There are some awards that no one really wants. The negative award "Plagiarus" is such an award in the design industry, and is awarded annually to the most audacious plagiarists, and recently another negative award has come to the fore: the „Fidius". With the help of this award, unfair tenders and design competitions will be publicly exposed. The dubious honour of such an award will be bestowed upon the design award of the Federal Republic of Germany in this first competition, which is awarded by the Ministry of Economics and Technology of the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Design Council as tendering institution.
The competition organiser FIDIUS, a non-profit association founded by attorneys and designers, justifies as follows: "This competition, for the "award of all awards" contains many deficiencies which the organisers, despite public criticism and a discussion with FIDIUS lasting several hours, have only dealt with superficially in the Department of Trade and Industry.
Thousands of people in the creative industries annually receive the joyous news that they have been "nominated" for this prestigious award. In ignorance the nominated masses pay Euro 210 and hope for this great opportunity to be one of the 25 finalists, who then actually receive the "Designer Award of the Federal Republic of Germany", and for which these recipients still have to pay another sum of Euro 2 900 to the organisers. In this way Euro 270 000 was collected in 2006, which was an expensive way for the chosen nominees to receive their award.
In a previous statement regarding the methodology behind the German design awards, Fidius already pointed out that the designation "nominated" in the sense of attaining success, is misleading as own qualifying criteria are not there, and that, up to now in practice, the results of other competitions are dubiously referred to.
Negative awards also for Becks, Bitburger and Mazda
Two further awards for unfair tenders in the Communications and Fashion Design category went to the breweries Becks and Bitburger for the competitions „Beck´s it" and „Passion is fashion", as well as to the vehicle manufacturer Mazda in the category Photo Design, for its „Zoom-Zoom" tender. The jury's verdict is that the shocking thing about all three tenders was that only minimal value was placed on service and authorship, and that the organisers retain rights to all work purely by the submission of the work.
Accolades for Ikea Foundation
The jury managed to find one exceptionally positive counter-example: The Ikea Foundation was honoured by receiving a special award. To celebrate its 25-year existence, Ikea launched a competition with the theme "Living in the Future", which fulfils all the most important criteria for an exemplary competition. And, according to information received by the Foundation, 10 x Euro 25 000 were awarded, so that winning concepts could also be realised.
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