“Graphis New Talent Design Awards” is … an eye candy book for Designers that showcases work from graduating college students. I got the 2001 annual because it was listed cheaper than retail which is around $70. I don’t recommend this book and I have never seen a newer annual, but also have no interest in doing so.

The book showcases work within advertising, some interior architecture, a generic design category, branding, and more. The first couple of sections weren’t too bad, I even laughed at one advertisement that was really successful. Though, all these works aren’t real persay, the works were done for a portfolio, not a real client. From experience, any designer can tell you it’s much easier doing a fictional work than doing one for a client. I’d rather see successful examples that were actually used. A lot of the marketing within here too is really off the mark. Someone did an advertisement for Mac that is completely out of line with their branding - and I thought Mac had one of the easiest brands to follow. I started to notice after flipping page after page that, all the work is coming from the same schools - not much of an annual now is it? When I was in school I never heard of this annual either, though I knew of the company. At first I thought perhaps it was a coincidence, maybe the only talent they found that year in the United States were from the same places… until I came to about the 3rd to last work in the book. It is THE worst 3D modeling scene I have ever seen - with exception to some things I remember seeing in High School. That being said, why did they choose to include only one 3D modeling work and why did they choose this one? I have no idea. They could find more untapped talent in that sector going to a web site like CGTalk.com. Why didn’t they advertise their annual’s efforts there? I was looking forward to the interior architecture too but was also disappointed by the lack of knowledge in usability and ergonomics in most of the designs. Not only have I seen much of the same work had been done before (for a century at least, too), but much of it was uninspired and looked awful to actually use. Also, the few web sites they chose to show were also, unusable and uninspiring.

No, I don’t recommend this annual and if you have around $70 to spend on an annual, go buy the Red Dot Design Awards annual for a little bit more - they have work worth mentioning.

Also worth mentioning too that a quick look on their web site shows that entrants have to pay upwards of $160 to submit their works in for consideration. That’s outrageous.