Q&A: Are your awards open to international entrants?

Question: Are your awards open to international entrants? We are from Australia.
Kiri Z., Queensland, Australia.

Answer: Yes! The APEX Awards definitely are open to international entrants from every country. We receive quite a few entries from around the globe, with an increase in international entries each year.

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New BLOG categories for APEX 2012

Now in its 24th year, the APEX AWARDS have long had traditional categories — printed materials, writing, design, graphics. In recent years, websites and online and electronic publications have joined the roster.

To those, we now add two new blog categories — Blogs (cat.#59) and Blog Writing (cat.#92). If you’ve created or written a blog, now is your chance to enter the Apex Awards and gain the recognition your blogs deserve.

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APEX 2012 Call for Entries

APEX 2012 is open for entries from business, nonprofit, agency and freelance communicators. Publishers, editors, writers and designers may wish to enter their print, Web, electronic and social media.

Please view and download the Call for Entries brochure. The brochure includes an Entry Form, but you may want to use the Online Entry Form instead. It’s quite easy, and, when you’re done, you can save copies on your pc, and print out final PDFs to mail or ship with your entries.

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From “cathouse” purple to business blue

Back in the day, when we used to publish newsletters on paper, just like Ben Franklin (well, not quite), we would periodically ask our senior publication evaluator and consultant, Paul Fisher, to critique our newsletters.

When we launched Writing Concepts, the predecessor to Writing That Works®, Paul always commented that our second color, PMS purple, had a “cathouse” purple look to it. But we’re stubborn, and stuck with it for some two decades, only recently toning down the “cathouse” side of things with a PMS 254 Purple — one notch darker. The color carried over to our Awards Competition, the APEX Awards for Publication Excellence.

But this year, we think Paul, until recently a professor with the University of Missouri School of Journalism, would be happy to learn that we’ve finally taken his criticism to heart, by changing to our new “businesslike” blue. We’ll miss our purple, but we like our new blue.

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APEX judges comment on a recent award-winning entry

APEX® Award Winners are top-drawer, and we’d like to share this example with you. It’s a Grand Award-winning entry from APEX 2011. You’ll also find the URL, so you can tour the winning site for yourself.

Photomediaonline.com (Gary Halpern, publisher, The PhotoMedia Group, Inc., Seattle, WA) is an exceptional site for professional photographers. The site is packed with useful features. The way photos are arranged and presented in the photo database is a particularly appealing design element. If you’re reading one of the site’s stories, you can usually click on the Image Gallery link at the top of the page (or simply scroll to the bottom of the page) for bio information and to see a collection of the author’s photographs. Click on any thumbnail and open to a larger photo. This is one of our favorites. We especially like the photograph of the Statue of Liberty’s torch. It brings back childhood memories of visiting Ellis Island and climbing to the top.

The Portfolios page is also well worth viewing.

Very slick.

Keep clicking to sequence through all the photos in the gallery. Top talent, skillfully showcased.

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APEX AWARD Winners Announced

Results are in for APEX 2011, the twenty-third annual Awards for Publication Excellence, recognizing the exceptional work by professional communicators in print and electronic media.

Please see ApexAwards.com for more information. You also might want to see the judges’ comments about selected Grand Award Winners, and links to their entries, where available.

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The King’s Speech

Just saw The King’s Speech. (We don’t rush to see a movie when it first comes out. Like to read the reviews first.) Is there anyone who hasn’t seen it? If so, you might want to. Compelling story. Fascinating look at the “royal’s” life in the 30′s. And quite a look at British “exceptionalism.” A term very out of fashion these days. In fact, am quite surprised the Academy gave it an award. Somehow not their usual “cup of tea.”

Part of our interest, of course, is work related. We’re in the word biz. Always nice to take in a movie with a superbly written script. And the topic is very “on point” for the speechwriters among us, whether we also give them, or write them for the people who do. Look at it this way — if you write speeches for your boss and he or she doesn’t stutter, you’re a step ahead!

Meanwhile, if your bent is more politically correct, and you need a quick fix of anti-hero revisionism — call it British “unexceptionalism” — you can browse Christopher Hitchens’ “Churchill Didn’t Say That” at Slate.com. Or, for more balanced views, see what The Telegraph’s film critics have to say.

By the way, if you do any speechwriting, you could do worse than look at Joan Detz’s excellent speechwriters’ site and blog.

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Overlooked categories, part 2

In the real world, people don’t always want the general answer (about which category(ies) to enter. They just want to know where exactly their hard-earned entry fees buy them the best shot at the gold. Often, this is a way of asking where the competition is lightest.

Hard to say. We can look at last year’s entries, but they aren’t necessarily predictive of this year’s entrants.

But we can make an observation or two. Here’s one.

For some reason, the Infographics category has not typically attracted large numbers of entries. Nor has One-of-a-Kind Emergency & Public Safety Publications. Seriously? Is there a company or nonprofit out there that doesn’t have some kind of plan for what to do in a (fill in the blank) emergency? Of course, many of those plans might be kind of, um, dusty. But, even so…

We’ll look at other categories in future posts.

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Overlooked categories in the APEX AWARDS

One of the questions we’re most often asked is, “Which category should I enter to have the best chance of winning an award?”

Good question!

Answer: Category 27.

Well, actually, not so simple. In general, you want to enter the category or categories most “in synch” with your publication. If you’ve just finished a major overhaul of your Web site, for instance, then the Most Improved Web Site category is an ideal choice – very “center of the bullseye.” Of course, you also could enter Site Design & Illustration or Site Content & Writing. Perfectly valid choices. But how often to you remake your site? Carpe Diem!

We’ll look at other categories in future posts.

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APEX entry tip: Shorten your URL

TIP: Entering a website or online publication in Apex? If the URL is very long, you might want to try TinyURL.com or bit.ly to quickly generate a short, simple entry for the URL line on the entry form.

Here’s one example.

Before:

http://www.google.com/search?q=Tinyurl+vs.+Bitly&hl=en&num=1
0&lr=&ft=i&cr=&safe=images&tbs=#q=Tinyurl+vs.+Bitly&hl=en&lr
=&prmd=ivns&ei=JU98TbP4BuGy0QH3v8TcAw&start=10&sa=N&bav=on.2
,or.r_gc.r_pw.&fp=f4c12fb37f79ddac

After:

http://tinyurl.com/4ntrezp

http://bit.ly/fuRps2

(Note: This tip only applies if you are filling out a printed entry form. If you use the online Easy Entry Form, we’ll automatically convert your URL for you.)

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