D&AD Blog

How to get a D&AD Pencil

Berwick St, Soho, London, April 2008

The D&AD Ceremony is going to be really different this year: A new venue, live music, interactive installations, and whopper of an auditorium in which to worship the best creative work in the world and the people who worked on it.
Over the past month or so we've been working with Cunning to find a lighthearted way to spread the word about the changes.
A market stall was set up in Soho and, for one (thankfully very sunny) day only, knock-off Pencils went 'on sale'.
John Hegarty, Rosie Arnold, Tiger Savage, Mark Roalfe, Michael Wolff, Gavin Gordon Rogers and Steve Henry popped by and gave Oscar winning appearances pretending to buy the pencils.
Norman the stallholder enjoyed the attention and plenty of passers tried to figure out what was going on.
Of course you can't buy a pencil, you have to win it, and this year's winners are going to have one hell of a party at which to celebrate.

Find out more about what went on and view the flickr gallery

Student Awards: Fergal's feedback

Hi guys!

Fergal - who is amazingly well organising the Student Awards this year - took the time though to give you a feedback about the Student Awards! Have a look at what he says guys, you won't be disappointed!

"I've been asked to put together a mini update from the Student Awards Judging, we are currently in the middle of the second week and the feedback has been amazing. The shortlists are being put together piece by piece and the care the juries take in the decisions they make has amazed me. Their dedication to the aims of the Student Awards has been one of the most humbling aspects of the whole process. Of course a lot of people will be disappointed that their work hasn't made it to the shortlists to appear In-Book, but if you want to see the nominated work then I suggest you come down to the New Blood exhibition in June to look at what the judges think has met some or all of the criteria. It's also a great opportunity to play guess the winner.

We will be notifying everyone together towards the end of next week regarding their success, this will be done via email, with over 3500 entries its too difficult to send out individual letters to everyone. To everyone who has entered I would like to say thanks, because of you I have been working flat out for the last two weeks.

Right, thats all I can say at the moment, please do keep checking back though as once we have announced the nominations then I will post up general feedback on the quality of each category.

Regards

Fergal"

Thank you Fergal!!

 

Hope it helps!

Until next time, Fany

Student Awards: Week 2

This week, the Student Awards take place at the D&AD school in the office.

Let's give you a quick insight on what's going on this week

Monday

• Integrated Communication/Cereals Partners UK/Curiously Cinnamon
• Graphic Design/Solar Century/PV Energy

Tuesday

• Open Briefs/Virgin Atlantic/Virgin Atlantic Airways Design
• Social Design/Design Council/Designing out of Crime

Wednesday

• Product Design/Lakeland/Solution for the Kitchen
• Open Briefs/MTV/MTV Virus

Thursday

• Advertising/Nando's/Nando's
• Open Briefs/Lastminute.com/Turn the world pink

Friday

• Graphic Design/Tigerprint/E-card Design
• Music Videos/Academy Films/Like a Rolling Stone

Let me know if you need more info!! Pictures will be available tomorrow.

Student Awards: Day 4 & 5

Hello!

Here is the schedule of the last two days at the Rochelle School (category/sponsor/brief)

Thursday:

• Environmental Design/V&A/V&A Bridge
• Advertising/Best beginnings/Breastfeeding
• Graphic Design/Burst*/Sanpros
• Advertising/Weilands/Belu
• Illustration/Paul Davis/Identity

Friday:

• Furniture Design/Vitra/Vitra Edition
• Advertising/Ogilvy/ If only I'd listened more carefully
• Graphic Design/Orion/Space Opera
• Product Design/Unilever/Rexona
• Advertising/Grazia/London Fashion Week

SO SORRY for this delay!

Student Awards: Day 1, 2 & 3

The student Awards began 2 days ago (sorry for the delay by the way, but everybody was involved in setting up your work!!) and will last 2 weeks. They take place at the Rochelle School near Old Street during the 1st week and then at the D&AD 'school' during the 2nd . It is less spectacular than the Professional Awards (less pieces of work exhibited per day) as you can see from the pictures, but still, the quality of some pieces of work is impressive!

 

Let's give you a short description of the Student Awards schedule

Monday: (Category/Sponsor/Brief)

• Animation/HSI London/The creation of a character
• Advertising/Tequila/The Army
• Graphic Design/Ted Baker/Ted Baker
• Advertising/Breakthrough Brest Cancer/Brest Cancer Awareness Month
• Graphic Design/Research Studio/FUSE

Tuesday:

• Advertising/This is Real Art/The Royal Opera House (I saw beautiful things in this category!)
• Photography/Alzheimer's Society/The fight against dementia

Wednesday:

• Advertising/ClearChannel/ClearChannel
• Graphic Design/Hamleys/Hamleys 250th anniversary (amazing things as well)
• What else to do?
• Product Design/Orange/The future of the Mobile Phone

Next days' program will be published tomorrow!

See this link for detailed information about the briefs http://www.dandad.org/studentawards08/

That's a wrap.

Judging Week finished off today with beer and biscuits being delivered to a lot of exhausted judges.  Today was the last of the four day process of judging the best creative work of the year here at Excel in London.  At the end of it now, with the posters coming down and the tables becoming increasingly empty, there is a feeling of satisfaction and finality among the judges.  They spent countless hours today in deep discussion over entries, knowing that the work they decided on would be deemed the best of the year.

In closing of this massive event, we would like to send out HUGE thank you to all the judges who took a week out of their lives to pour over the hundreds of entries and help us in redefining the standards of creativity for 2008.  This whole thing would not be possible without your participation.  Once again, thank you!

Now that the votes are in it's time to wait.  As we speak, our results room is finding out the winning work, but for the rest of us, we just have to hold tight!

Until next time, Fany and Elizabeth

Judging Week: Day 3

Today, new judges arrived for some exciting categories:
     -Writing for advertising
    -Music Videos (very cool, according to us...)
    -Viral
    -Photography
    -Branding    
    -Gaming
    -Packaging Desing (lots of cool stuff in there too)

However, the walls and tables are slowly emptying themselves as the first rounds for in-book and nominations have gone through.
So, the Production team has been busy scurrying along (see picture below, where you'll also see that despite all the work everyone is still having a lot of fun!), taking the unsuccessful entries down, rearranging everything and leaving some space for tomorrow's categories. So, stay tuned, there's still more to come...

Signed off by Mirella & Fany!!

Judging Week: Day 2

Today, about 200 judges showed up at Excel to judge 14 categories, including (ready? it's a long list.):

Ambient
Direct
Press Advertising
TV and Cinema Crafts
Online Advertising
Magazine and Newspaper Design
Mobile Marketing
Writing for Design
Book Design
TV and Cinema Graphics
Poster Advertising
Graphic Design
TV and Cinema Advertising
Websites

Many of the juries were very pleased with the work and others, not as much.  It was difficult to stay enthusiastic throughout the entire day...you can't blame them can you?  Having to watch TV commericals for 7 and a half hours, it's a bit tiring.   But in general, the judges were excited to see the work and we heard numerous comments at the end of the day along the lines of "The work was great" or "This whole thing is amazing." 

The judges were joined this morning by a group of press attending the annual Judging Week Press Tour.  They had the opportunity to tour the venue, see the work and interview Simon.  Some of the press that attended were The Drum, Contagious, Advanced Photoshop, Adobo, and Skirts in Advertising/Publicidade de Saia.   We are also lucky enough to have two guys from ihaveanidea, Brett and Reinhard, here documenting the entire week of Judging, getting some great footage and interviews. 

So, now that the preliminary rounds of judging are done and the metaphorical ice is broken, it's time for the really good stuff; the discussions, heated debate and brawls over what qualifies a Yellow Pencil. 

Stay tuned!

Signing off, Fany and Elizabeth

Judging week begins!

When?

   
                                                                                                

 

Why?

 

 

 

Where?

Who?

Judging week began early this morning with Simon Waterfall addressing a sleepy looking bunch of judges.  The Television and Cinema Advertising and Websites juries plowed through the first round of judging today.  Meanwhile, our fabulous production team did a lot of bending and taping, putting up hundreds of posters and setting up tables in preparation for the rest of the juries who arrive tomorrow.  So, it's official, Judging Week 2008 has begun!

Judging Launch Party

The Judging launch Party took place yesterday near Brick Lane .
We – Judges and D&AD staff – went to a trivial, colourless, unimaginative, not-cool-at-all place as you can see from the pictures.

PlayStations, huge screens, a roof garden, and 3 floors….Nothing more to say!! It was just amazing!!!!

Judging

Next week we once again decamp to ExCeL for D&AD Awards judging. Last year, we let Gwen Yip run wild in the main hall on behalf of the blog, with brilliant results. This year, we thought we'd let two of our wonderful interns, Elizabeth and Fany, give their impressions of all the action as it happens.

So if you happen to judging next week and one of them asks to take your photo for the blog, be nice!

We're not saying a word...

http://www.designweek.co.uk/Articles/138020/Banksy+to+take+top+DAD+role.html

Ivan Chermayeff's President Lecture

Here's another President's Lecture clip that we've added to our vimeo channel. Legendary designer Ivan Chermayeff talks about some of better known, and less well known, work.

Of course, D&AD members can watch President's Lectures online in their entirety. 

Letter from Tokyo

Way way way overdue with the blog - we've been in Tokyo since Tuesday morning with Pres Simon Waterfall and ex-Pres Michael Johnson.  We're here for a couple of events to support the D&AD exhibition at ADMT (part of UK-Japan 2008).  It's been running for a few weeks now - they've had lots of visitors and it looks great.

Thanks to our sponsors, Virgin Atlantic, we were upgraded for the flight over.  Oh yes, Upper Class is all it's cracked up to be.  We spent some time in the Yellow Pencil winner Clubhouse before our flight and it was lovely.  We regretted not checking in earlier so we could take advantage of the spa.  Next time, eh? 

Dinner was in Shimbashi - we wandered a rabbit-warren of streets filled with noodle shops and sushi bars.  It's remarkably hard to find a place big enough to fit a group of 6 in Tokyo.  We ended up at a great little place, however, the language barrier led to me receiving a plate of noodles covered in squid ink for dinner.  It tasted fine, but I'm sure the photos will be posted later of my blue-black lips after slurping them up.  Speaking of language barriers- the ashtray at our table seemed to send a bit of a strange message.

We ended up at an even tinier bar, after only a few wrong turns (note to self, never believe Simon when he says, 'it's this way, I'm sure it is!'), we found it down a side street off a side street in Shibuya.  It fits about 6 people and has velvet walls covered with bizarre antique things.  Think lots of gilt, oil paintings of horses, ornate mini-chandeliers...I think there was a deer's head hanging there too. 

The Education Seminars the next day were packed with college students.  Laura talked about how to get noticed and get that first job and Simon & Michael showed them some great work.  Vicky has been playing official photographer at our events, so she'll load them up when she blogs later.

Michael & Simon were both on the list for the 5th anniversary Pecha Kucha that night at Superdeluxe in Roppongi.  It was a packed event with all kinds of people sharing their inspiration and having a great time doing it.  Thanks to Mark Dytham & Astrid Klein for giving us such a warm welcome - they won a Yellow Pencil in 2005 for their amazing Leaf Chapel.

Yesterday was the D&AD Forum, which we held in partnership with The Asahi Shimbun.  Dara introduced D&AD to an invited crowd of creative directors and some of the newspaper's clients.  Simon gave a keynote speech and the event rounded off with an excellent and very lively panel discussion including Simon, Michael and Mr. Teruo Kurosaki, CEO of sasugasouzoushuudan and Mr. Satoshi Takamatsu, CEO/Creative Director of ground.  The poor MC had to jump in to finish up the event, as I think the 4 of them would have happily spent the whole afternoon bouncing ideas off of each other.

After a drinks reception hosted by The Asahi Shimbun offices, we took off for dinner - this time in a Chinese restaurant with an unusual centrepiece. Take a close look at the bell ringer (the thing covered with lights) and you'll understand our surprise.  Even more surprising are the composed diners beneath it.

Student Awards Deadline Day

We're moving into the final 30 minutes before the Student Awards close for entry and the team are receiving lots of calls from people worrying about whether their entry has made it here or not.

If that's you, I'm afraid the best we can do is to let you see if you can spot your work amongst this lot!

President's Lectures are now online!

Here's a thing.

From now on President's Lectures will be available to watch online. All D&AD members will be able to watch complete lectures in the D&AD members area. 

But if you're not a member, you'll still be able to see segments of lectures on our newly opened Vimeo channel. We'll be adding more little bits of lecturish heaven up there all the time, so subscribe to the channel if you want to keep up.

We've launched with the Autumn 2007 series, and will be uploading older lectures over the next weeks and months. The current Spring 2008 series will go up in the autumn.

Here's Irma Boom talking about the most beautiful book in the world:

D&AD @ GroupHub

A couple of weeks ago Maeve was on the panel of GroupHub's Industry Awards Night, held in Preston.  They've just put up lots of nice photos of the event. Here's Maeve showing off a Pencil:

Photo by Andy Livesy, courtesy of GroupHub

Snowdrops, Pancakes and President's Lectures

Eye covers, by Nick Bell.


As we fight through the last weeks of winter, bouyed by the arrival of small white flowers and fattened with  stodgy pancakes, what better way to further warm the cockles than with a shiny new season of President's Lectures.

Nick Bell kicks things off in Manchester, before we come back to London for a Digital Pecha Kucha, Bob Greenberg of R/GA, Sir Christopher Frayling, and Experimental Jetset.

Happy February.

D&AD on your iThingy

Got an iPhone or iTouch?
Like a lovely D&AD icon on your home screen?

Simply browse to www.dandad.org on your iTouch/Phone, click on the '+' at the bottom of the page, and then 'Add to Home Screen'.

Pretty, huh?

On being Thoughtful

The guys at Thoughtful in Manchester decided hold a tombola competition for students last year.  The top prize?  One of the agency's copies of the D&AD Annual 2007 (all three are Members - three cheers!).  Criteria for entry - commit a 'random act of Thoughtfulness', take a picture of it, and send it in. 

Well, the draw took place today to coincide with our own Awards 2008 deadline (nice touch, gentlemen).  Here's the film of the draw.  Congrats to the students who won.  We're looking forward to seeing your entries into the Student Awards later this year....