Douglas Okasaki is senior designer at Gulf News, and is on the team judging the News category for the 35th Best of News Design™ competition. To get to know him better, we posed three questions:
What was your takeaway from being a judge?
I felt a certain sense of responsibility of being fair with the entries. I’ve been always in the other side, as a competitor and I know that the expectation is quite big to win a award. Analyzing and thinking about the page is a great exercise. Usually, as a designer we make the page automatically not questioning why. The competition raise these questions.
Do you have any advice for people entering next year?
Don’t be discouraged if you did not win any award this year. Make your objective to be better each year. Winning awards can be easy, but keeping the innovation and enthusiasm is the most difficult.
What are your passions outside of work?
Work is my passion and I am blessed to work with something I really like. There are some interests that are not a part of work. Sometimes I’ve been obsessed by any subject, for example aliens, but as a passenger.