The Judges (L to R): Michael Beirut, partner, Pentagram, New York • Ron Pompei, co-founder/creative director, Pompei A.D., New York • Jonathan Alger, founding partner, C&G Partners LLC, New York • Chris Calori, principal, Calori & Vanden-Eynden/Design Consultants, New York • Kevin Szell, partner and design director, The Moderns, New York • Peter Dixon, senior partner, creative director, Lippincott Mercer, New York

Judging by this year's Exhibit Design Award winners, it's time to stop making excuses for bad design. Facing the industry's biggest challenges, the winners didn't cave in to conventional excuses, they eradicated them.

Refusing to blame low budgets for lackluster design, winners cranked out sophisticated exhibits using an average of $83 per square foot - $56 per square foot less than the Exhibit Designers and Producers Association's $139 average for custom island exhibits. A portfolio void of big-brand clients and pristine products is no excuse for dead design either, as winners created refreshing exhibits for clients hawking everything from tile and toilets to garbage-collection services.

And when it comes to floor plans, small sizes are no defense for small-minded spaces. Churning out designs for everything from a 6,500-square-foot exhibit to a small but mighty 20-by-20-foot booth, winners proved it's not the size of your space that matters, but how you use it.

Equally unfettered by the reins of rationalizations, this year's judges lauded designers for their "no excuses" approach and their ability to marry products and marketing with art and aesthetics. Sequestered in a New York design studio, judges worked through a bevy of entries - representing 13 countries such as Turkey, Hungary, China, Denmark, Thailand, and South Africa - settling on 15 winners they called "intellectual and sophisticated" and at times "whimsical and effortless."

So hats off to the 2008 Exhibit Design Award winners. Like it or not, they've set the bar at an astounding new height - and designated 2008 as "the year of no excuses." e