1 post tagged “invitation au voyage competition”

I was honored to be invited as one of the 4 judges for the Invitation Au Voyage Moleskine City Notebook competition last Saturday.  The panel includes Mariko Jesse, an illustrator and teacher; Winnie So, publisher of Little Cream Book and Arnault Castel from Moleskineasia.com.

Entries were sent from all over the world and we got over a hundred of them.  It took me the whole afternoon to flip through all the pages.  The judging criteria are mainly about the originality and creativity of the concept presentation, as well as how the drawings capture the travel spirit.

Invitation Au Voyage: my choices

Each judge was to rate the notebooks from 1 to 10 (10 being the best) and all the marks were added up to find the winners.  I first scanned all the notebooks once and grouped them in piles of my own preferences, then looked at them again in more details (I found many used amazing techniques, some almost like book art) and tried to think of how appealing when they were to be exhibited.  Finally, there were 11 top most impressive ones from my choice. Marks were then given to them after a final study of details.

Invitation Au Voyage: my choices

It was amazing how small this world has become.  I saw from one of the entry a picture of a girl who's a friend's family member.  Also, some of the entries were from inner Mongolia.  You can really see country differences in these drawings.

Invitation Au Voyage: my choices

I am particularly fond of great drawings or collage techniques with truthful stories behind.  Some chose to put everything in a notebook treating it a memory vault, some never pasted a receipt but drew the essence, some have touching stories and beautiful photos of foreign lands.  It was an amazing afternoon too short.

Finally the list of the top 10 winners came today.  There were too many great entries Moleskineasia.com decided to add more prizes.  Details to be announced by them later.  I'm anxious to show you all more pictures later.

P.S. Check out Winnie's blog about this judging experience.