The IHAF Awards Show judging event took place last week. For a full day, six judges gathered to evaluate and assess, calculate and debate—selecting category winners and one Best of Show. Here’s what Will Burns had say about the day.

“I saw sharks. I saw bugs. I saw boxing gloves, and almost used them. 

I saw shocking films. I saw talking heads. I saw 3D POP displays. I saw good print. I saw less-good print. I saw, too, that we got our fingerprints over all of it. 

I saw engagement over here, enlightenment over there, and estrangement over there. I saw some pieces really enter my psyche. I saw others I couldn’t believe were entered in the show.

There was so much work; we judges had to find our own strategies to cut through the clutter in time-efficient ways, while giving each piece its due. In short, we had to act like real consumers navigating the real world of media, where your work is not only competing with other in-house work, but with the work of the universe.

So we depended on first impressions, visceral feelings, and emotional grabs. The work that couldn’t be missed wasn’t; and the work that did little for us, did little for its creators in the competition.

In the end, the work that won their respective categories were true winners on any media battlefield. But one piece stood out above all others. A piece any of us judges would have been proud to call our own.

Yes, I saw that idea too. And I ain’t tellin’.”