Arts Thread × Gucci · Global Design Graduate Show

Arts Thread selected me as a judge for its Global Design Graduate Show, run in collaboration with Gucci, on an international panel of more than 150 expert judges. The show was featured by Google Arts & Culture, which published a story introducing its judges.

I served on the jury for three consecutive years. The 2023 programme lists me among the judges, and when I announced it that year I described it as my third year in a row.

Each name in this record has a precise role. Arts Thread organised the show and selected the judges. Gucci was the collaborating partner. Google Arts & Culture was the platform that featured the show. More than 150 is the size of the judging panel.

With more than 150 judges, a seat is not a headline. It is one specific eye among many, and that is how I read it.

This is a jury seat. It is not a ranking, a list or an award from Google, and it is not a client engagement with Gucci. I state it exactly because the precise version is strong enough on its own.

The jury sat where my work had been for years: in photography and digital art, where Keith Grossman selected two of my photographs for NFT Liverpool, and in creative industries, where I spent years with UNIDO helping designers and artisans reach markets. Graduate design work sits at the start of that same chain, before a market has told the creator what their work is worth.

Judging graduate work is the exercise I practise on brands, run in reverse. With a brand I look for the gap between what something is and how it is perceived. With a graduate project I look for the gap between the intention and what actually reached the page or the object, and for the rare work where there is no gap left. Graduates are at the moment when nobody has yet told them what their work is worth, which makes an honest reading more useful to them than praise.

Being asked back twice tells me the organisers found that reading useful.