D&AD Blog

Augmented Reality

Simon Sankaraya, aka Sanky, is a founding partner of interactive agency AllofUs and D&AD Deputy President.

Sanky sees brands getting very excited about an emerging technological toy recently. “Augmented Reality (AR) combines real-world images with computer-generated content on screen,’ he says.  “It enhances what we see, hear, feel and smell.”  

A basic form of it has been in use in broadcast for a while – like when weather reporters stand in front of changing weather maps (lately full of rain clouds). 

 
“As always brands want to take advantage of new developments in technology but it’s a question of using things appropriately,’ says Sanky. “There’s a way to go until AR is being used most effectively.” 

Sanky feels that AR at its best results from a magic mix - “a great concept, annoyingly deft execution and a ‘real world’ benefit”.  He’s found 3 projects that are each getting an element of this mix right.  “I’m looking forward to seeing projects in the future that fuse them all together, then we’d have a benchmark,’ he says.

The best project that Sanky’s seen is in terms of concept is www.weareautobots.com.  The site launched this summer to promote the opening of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.  Fans get to see what they look like with the original 3D CGI head of ‘legendary’ Autobot leader Optimus Prime.  “This is a great idea for content,’ says Sanky.  “If I was a kid, I’d be giddy.”

The Picture Production Group created the Autobot site for Paramount Pictures international. The PPC’s Dan Light wants to take Augmented Reality forward in future projects.  “The key is to enable people to capture and share personalised, augmented video,’ he says.  Now that it’s technically possible, Light says his team is looking at how they might use it with upcoming movie projects.

Two more projects represent the other crucial ingredients of Sanky’s magic mix. Toppstown.com, a US site created by Wondergroup, has taken the US childhood tradition of trading sports cards to the virtual world. 

“I really like the way this extends something that already exists,’ says Sanky.  “It’s also a social thing, which is great for kids.”

For execution, nothing beats the projects by Swiss designer Camille Scherrer. Le Monde des Montagnes, is an interactive project that reveals the secrets hidden inside a book. “It’s a beautifully crafted narrative with the tech hidden away.  I’m a little bit jealous’, says Sanky.

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Christmas Advent Window

Two D&AD Student of the Year winners are bringing Christmas cheer to east London.  Harri Leppälä and Petra Muda won the prize just this summer and we are really happy to report, they are now gainfully employed by Wieden+Kennedy.  They're part of the creative team behind W+K’s interactive Advent Calendar this year.

You can check out the real world version at the agency's office on Hanbury Street in London.  Each day a new door opens  revealing street objects sourced from the local neighbourhood – but the everyday mundane objects inside have been given a Christmas twist. 

We caught up with Harri last week to find out how things have been going since they picked up their Pencil in London. 

"Everything went really fast after we got home from the Student Awards. We were in contact with a couple of agencies already, but when we got an e-mail from W+K we got really excited, and fortunately we impressed them enough to be here today.  We moved to London on a Monday and started working on Tuesday. We were pretty overwhelmed, because this was our first job in advertising and we had just moved to a new city.

It’s been over 3 months since we started. It still feels like it was yesterday but at the same time it feels like we have been here a lot longer. We have mostly been working on Nokia, among other things we are working on some stuff for their latest phone N900 where we involve users of the device.  It’s been great so far, everyone is really nice and helpful. And now we are just trying to learn as much as possible."

We love to hear how our 'alumni' are getting on.  Let us know if you have an update.

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Behind the Idea: Apple iMac

Co-founder of internationally renowned product design consultancy SeymourPowell, Dick Powell was awarded a D&AD President’s Award for his outstanding contribution to design in 1995.  Pick your way through an Argos catalogue, and it’s fair to say that his consultancy has created most of the products you’ll find in there. SeymourPowell will soon be taking us to the stars, having designed the interiors of Virgin Galactic’s spacecraft that was unveiled last week.

Powell wants to see one of the new Apple iMacs under his Christmas tree this year, which he describes as just the latest in a long evolutionary line of design excellence.  “It started with the ground-breaking translucent multi-coloured computers launched on an unsuspecting world in 1998,’ he says. 

“They turned the home computer from a dull grey technical box festooned by wires into a slick desirable consumer product.” 

The third generation iMacs were the first ‘all in one’ flat screen computers (with all the gubbins concealed flat behind the screen).  The fourth generation iMac picked up D&AD’s most coveted award for creative excellence - the famous Black Pencil. “And now, just when you thought it couldn’t get any better, along comes the fifth generation iMac,’ Powell adds. 

Designed by Apple’s Design team, led by Jonathan Ive, Powell says iMac’s look and feel derives inexorably from a fanatical obsession with functional integrity, detail, material and a relentless distillation of complexity. It produces a contemporary style, but it’s a style mapped firmly by the classic aesthetic values of form, proportion, balance and composition. 

 

“There is an intellectual completeness about Apple’s products, evidenced by their singular and uncompromising vision, that goes much deeper than just their look and feel. And it is this which makes them so compelling,’ says Powell.  

With its surround-less screen and floating form, iMac is a product, as Jony Ive says “with nothing that doesn’t need to be there”. It is utterly simple.  Powell challenges readers to look around the back and try to resist the temptation to run a hand over the rear surface, “It’s stunning,’ he says.

The latest generation of iMacs also comes with another little product likely to sweep up design awards everywhere - Magic Mouse: the world’s first multi-touch mouse, with a touch sensitive surface enabling all of the gestural control now familiar from the iPhone - swiping, scrolling and pinching. It’s the future…and it’s here now.

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Retail therapy

Apparently we’re all shopping online these days, so why doesn’t it seem to have affected the crowds and endless queues that are a hallmark of Christmas shopping misery each year?  We salute the designers who create spaces that work brilliantly, look beautiful and – dare we say it? – make it worth battling the crowds. 

Heatherwick Studio won a D&AD Black Pencil 1998 for their groundbreaking take on Harvey Nichol’s shop windows in Knightsbridge.  They created a single façade by using a single 200 metre-long element, twisting across the shop-front.  Weaving in and out of the windows, it climbed up the façade by up to ten metres.

 

Chocolate Research Facility, Asylum, In-Book 2009

A haven for chocolate lovers - an actual chocolate bar.  The Chocolate Research Facility in Singapore sports clinical white interiors and a shop window containing rows of LED numbers, akin to the running numbers in a laboratory. But wait, there's more - the shop offers products in 100 different flavours with a distincttive monochromatic box for each bar.  Turn the box around and things take a patterned and printed twist.

La Maison Unique, Heatherwick Studio, Nomination 2007

Heatherwick Studio was nominated for its Longchamp flagship design. With a retail space situated above street level, the challenge was to draw people up into the store from the street. The studio's solution uses natural light from a large glazed core cut through the building to draw people up a stair landscape to the floor above. 

 

Freitag Shop Zurich, Markus and Daniel Freitag, Yellow Pencil 2007  

In 1993, graphic designers, Markus and Daniel Freitag, were inspired by the the Zurich transit intersection in front of their flat and designed a messenger bag made of old truck tarpaulins, used cycle inner tubes, car seat belts and airbags. In 2006 they decided to sell their bags-made-from-tarps in a shop-made-from-containers. The Freitag Shop Zurich is completely built from rusty, recycled freight containers, which were gutted, reinforced, piled up and secured. 

Puma Red World, GBH, In-Book 2008

The aim of this large project was to inject the Puma brand attitude into the shopping experience of its flagship stores - the result a series of 10 trompe l’oeil changing rooms, super lifelike silicon mannequins, a VideoGobo, which projects a virtual puma that roams the store and sleeps in the window at night.  There is also a wider library of images and an interactive shoe wall, which displays film clips that are triggered when a show is lifted or put down. 

 

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Neville Brody President's Lecture: Q&A

Neville Brody's President's Lecture took place on 25 November.  About 1000 people turned up to hear Brody discuss his work and to come to some conclusion about whether or not the man is a genius or wanker.

Do you like the prospect of global culture?

Who is as innovative as Alexander Rodchenko?

and finally, Genius or Wanker?

The film of the whole lecture is currently being edited, and we'll let you know when it's up online.  In the meantime,  you can see other past President's Lecture films here.

New Blood: Graduate festival moves to east London

New Blood will be undergoing radical transformation and moving to Shoreditch in east London next summer.

2009 New Blood Exhibition at Olympia. Photo Credit: Christine Donnier-Valentin

The exhibition element will take up one week of graduate show Free Range from 24-29 June. We'll fill the Truman Brewery with the best advertising and design courses from our University Network membership.  The exhibition will be complemented by a range of events and activities arranged in partnership with creative organisations and companies in the area.

 

Laura Woodroffe, Director of Education & Professional Development says “New Blood will centre around networking – a crucial skill for students to learn. Where better to learn that than in the middle of one of London’s creative hubs?  We’re going to take over Shoreditch and are calling on all our industry friends in the area to work with us to participate in creative ways.  We will run a series of industry events, along with workshops and training for students and tutors.  Additional content will be provided by our education partners Shellsuitzombie, who will run activities within the exhibition itself.”

Tamsin O'Hanlon, Free Range Director said “Free Range and D&AD New Blood are quite simply stronger by working together. Through this partnership we will be better able to support tomorrows' creative talent and their tutors.”

Chris Waite, the Course Leader at University College Falmouth says “New Blood has always been a motivating and inspiring occasion for our Graphic Design, Illustration and Advertising students."

"It’s a great opportunity for them to show off their talents to a genuinely influential audience.  The move of venue to Shoreditch – smack in the middle of London’s communications industry – promises not only a great show, but also a whole series of satellite workshop and training events, to be run in collaboration with the kind of organisations where our graduates aspire to work.  The potential for networking – students, employers, tutors, media – is without equal.  We’re looking forward to it immensely.”

“This is a prime opportunity for the industry,’ said Greg Quinton, D&AD Education Chairman and Creative Partner at The Partners.  “Not only will it be incredibly convenient for many to be able to simply drop in to the exhibition, the savvy within the industry should also be getting in touch with D&AD to organise events that get those graduates into their agencies and studios.  Agencies and graduates both learn so much about ’agency fit’ by simply sharing a bit of time in their own space/habitat/turf/caravan/etc.”  

Behind the Idea: Meerkat

Past President Michael Johnson has made this week's selection for Metro.

He's impressed by the rise and rise of Aleksandr Orlov – the Russian Meerkat who’s taken over TV and the web in his ongoing campaign to differentiate his brand from ComparetheMarket.com. 

Orlov has become a cult phenomenon since the campaign launched in January 2009 with over 600,000 friends on Facebook and 33,000 followers on twitter. Orlov has extended his reach to a celebrity podcast and now there’s even a cuddly toy available in Harrods.  Rumour has it that there is even more to come from the world’s most famous Meerkat in 2010.

This is what Michael Johnson has to say about the campaign:

A great product or unique service makes advertising one of the easiest jobs ever– just tell the consumer what it does, why it’s great, then go home, job done. So the first iPod and first iPhone made advertising a doddle because the product WAS the ad.

But in markets where products seem dull and undifferentiated? Much, much trickier. A classic example is ‘market comparison’ sites - acres of green, blue and white cyberspace stuffed with endless jolly couples willing you to fritter endless unjolly hours shaving 3 quid off your car insurance. 

Then along came a mad Russian meerkat called Aleksandr. And an annoyed and slightly victimised one at that, cross that you wanted to compare markets, not meerkats. With one slightly barmy joke (or bad pun, or slice of genius, you decide), Compare the Market has become a brand.

Briefed to create a campaign that linked both the words ‘compare’ and ‘market’ and somehow instill genuine love and affection, VCCP (the agency) has created a classic. 

Have we found our turn of the decade Smash Martians or Hofmeister bear? Perhaps. Launched only in January, Aleksandr already seems part of the zeitgeist. Enough people enjoy the joke to visit the real site and doing some actual comparing, the site has 100% more visitors than a year ago, and our velvet-jacketed friend joins that list of characters created to sell ‘stuff’ that becomes more memorable than the stuff itself.

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Want to work in advertising?

Are you finding it hard to get in to advertising or even just to get a placement? Nigel Edginton-Vigus, Creative Director at Wunderman has been there.

When you’re busy ‘doing’ your career, you don’t really stop to analyse how you got into it in the first place do you? Or you don’t until the D&AD ask you. So with the delightful Dr Rhiannon James in the padded leather, wing-backed armchair (no doubt peering attentively over a pair of expensive horn rimmed spectacles) and me lying prostrate on a comfy chaise longue, here goes. “Mummy!” Oh dear, let’s start again.

Steven King was once asked why he’d chosen to write horror novels. He replied; “What makes you think I had a choice?” And that’s pretty much how I feel about this game.

Yes I did terribly at school, except in art and English, so you can see where I was heading. And true to form I flourished at art-college. Although even there I spent most of the final year on placement at all the best agencies I could get into (working all hours with the brilliant Dave Buonaguidi). Of course, there’s the ultimately rewarding slog through placements that I went through just like everyone else. Over the years, I’ve also sold Betterware door-to-door, been an apprentice panel beater and sprayer, driven breakdown trucks, worked in bars and sold print services. I’ve been a designer (I won prizes for it and everything!), ran my own design agency for 6 years and worked in both new business and account services. I’ve even worked on a traveling funfair, which I loved, and I’ve been redundant. Twice.

But while I’ve enjoyed doing all these jobs and learnt something valuable from them all, I’ve always felt compelled to be in advertising.

And D&AD’s always been there to help me. In fact, here’s a little story that might give you hope if you’re trying to break into the industry yourself. I was ‘downsized’ from a job as a new business manager at a design agency, back in ’96. I was in my late 30s, had a two-year old daughter and suddenly, no income. Christ! However, the situation forced me to think about what I really wanted to do: write ads. So I signed up for a D&AD workshop, got a book together, pestered all the CDs/teams I met, designed a mailer and within weeks I was working as the oldest junior writer Carlson had ever employed – as well as the cheapest! I won’t bore you with my career trajectory from there. But it perhaps shows that hard work, tenacity, grim determination, enthusiasm and love of what you do (plus a generous measure of good luck) can take you quite a long way.

And when you work with such bright, fun, talented, exciting, switched on, curious, creative, often dysfunctional and always passionate individuals, what’s not to love about the business?

So that’s how I got into advertising. Now you know and I’ve remembered.

On the subject of getting into the business, one of the most important things you can do as someone trying to get into this industry is consider yourself as a brand. Then make sure you market and promote yourselves. Which is why I always set a self-promotion brief to every placement team I take on. Here’s my current  favourite from Mark Lees and Laura Davies. They’re now on an extended contract with us at Wunderman. So it worked.   

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Tjav1JFqi0

Although it’s got me thinking: how did advertising get into me? But that’s months of analysis.

Are you taking the diss?

Steve Price is founder of Plan-B Studio and writer of the www.designweak.com blog. Having worked both as a designer/creative director and a tutor, he has been inspired to discuss the merits of writing a dissertation for a bachelor's degree. Both he and D&AD are interested to hear your thoughts!

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‘Does MTV design or create Youth Culture?’... ‘Visualising Boundaries: Between Architecture and Design’. You’ve not read these titles? Are they not on your Amazon wishlist? No? Really? That’s because these are the titles of my dissertations. The first for my Bachelors, the second my Masters. The former I believe could be completely scrapped. Not the contextual part, but the ten-thousand-word-dissertation part.

Why? Simple. No-one has ever asked about or been bothered to listen to me recounting my dissertation topic even with an invitation to do so. Not one. It is high-time we revised this part of a BA degree.

‘Art schools prompt you to try and go in to depth about your ideas and you end up writing documents after documents. It makes you feel like that is how the real world exists, and actually it’s not true in all cases. Often you might be working with television companies who manage to present an idea for a ten programme series, with a few million pounds budget, on a single sheet of A4. It’s about being able to articulate an idea as simply as possible.’
Nicolas Roope, Creative Founder at Poke interviewed by Core77

The design education comes in for harsh criticism amongst myself and many of my peers. The same problems are still being met - basic, and fundamental skills aren’t present in many graduates; as they weren’t when I graduated. Helping to produce designers that can think conceptually is important, but it is now only one portion of a very big pie that all too often comes out half baked (sorry I used to be a chef).

I never understood the need for writing a dissertation. Surely I wouldn’t have made it through to the interview if I wasn’t able to read or write? Arguably, if I had, I should be welcomed and embraced for having the ability to surf through life without those basic communication requirements. So if not to test your language and grammar - what is the use of a dissertation today?

It is an annual grind for all concerned - the students who spend months hibernating the whole process under a layer of procrastination and hangovers. Teachers who are burdened with the task of tutoring and modulating them throughout the process. What a waste of time and resource. Not to mention a complete waste of materials. In the final year of my BA there were some ninety-six students. Each student was forced to submit two, hardback bound copies of their dissertation (on my MA at Central Saint Martins, five copies!). Working on the basis that each dissertation was sixty pages long, that’s 11,520 sheets of A4
alone!

I have an idea. Rather than a lengthy dissertation what about five reviews/commentaries on the chosen topics that interest each individual student; these could be reviews of books, web sites, technology, projects by agencies, interviews... Minimum of 500 words each. These could be posted on their own blogs, or submitted as PDFs on Slideshare for all to see and read. The emphasis is to help them simplify their message. To refine their skills as communicators.

These topics would be set between tutor and student at the start of each semester. Each student would then present their findings/topic to an audience. Perhaps in varying formats; Pecha Kucha, or presented along side only the use of images, or sound, or words? Each format should set to test and challenge how the student deals with differing formats and audiences. Heckling encouraged.

Or, as part of New Blood, create a design graduate summit whereby the best presentations/essays get to present their ideas and findings to the people that might want to employ them.

The design education has to evolve and right now it doesn’t appear to be doing so at the same pace of the industry. Graduates are already under increasing pressure to perform and do so almost immediately. Without giving them the necessary time to learn practical skills I’m afraid that their efforts will be as useful as their dissertations which will sit dormant on their book shelf, just like mine.

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Sir Ken Robinson spoke at the Cumulus conference in London earlier this year and also commented on this topic. His argument was if we are looking for a nation of creative communicators, why do we ask creative graduates to present in a form that they are not expert in (ie long-form essay writing) as opposed to using the visual methods and craft which they have been developing on in their degree. If you would like to hear more and what Sir Ken has to say on this issue, please have a look at his TED talk on education and creativity. 

Tiptoe through Pencil history

Our new Archive has just gone live.  You can search for work across the Annuals back to 2005 by title, entrant, brand and of course, by individual. 

A quick search has revealed the 79 entries that include President Braze in the credits.

Work from 2003 & 2004 will start to become available from next week.  We'll let you know as new work goes up.