D&AD Blog

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!

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

D&AD09 launches next month

D&AD09: Creative excellence in design and advertising will launch next month.  This book is the result of D&AD and TASCHEN's partnership to make The Annual available to anyone.  Designed by Jeremy Leslie, it will be available in two versions; English, German, and French as well English, Italian, and Portuguese.

The D&AD awards panel judges over 20,000 pieces of work from design studios, advertising agencies, branding consultancies, film production and photographic agencies, digital media pioneers, and other creative firms from all over the globe. Winners receive the D&AD Yellow Pencil – or in the case of exceptional and outstanding work, the rare Black Pencil Award.

The TASCHEN D&AD Annual is an absolute must-have reference work for anyone interested in creativity, communication, design, or advertising.  It will be available to purchase from March.

For further information and to pre-order copies, visit: http://www.taschen.com/pages/en/catalogue/design/all/06756/facts.dad_annual.htm

By any means necessary: Ambient Communications

It stops us in the street, pops up in pubs and hopefully brings something new and entertaining to your day.  Ambient advertising communicates ideas directly to consumers by 'any means necessary’.  The category has been a fixed asset at D&AD since 2000.

With agency BBH New York, Oasis took a whole new approach to promoting the release of ‘Dig Out Your Soul’ in 2008, and it won them a nomination at D&AD. Weeks before the album was released the band taught over twenty New York City buskers the new songs, who were then unleashed on the streets to perform.  The campaign got worldwide press coverage and content captured by fans garnered 200,000 views on YouTube, Flickr and the NYC website.

A documentary premiered MySpace and received over 520,000 views and a second wave of global press coverage. Result? Dig Out Your Soul became the first US top ten album for Oasis in ten years.

In 2006 Canadian agency Rethink went In-Book for placing what appeared to be three million dollars in a public transport shelter for 3M.  The company wanted to showcase the qualities of its new product, scotchshield, a see-through film that, when applied to glass, makes it almost bulletproof. So close, but still out of reach! Have a look here.

For the FIFA 2006 World Cup kick-off, TBWAWhybin Auckland catapulted Adidas' audience into the air at over 170km/hour. It also won the agency a Yellow Pencil in 2006.

Effortless? You decide

In 2008, ad agency WCRS set out to update Brylcreem – the men’s hairstyling essential of old.  They wanted to appeal to young guys keen to look cool without a fuss.  PR buzz was generated through a casting campaign on MySpace for the star and the band.

Juggler Sam Veale won after posting a film of him performing tricks ‘effortlessly’. Four-piece band B Raymond and the Voicettes won the competition to supply the laidback soundtrack.  Each take had to be completed in a single shot and it took three weeks of training, 2 days of filming and over 200 takes before the team got what they wanted.  Spot if you can, the tricks that were given a little extra help to pull off.  The commercial went on to win 2 Yellow Pencils in 2008 for special effects and production design.

Here are some other chef-d'oeuvres that merit a second look.

In 2007 Nexus Productions produced 'Videogame' in collaboration with Wieden+Kennedy Portland.  Meet Ray, a menacing, computer-game tough guy. Wait, isn't this all a little familiar? Haven't we seen this somewhere before?  But look what happens when he takes a swig of Coca Cola.  'Videogame' went In-Book twice, in TV& Cinema Advertising Crafts/Animation and Motion Graphics and in TV & Cinema Advertising.

Some more sobering work from AMV.BBDO and Therapy Films for Choice FM. The radio station wanted to draw attention to the reality of pulling the trigger of a gun and its devastating consequences.  'Kill the Gun' went In-Book in 2008 in TV & Cinema Crafts/Practical Special Effects.
 

See you at ADFEST

We're working with ADFEST to host the 2010 ADFEST+D&AD Academy in Thailand next month. The partnership will give creatives (aged under 30) in the Asia Pacific region the unprecedented opportunity to start working on their career 'toolkit'.  

Participants can explore some of the issues behind developing their own creative career, encouraged by inspirational talks from three advertising greats, Sir John Hegarty, Worldwide Creative Director at BBH and Past D&AD President, Paul Brazier, D&AD President and ECD at AMV.BBDO and Akira Kagami, Executive Officer & Global ECD, Dentsu, Inc.  The session will also include a series of practical exercises to help participants start building their own path to career development.

A maximum of 30 delegates can attend each session. Enrollment is open on a first-come-first-served basis to all registered delegates who are aged under 30. The enrollment fee is 1,000 Baht per person.

We plan to stay busy while out there, so Tim and Paul will each present a Seminar as well:

 

'Keeping a 250-year-old brand alive'

Friday, 19 March, 14.40-15.15

Arguably Ireland's most famous liquid export, Guinness is even more famous for its iconic advertising.  Paul - a veteran of almost 2 decades at AMV.BBDO - will tell the story of the brand's ongoing creative evolution.  From its poster campaigns of the 1940s, its television commercials of the 90s and naughties to its digital reinvention last year with the launch of 'Bring it to Life'.

 

'It's the End of the World as we know it... and I feel fine'
Saturday, 20 March, 14:30-15:15

There’s never been a better time to think about what exactly we’re going to rebuild. The same thing we had before, only bigger, or an agency model that is fresher, more sustainable and lot more fun?

Tim will argue for breathtaking - even alarming - changes in our technological future, offer some speculations about the consequences for marketers, and talk about the characteristics of the agencies we should now be building to service them.

All You Need Is Love or No Woman No Cry?

It’s Valentine’s Day this weekend. Love it or hate it, it can bring out some strange behaviour in people.   Here are some creative teams that have brilliantly communicated this craziness over the years, and ended up with a Yellow Pencil in the process. 

Let's begin with Viral Factory's tale of true love from 2008.  The whimsical story is told through animated body art using stickmen and the small matter of 1622 pictures taken with Samsung's G800 mobile phone.

In 2009 Judges rewarded advertising agency GT Tokyo for their groundbreaking idea for Sagami condoms.  Two young lovers ran a 1000 km marathon - the length of Japan - to be reunited.  Only there remained a tiny bit of distance between them...Have a look at this story of love triumphing over the most extreme….diversity in a Spike Jonze directed music videofor Björk. It also features the Japanese beatboxer Dokaka and was awarded a Yellow Pencil in 2005.In 2005, agency BBH won 4 Yellow Pencils for their tribute to the crazy things that love can do.  Or is it just the Lynx Effect? A young man and woman wake up in bed, and as they start to get dressed, we discover that their clothes are scattered across the city.  They follow their sartorial trail all the way back to where they first met.

 

Photography: Golden Skins

A Golden Wonder poster campaign from a few years ago used the power of photography to stand out from the crowd.  Ad agency JWT London were approached by the crisp brand to promote a new product called Golden Skins – thick-cut crisps, with the skins left on.  The creative team came up with the idea of contrasting of the name of the product against a series of people with very (very) pale skin eating the crisps.

The startling images from photographer William Selden speak for themselves and were awarded a Yellow Pencil in 2006.

Visit the archive to see even more award-winning photography from Das Comitte, Jung Von Matt, Andrew Zuckerman, CHI & Partners and more.

Illustrating the idea

Sometimes you can judge a book by its cover. The Folio Society is dedicated to publishing special editions of classic books and their cover illustrations have appeared in the D&AD Annuals every year over the last 3 years.

Illustrated by Bristol born designer Geoff Grandfield, who admits to an obsession with ‘film noir’ imagery, the covers are striking monochrome images that set the tone perfectly for Raymond Chandler’s pulp fiction detective stories and the tragic mountaineering accident of ‘Touching the Void’.

Want to see more? Have a look at the work selected by our illustration jury in 2009.