Award winners are not always the top players

With reference to your feature on awards schemes (DW 16 December), year after year design groups that spend a lot of time perfecting the art of self-promotion pick up design awards.

The point never seems to be made that the winning entries are not necessarily the best design of their kind at that time, they are the chosen entries from a list of how many other entries? We are rarely informed of the number of entries in any particular category or of the criteria used to judge and rank.

All designers know the names of the companies which continually seek these awards and their value is therefore obvious to these companies. But of what value are they to the world of design?

Lewis Em

Designer

London