The one contest I still had an entry riding in was the 40th Boulogne-Billancourt designer Contest. My entry “Waltz of Fireflies” was a retheming and simplification of an older project.
No success this time either. There were 124 entries from which 30 proceeded from the “rules-reading” stage to the next “playtesting” stage.
I have been participating in different design contests for years with effectively no success. While the time I have for these projects is limited, I have had a longer design time span to somewhat make up the handicap. So why do these designs stay on the ground? To get some new ideas and perspective, I have lately been reading “The Tipping Point” by Malcolm Gladwell. The main question posed in the book is how a small movement becomes a big one… and how small insignificantly seeming things might cumulate to make the difference. The book has rather interesting examples and it is a light read, so I sincerely recommend it.
Looking backward, probably one of the reasons is my design goal of making more or less straightforward solid designs… while the “market” is overcrowded with solid designs already. Like the “Waltz of Fireflies” has its own uniques tweaks but nothing that special. I think I’ll have to raise my design aim from solid-and-good to extraordinary. So that the design “sticks” with those who have read about it. I’ll also need to be reaching out more since ultimately designing (and getting somewhere) is a numbers game: you’ll need to put in the hours and have enough mass to start an avalanche. YODEL-OH-EE-DEE!