Interview
Judging Arabic type without a house style
A panel of one taste is the fastest way to make an award worthless.
2 min read
Interview · August 20, 2026
Watch the interview
A type juror explains how a panel with genuinely different tastes reaches an agreed score, and why that disagreement is the point rather than a problem.
What the criteria actually measure
Every group is scored against the same four criteria: the problem the work was given, the idea it answered with, how well that idea was made, and what happened once it left the studio. A juror cannot substitute a fifth criterion of their own, and cannot score a piece on a criterion its category does not carry.
The scores are recorded per criterion rather than as a single impression, which is what makes a result explainable afterwards. When two entries finish level, the tiebreak reads the criteria in a fixed order before it reads anything else.
Why the tier is settled first
A student ranked against an agency is not a competition, so the tier a piece competes in is verified before any juror sees it. Verification looks at the entrant, not the work: enrolment, trade licence, the size of the studio that made it.
It happens before scoring for a plain reason: moving an entry after a jury has read it would either discard their work or carry a score across a boundary it was never given for.
About this conversation
The conversation was recorded for the programme and edited for length. The full transcript is above the related posts, so nothing said here depends on being able to play the film.
Transcript
The film is edited for length. This is what was said.
On what the brief actually asked
A type juror explains how a panel with genuinely different tastes reaches an agreed score, and why that disagreement is the point rather than a problem.
The constraint was the useful part. Once it was written down properly, most of the options disappeared on their own and what was left was arguable rather than arbitrary.
On entering
Read the sub-category before the deadline, not after. The group decides which of the four criteria carry weight, and strong work loses every year for being entered where its strengths are not counted.
