Cut&Paste is an international, multicity digital design comeptition. For information on upcoming city events and how to watch the events as live webcasts, visit the Cut&Paste website. You can also read an interview with Cut&Paste regional director Lizzie Ostrom.
I enter the Coronet Theatre to a whir of technological activity. On the main stage, computer equipment draped in wires waits patiently for the competition that is about to ensue. On the ground in front of the stage, four more desktop setups are being put through their paces by some rather frantic-looking designers who are steadfastly ignoring the crowd growing around them.
I am at London's second annual Cut&Paste Digital Design Tournament where graphic designers compete against each other and the clock to create designs from scratch in front of a live audience. The winners receive top of the line design software and a trip to NYC to compete in the Cut&Paste finals against other regional winners.
Contestants compete in one of three categories: 2D with 15 minutes to create a flat image, 3D with 20 minutes to create a 3D-rendered object, and Motion, with 8 hours to create a 15-second animated clip. The motion designers, who have been working all day, give barely a glance as I hover above their screens. My attention is diverted as Cut&Paste kicks off with the first 3D round. With a cheer from the audience, the designers are off, rushing to build a model that fits the enigmatic theme 'rescue package'. 
The crowd is decidedly hipster and is made up more of those who wear trendy designs than the types you might expect to find in a techy design job. While this, of course, makes the designs we see tonight no less exciting or valid, there is a certain amount of pandering by the contestants. A banana quickly becomes a more graphic representation of male anatomy (with the caption 'sorry mum!') and a representation of 'evolution' takes the form of an anthropomorphic dinosaur flipping steak burgers. What this means, however, is that when the judges choose a winner based on skill, style and use of the tools provided, the audience favourite tends to get left out.
As we move into the second heat, I wander over to the display to try my hand at 15 minute designing myself. A rather disappointing experience with Photoshop later, I discover that's barely enough time to create a stick figure, let alone a fully-fledged design, and my respect for the contestants increases exponentially.
Cut&Paste is absolutely brilliant in concept but by the third hour of the competition, audience energy is slightly lagging and we've still got two more rounds to go. A tighter schedule would not go amiss. Additionally, the projectors are quite dark so some designs appear only as blobs on the screen, leading to more audience disgruntlement when their favourites are beaten by an unidentifiable dark shape.
Yet despite any mishaps Cut&Paste is a fun, music-filled creative release entirely different from any other event in the city. For every criticism throughout the night, it's been in reaction to my belief – and the clear belief of those around me – that Cut&Paste is a fantastic combination of creativity, competition and clubbing, and deserves to be long successful. Here's to Cut&Paste 2010.
Click here to visit the Cut&Paste official site.
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