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Creating a Winning BALA Binder
December 17, 2004
HousingZone
Chris Porter, Web editor at HousingZone.com, talks with Georganne Derick, president of Merchandising East Interior Design and a BALA judge, about how to put together a winning BALA application binder.
Porter: How often do you see really good projects that don't win because their binders are poorly put together? Is that fairly common?
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Georganne Derick |
Porter: What are the most common mistakes in putting together a binder?
Derick: The first one is not investing in excellent photography, because the photography is the very first thing the judges have to make a decision about what is going to be truly judged in the second round. The first round is where you have the decision to say, "Yes, this is good enough to really pore over the details" or "No, we're not even going to bother."
Porter: How many pictures would you say a winning application should have? Can you have too many or too few?
Derick: You cannot have too many, as far as I'm concerned. Now that you can desktop publish and have a lot of little images on one 8x10 sheet, you can have too many little images that don't express some of the points you want to make. You have to communicate what is essentially unique about your submission to the judges graphically, first and foremost. And you can do that through the photography. Photography is key and the way you present the information.
One of the most emotionally exciting things that a builder can do with the photography that they submit is to include photographs from different times of the day and night, because the light quality in the windows or the community itself changes the emotional response that the judges have to the photographs. So to have a few dusk shots, a few morning shots, some daylight shots and some dark shots all creates more of an emotional response.
As a generic rule of thumb for all categories, too, I would say, as a judge, I prefer to see some shots that are close-up detail shots and some that are distance shots. Some that show the relationship of rooms to each other or of the community entry to the sidewalks or the entry to the parks or whatever the relationships are that you feel are important to the community. So you have a variety of images, some are close, and some are far away, and that gives you an emotionally different response when you're looking at something in detail or when the frame of the picture has more mass to it and one that has more details.
Photographers tend to shoot in the same way, so I think it's even as important to vary the photographer. Use more than one photographer for your entry, or make it clear to the photographer that you want shots that have different feelings about them.
Porter: There is not a lot of room for the written word in the application — only about 300 words — touching on the project context, relationship to surroundings, design concept and market selling segment. How much emphasis do you place on this piece, and what are you looking for as you're reading over this?
Derick: The emphasis is in the second round of judging. You can start to really focus your time on the cream-of-the-crop entries. When it comes down to the judges tossing back and forth between entries, we have knockdown, drag-out arguments over what we believe is the winner. Generally, at that point, we will start to compare the market segment and whether they targeted the market segment, as a tiebreaker. "While they're both excellent projects, let's look at which one best addresses the market needs in that market and what was most appropriate."
I look for what is unique or what challenges were offered by the builder. If they were building on a brown site, for example, then that actually starts to add some interest in the challenge portion of the way we compare communities to each other, because at the national level, you have so many variables to consider due to the regional differences. We look for what was regionally interesting or regionally appropriate and then what challenges might have been in the face of the builder or the architect in their situation.
The design concepts themselves generally are made most visible through the photography. And, if there is a specific challenge that the architect had that they want the judges to know, that's what's important: what's unique about this community. For example, a community that came up in the community category a few years ago integrated their development into a bigger-picture community effort that is a social cause to not only the state but the nation. By highlighting that special quality, that really impressed the judges. In sales and marketing we call it the USP: the unique selling proposition or the unique selling position. And you want to make that known.
You don't have a lot of words to use. So my advice to someone writing the text is to do a number of things:
Highlight the unique aspects and challenges in those categories. Boldface in the text any of the key words that highlight that so that the words jump off of the page for the judges and make their words more graphic.
The other thing that's important for people to understand is, when you write the text, please do not editorialize your feelings about your project in terms of adjectives. The judges don't want to be told that this is the most beautiful community or this is the most stunning house in the community. They want to draw that conclusion themselves. They want the facts. They don't want to be told how to feel about this. And you don't have many words to use. So don't put words into the mouths for the judges. Give them the facts that are special to their community and write it in such a way that it's concise.
Porter: For the specific categories, are there hints that you might have for putting together a binder?
Derick: Let me start with communities because that's one that people generally have the most difficulty with in their entries. When showing community entries, the judges want to see continuity of the design theme in as many details as possible, meaning they want to see the signage at the entrance to the community, they want to see the street furniture, which is the lamp posts or the stop sign or the signage that shows the logo of the community. It may be at the athletic club, it may be in the information center or the sales center signage or the mailboxes or any of the community architecture. Show the details that are scattered throughout the community. This is an area where they don't have enough photography. Communities should do all 20 shots. Some of those shots could be of the sidewalks, just showing the sidewalk in its relationship to the streets. Or the landscaping, and showing the relationship of the landscaping to the homes or to the streetscape, to the parks. A detail of a lamp post is a welcome detail to see when you're looking at communities. I think people could really be served by just simply entering with more photography and more explanation as to what the special details are in that community.
Porter: One part of the application that we haven't touched on yet is the drawings or floor plans. They're allowed only one per entry, but is there any way to spruce those up to make them more appealing and make that an important part of the application?
Derick: First of all, one of the most difficult parts of judging the floor plans is when you're dealing with a very large home or a large blueprint and it's been reduced down to minutia to fit in the book and you can't read the information that's on it. It's important that you know that your floor plans are legible.
Secondly, it really makes a bigger impression when a floor plan has been rendered with furniture on it to prove that it furnishes well. When we finally start to argue about which house is better than another for Home of the Year, that's when we start to look at the relationship of the garage to the kitchen, the relationships of the bedrooms to the bathrooms, the relationship of the TV space to the sitting space. And if we can see it at a glance and it's very clear, with the furniture placed on the blueprint, it's easier for the judges to make a decision about that. We have only three days, and we spend the last day really getting into the minutia of which house is the best in the nation. So at that level, the floor plan becomes critical.
The most interesting floor plans are the ones that have kind of a 3-D look about them. When you look down on them, you can see the sofa and the bed and the table with shadowing and it has a dimensional aspect to it. It brings the floor plan alive on the page. And if you are going for Home of the Year or the best in region in your market, then your floor plan becomes critical at that stage.
Porter: Do you have any final words of wisdom that you might have for someone who's considering entering and hasn't done so before?
Derick: This award will mean so much to your marketing efforts over the life of your business. It will not only validate that community or that product that you've designed, it will also validate your business acumen for the next person you go to to loan you money for your next community. The banks will be impressed by the award. The home buyers — the public — will be impressed by a national award. Your peers will be impressed. Your potential new hires — the people you hire for your company — will be impressed by the awards you win.
Therefore, investing in fine photography is so worth the money. I can't tell you how many times I have to plead with a builder to spend a couple thousand dollars to photograph one house or one community and what that will mean for their future and their business. It is so worth the investment.
And finally, just make sure your book is visually beautiful, that it expresses the unique elements and is attractive to the eye the way it is presented, because the judges need it to stand out. They need to have something memorable to take away. So make the book memorable, visually beautiful, visually appealing and harmonious.
© 2009, Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All Rights Reserved.
