3x3 International ProShow Judges Announced

We’ve just nailed down our international panel of judges for the ninth 3x3 professional show. As always we search for some of the top talent around the world to judge our show.

This year’s judges include Jordan Awan, Art Director, The New Yorker, Andrew J. Nilsen, Art Director, SF Weekly, Gary Cochran, Art Director, London Telegraph, United Kingdom and Shayne Pooley, Creative Director, Ogilvy & Mather, Hong Kong. Our illustrator panel includes Brian Stauffer, Valeria Petrone, Italy, Rod Hunt, United Kingdom and Marco Wagner, Germany.

Categories this year include advertising, animation, books, editorial, editorial spots, fashion, gallery, graphic novels, institutional, medical, posters, sci-fi, self-promotion, sequential, three-dimensional and unpublished. Deadline for entries is March 9, 2012.

What sets 3x3 apart is that unlike many shows all judging is done independently on the each judge’s desktop which allows us to not only secure judges from all over the world but also to avoid any personal biases that tend to creep up when judges are assembled in the same room. Balloting is secret and once the judging sheets have been returned we tabulate the results. A majority of the judges must favor an entry for it to make it into the show; medals are decided based on the judge’s personal selections of top work as well as by the number of judges voting for an individual entry. We’re fortunate to have the only show that is truly international. We look forward to seeing your entries this year.

Our Call for Entries will be going out soon and we’ll be announcing our 3x3 International Student Show and 3x3 International Children’s Show judges in the next several weeks. Stay tuned.

3x3 Directory 2012 Arrives

We’re happy to report that the 3x3 Illustration Directory 2012 is right on schedule, shipments began yesterday from our distributor in Minneapolis. With over 6,000 to be mailed we expect the job to be finished by them by the end of the month. In the meantime participants will begin receiving their copies starting next week. Samples to Europe will take a bit longer.

Thanks to The Prolific Group in Winnipeg for expediting the delivery of the directory.

Cover illustration by Wonil Suh

3x3 Annual Ships

 The 3x3 Illustration Annual No 8 is in the mail and on its way to newsstands around the country and the world. Unfortunately there was a problem with laminating the cover so our printer, The Prolific Group in Winnipeg had to reprint the entire cover before binding the book. There are always so many variables in printing, temperature, humidity, the paper itself, the laminate, so it's never a surprise that things like this happen; fortunately it happened at the right time in the production process, otherwise we would have had a very disappointing cover.

Inside the plant at The Prolific Group

HOW International Design Awards: 4 Years in a Row

What a wonderful way to start off the new year!  We just received notice that 3x3 has been accepted into the HOW International Design Annual. And not just one winner, but three winners: Issue 14, 15 and 16. Also among the winners was a series of issues of our sister publication, Creative Quarterly—for the second year in a row!

This is the fourth year that 3x3 has been honored by HOW and what makes it especially gratifying that our series of magazines were honored. As a judge I know how rare that is, too many times two of the three entries are great and the third is less so, so these judges saw strength in all issues. And to be continually honored each year is an indication that we must be doing something right.

What's also gratifying is that each year a new set of judges are being exposed to the best illustrators around— as they thumb through the entries they had to be impressed by the quality and diversity of the work they were seeing. These are not only design awards for us, these are big announcements that illustration is alive and well and thriving. Since in each of publications illustration is king—not design, the very fact that judges four years in a row have honored us speaks well of the illustration industry.

We’re only as good as the work we present. Our cover artists Paul Blow—Issue 15, Q. Cassetti—Issue 16 and Alessandro Gottardo, aka Shout—Issue 17 certainly caught the attention of the judges as they sifted through the thousands of entries and provided a welcome greeting to what was inside. The judges had to be impressed with our publications cover-to-cover for them to receive this honor, so a great big thank you to these illustrators for making us look good.

Look for the issue on newsstands in March.