D&AD Blog

Behind the Idea: Recode Decode

St Luke’s Creative Partner Al Young has spotted an innovative approach to promoting a major digital art exhibition.

The V&A launched Decode: Digital Design Sensations in collaboration with contemporary arts organisation onedotzero in December – the first time the museum has staged a digital art exhibition. The challenge was to create a campaign that would appeal not only to regular museumgoers, but also to a highly digitally literate audience. 

‘Karl Marx wanted the means of production to fall into the hands of the proletariat so that revolution could occur,’ says Young.  He believes the V&A matched these principles with its interactive approach to Decode, and it’s advertising campaign has followed similar ‘revolutionary’ principles.

Recode Decode was an open source campaign created by digital agency Saint/Y&R.  Recode not only promoted the exhibition but extended participation to the web.  Digital artist Karsten Schmidt was commissioned to create a piece of work that could sit at the centre of the campaign.

‘Schmidt designed the beautiful animated identity for the show and gave open-source access to the coding.  It allowed the masses to re-form and submit their own new design,’ says Young. 

Work was submitted to an online gallery and the best Recodes were then used to promote the exhibition on and offline. The V&A exhibited the best of them on CBS’ new digital screens on the Underground.

Saint/Y&R Creative Director David Gamble noticed that Recode submissions kept improving as the campaign ran on.  His team even noticed digital artists from the Decode exhibition submitting pieces of their own. ‘The work got better and more ambitious as people got to grips with the application and the code,’ says Gamble. ‘Just look at the piece by Matt Swoboda, it’s fantastic, and has raised the bar even higher.’

Young is impressed that the V&A has taken on this kind of exhibition. ‘This is the sort of collective affair you’d expect at the Hayward Gallery, ICA or Tate Modern – not the V&A,’ says Young.  ‘Karl, it seems you’re alive and well in the 2010 avant-garde digital arts advertising space. And so, Victoria and Albert, are you.’

Decode: Recode from directtovideo on Vimeo.

Judging: One week to go

 

One week to go until Awards & Student Awards judging kicks off.  In this film, a few of last year's judges talk about what the experience is like.  Keep an eye on www.dandad.org for daily interviews and updates, and most importantly - the Awards results.  Student Awards results will be released in early May. 

Good luck to all our entrants!

How many judges does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

D&AD Judging 2009 at Olympia, London. Photo Credit: Christine Donnier-Valentin

We're not sure, but we might just find out in a couple of weeks when judging for the Awards & Student Awards takes place at Olympia.

We'll be announcing In-Book and Nominated results throughout the week at dandad.org, along with commentary and interviews. 

Entries selected to go In-Book are considered the best creative work of the year and will be featured in the D&AD Annual, published in October.  Nominated work may go on to win a D&AD Yellow Pencil for setting new standards of creative excellence.  The D&AD Black Pencil will be awarded to work that is truly groundbreaking.

The D&AD Student Awards will be judged over the same week.  The Student Yellow Pencil identifies the best new talent each year for the industry and kick starts careers for plenty of new graduates.  Over one-third of last year’s winners got their first job or placement as a direct result of their prize.  Not shabby!

Ideas Playground

We've partnered with YouTube to create a space for the latest, most inspiring, groundbreaking and otherwise remarkable videos in commercial creativity.  The Inspiration Channel officially launches today as the central repository of ideas online.

The rules?  

Anyone can upload videos created through work or play.  Content uploaded and tagged will appear free for anyone to browse and view.  Regular and varied guest editors will be invited to select their favourites, starting with our CEO Tim. 

Disclaimer time:

Work featured on the Inspiration Channel has not been subjected to D&AD’s judging standards or process, however it will be quality controlled to ensure the content stays relevant.  Anyone can contribute to the Channel, making it an ever growing, always changing online resource.

Behind The Magic: Bringing Print and Digital Together with QuarkXPress 8

We are pleased to present a story this week about how Gravity London use an exciting brief to learn a thing or two about merging disciplines. Seamlessly coordinating print and  digital teams to demonstrate the creative functionality of   QuarkXPress 8. The more we learn, the better our ideas can become. Thanks very much to Valentina Moressa at Quark for sharing this great case study with the tutors and students of our University Network.

Behind The Magic

Paul Anderson is the creative director at Gravity London, one of London's hippest agencies, working across TV, press, outdoor, radio, DM, ambient, experiential and the world of digital, with clients the likes of Investec, Toyota and Adecco.

At Gravity’s, like in most agencies, the creative department is split between press and digital. Paul, however, is fully aware that “there’s not going to be one or the other anymore in the world.  It’s just not really feasible.  So anything that can help the crossover of those two disciplines has got to be a great thing.”

When Gravity was approached by Quark to come up with the creative idea for a new campaign to showcase QuarkXPress 8’s Flash functionalities, the teams got together for a brainstorm and found that there was “something special about that functionality and the sort of creative tool box that it gave you. With QuarkXPress 8 you can make a transition from print to interactive in a nice easy way in an environment that you know and love”.

The big idea? “Perform magic with Flash in QuarkXPress 8”.

Paul admits: “It is effectively magic, that’s how we see it.  It’s like a little magician’s toolbox of tricks. And in the process we’ve actually learned to perform a little bit of magic ourselves  “

Gravity’s print and web team worked closely to create and craft the initial idea through to the writing, development and building of the end product: a microsite with Flash functionality, a digital advertising campaign and 100s of Flash resources that QuarkXPress users can download for free. All of this- designed and built with QuarkXPress 8.
 

Gravity also produced a series of ‘Behind the Magic’ videos to give an insight into the design challenges they faced and how they used QuarkXPress 8 to overcome them. They were using QuarkXPress 8 to combine Web design and interactive functionality in one application and found themselves simply having several ‘Eureka!' moments and realising how easy it is to create Flash resources.

Gravity’s art director, Tom West, on the creative journey with QuarkXPress 8: “As an art director, it’s very important to understand that the nature of the advertising business and the creative idea is actually moving a lot more online and a lot more interactive.  So you need to have an understanding of what is going on and the interactive side. I think the more you know, the more you learn, the better your ideas can become.”

Dipping into design history: Alan Fletcher

Alan Fletcher is an icon of post-war graphic design in Britain.  He spent over fifty years creating stunning identities for clients as prestigious and diverse as the V&A and Reuters.  He was a founding member of D&AD and founding partner of international design firm Pentagram.

His style and approach can be best understood by flicking through his seminal publication, ‘The Art of Looking Sideways’.  Fletcher himself described the book as 'a journey without a destination'.  The book is a collection of images, quotes and comments that provides insight into Fletcher’s inspiration and visual philosophy.

Here's a selection of his work.  A big thank you to Pentagram for sourcing images.

Pirelli cintura: 1961

Reuters Logo: 1965

D&AD exhibition poster, 1963

Designers Saturday: 1982 

IBM Poster Series: 1983

IBM Poster Series: 1983

IBM Poster Series: 1983

Daimler Benz Poster: 1986

Metro Wrap Competition: We Have a Winner

Metro wanted to give creatives the chance to play with their newspaper, so last month they launched a competition with D&AD.  The challenge was to produce a coverwrap that would inspire and motivate commuters on their way into work. The winning work was wrapped round this morning’s edition of the paper.

A diverse mix of work was nominated, but it was the simple, bold images that won over judges. ‘Lots of the entries brought a smile to my face which to me is no bad thing,’ said film director Ringan Ledgwidge.

A team from branding and design agency The Partners came out on top with their simple and beautiful idea to ‘make someone’s day’ – turning the wrap into a bunch of flowers by rolling up the paper.

‘We wanted the idea to have a purpose; getting people to re-use and pass on their newspaper, said Jack Renwick, Creative Director at The Partners. “Everyone likes flowers. You can use them as an emergency gift, to say sorry, or just to cheer someone up. If someone proposes using our paper I hope we get invited to the wedding!”

Thanks to everyone who entered - and congratulations to the winning team!

(L-R): Alex Woolley, Jack Renwick, Samuel Hall & Sam Griffiths