Others may feel, as I do, that the Design Awards competition is in poor shape. For years we have lived with hit­and-run assessments, expressed in grudging phrases like ‘perfectly competent’ and ‘clear if unimaginative’. Such loftiness, such faint praise! We have struck it a hundred times in Design Awards catalogues. I should be happy to see an end to all comments on individual books other than prizewinners. Instead I would invite each of the judges (not just the chairman) to write about the competition as a whole, commenting on the strengths and weaknesses of entries, noting trends, and considering Australian design and production in the wider context of world publishing. If a judge finds a lack of innovation in the year’s crop of entries, let him mention some other books that he thinks possess that quality, so that at least the basis of his assessment is known. This would make judges more accountable for their selections. At the same time it would give individual judges a chance to express what might be their minority opinions.

I would drop the notion of ‘commended’ books. Every book chosen for the catalogue would be a Design Award winner in its category, with no also-rans. From the whole field of award books, the only two to be singled out would be the winners of the APBA Andrew Fabinyi and Joyce Nicholson prizes. I would not accept the proposition that there could be no winner of the Joyce Nicholson Best Book of the Year prize.

In the hope of increasing the usefulness of the catalogue, I would give full production information for every award book; not only the names of publisher, designer, typesetter, and printer as at present, but also details of size, number of pages, typefaces, printing, binding, and materials used. Last but not least, I would include the price and the print run of the first edition, two revealing indicators of a publisher’s intentions.

Could one hope for exhibitions of each year’s Design Award books in State libraries and major public libraries, with display copies of the catalogue available to all viewers, and some give-away copies for first comers? To me a depressing feature of the present competition is that it is so inward-looking to the publishing trade, and that so few members of the public get to hear of it.