Before we get stuck into the gritty details let's take a look at the Fresh scoring process.
How we score entries
Entries are scored on five criteria; originality, freshness, inspiration, context and craft. When judging is complete the criteria scores are averaged for each entry, and Fresh’s internal multiplier is applied - which weights the five criteria independently.
Scores for the criteria are then combined, resulting in a single score for each entry. The entry is then measured against the other entries within it’s category.
Entries can score up to a total of 275 points. An entry needs to reach a score higher than 225 to be eligible for gold, 200 to be eligible for silver and 175 to be eligible for a bronze or carbon award.
How we award entries
Each category can only have one gold, silver and bronze winner, unless two entries carry exactly the same score; in which case they’ll both carry the highest award their score allows.
Eligibility tiers mean that sometimes a category may not have a gold winner or silver. This helps ensure a level standard of quality across the entire showcase. A piece of work that would be graded silver in one category couldn’t win gold in another.
Eligibility tiers are crucial in ensuring that creatives submitting a lot of entries can't easily acquire all of the awards in the categories they're entering - unless, of course, the work is extremely good and outperforms all the other entries in the category. But does submitting several entries really pay off?
Let's look at our five highest performing entrants:
Owen Gildersleeve
1086/1375
With a combined score of 1086/1375 across three entries, London-based illustrator Owen's work really resonated with the judges. That number gives him a 79% amazing rating. Picking up the Graphic Gold and Illustration Silver for Outside Lands, Editorial Silver and Illustration Carbon with his Variety500 entry, and Editorial Carbon for Welcome to the Golden Age of Conservative Magazines.
Luke Manning
1005/1375
With a combined score of 1005/1375 across three entries, the Bristol-based designer showed consistent quality. That brings Luke in at 73% amazing. He picked up Packaging Silver and an Illustration Carbon for his Wood Brothers Vodka bottles, Packaging and Branding Carbons for his work with Bristol Syrup Company, and another Packaging Carbon for Ideas come in weird places; a self-initiated project.
Peter Marsden
940/1100
London-based filmmaker Peter submitted three entries and came out with a combined score of 940/1100, making him 85% amazing. Peter's work scored amazingly well and picked up four awards; Music Video Gold for his Lunice promo, Music Video Silver and Narrative Bronze for his promo for Berlin drummer-composer Cid Rim and picking up a Music Video Carbon for his Suicideyear promo.
Mount Audio
906/1100
London creative sound studio Mount Audio produced a series of collaborative efforts in 2017 called Forms. They entered three of those collaborations to Fresh 18 and earned a combined score of 906/1100, making them 82% amazing. Both awarded entries; Forms II and Forms III won double Carbon awards between the categories of Animation, Motion Graphics and VFX; a very consistent score and efficient use of the entry allocation.
Ariel Palanzone
738/1100
Buenos Aires digital artist Ariel submitted three winning entries, earning him a combined score of 738/1100. That makes him 67% amazing. Ariel picked up one Bronze and two Carbon's in Sculpture, and an Installation Carbon with his works Rosa Metalica, Pensador and Infinite Orden.
So does it pay dividends to enter your work into multiple categories? Well yes. It won't help you win a category, but it does help your presence when viewing a category. Taking a look at the categories for Editorial, Packaging, Music Video and for Sculpture we see strong presence from four of these five creatives.
However, do we see jury fatigue in marking work that looks similar? All but one of the six creatives that made the Best in Book submitted a single entry, which hints to us that quality definitely sparks the interests of our judges over quantity. Furthermore, the three entries that scored the highest across the entire pool of approved work each came from creators that submitted just one entry each.