for excellence in Australian Web Design
After an arduous decision making process, the Jury in this years McFarlane Prize has decided on the shortlist. The shortlisted sites this year are
The quality of entrants this year was extraordinary, in particular in terms of best practice in coding, accessibility and development generally. If you'd like to know more about how the decision is made, and the criteria used, please see the judging criteria.
Congratulations to those shortlisted, and to all who entered. Thanks too to the Jury of Donna Maurer, Gian Sampson-Wild, Andy Coffey and Dmitry Baranovskiy for all their efforts.
The winner will be announced on Thursday September 27th at Web Directions, by Dean Jackson.
Named in memory of noted Australian web pioneer Nigel McFarlane, the McFarlane Prize aims to recognize and encourage excellence in web design by Australian web professionals.
The Prize rewards excellence in web design in the broadest sense, from the appropriate use of technology, to design aesthetics, to its impact more broadly on the web.
The Prize also aims to be a showcase of the best in Australian web design, and to inspire other Australian developers in their own endeavours.
The McFarlane Prize is awarded by a jury of Australian experts in various fields of web design and development. The decision process has two stages. In the first stage, entries are assessed for their adherence to best practices in accessibility and standards based coding (correct and valid use of CSS and HTML). These criteria are outlined in detail here.
The top 15 sites from this phase will be individually assessed in four areas by members of the jury who have expertise in a particular area.
These areas are
Based on the two rounds of judging, the McFarlane Prize shortlist will be announced on September 22nd.
The announcement of the winner of the inaugural McFarlane Prize will be made at the Web Directions Conference, September 27th 2007.
Congratulations to the web development team from Museum Victoria, winners of the inaugural McFarlane Prize, for Caught and Coloured. It is a beautiful, well developed, usable and accessible site.
The Prize was awarded on Thursday 28, at the end of the first day of Web Directions South. We were very honoured to have Nigel McFarlane's parents at the ceremony, and the Prize was awarded by Nigel's sister, Colleen.
Congratulations too to Glass Onion, developers of the The Australian College of Physical Education site - highly commended by the Jury.
Thank you to all the nominees, and a particularly big thank you to Andy Coffey, for his painting "Page Impression" which was awarded to the winners of the prize, and to the Judges for their huge efforts and their expertise in deciding this year's winner.
We'll shortly be publishing some comments and thoughts from the Judges regarding the sites they saw - things developers are doing well, things that we could improve. So keep an eye here.
The following six sites were the finalists for the inaugural award in 2006. Congraulations to them, and indeed to all our entrants. The quality of the work entered was of a very high standard.