than three” designers. The Committee was divided into two options, “Since we had the second round of voting after a discussion, and the result was this gap in the number of votes, we should confer the award only to the two,” and “As we have three seats, we should give the third seat to a young designer, considering the future of JAGDA and the design community.” With the 16 votes in favor of the latter, it was decided to select one from among the three ranking from 3rd to 5th.

Each committee member cast one vote at the final voting to select one from the three candidates, and 11 votes were cast to Mr. Ikezawa, 10 votes to Ms. Miyata, and 7 votes to Mr. Shirai.

As a result, the 2012 JAGDA New Designer Awards were awarded to Ren Takaya, Yusuke Ono, and Tatsuki Ikezawa.