The D&AD Awards are possibly the most prestigious awards in the world of graphic design and advertising, and unlike other award shows, there is no guarantee of a winner. Agencies around the world vie for the coveted yellow and black pencils. This year, 58 yellow pencils and 6 black pencils were handed out, but in the category of Graphic Design, not one pencil was awarded and only two pieces were even nominated. Needless to say, this has caused a bit of a stir in the graphic design community.
The day after the awards ceremony, Creative Review posted a couple of interesting items about the issue. The first is an interview with Michael Johnson, an ex-president of the D&AD and Sean Perkins, founder of the design studio North. In the interview, both Michael and Sean give their thoughts on the differences between advertising and graphic design, the relevance of the D&AD Awards, the impact of the web as a means of getting work out in the open. Regarding the relevance question, here is a telling quote from Sean Perkins:
It has an amazing educational programme and student awards; the lectures are inspiring – they do a lot of great things that we have to give them respect for. There’s some great ad work voted in and D&AD is the only place to go and see it. But when it comes to graphic design I just feel like I’d never ever look there.
The two lone nominees in the Graphic Design category.
Their second post talks about the awards in a bit more detail and, as with the interview, suggests that design studios understand that the D&AD awards are skewed towards advertising and are beginning to submit in advertising categories just to stand a chance. If this is the case, then questioning the relevance of the D&AD (that first D stands for Design) is certainly a worthwhile discussion (Mark Boulton takes this a little further and questions industry awards altogether). The article also offers up some ideas of how to change the organization for the better; including lowering the entry fees for design and changing the category structure to better reflect the reach of graphic design within the awards.
Unfortunately, I don't pay too much attention to the D&AD or their awards, nor do I have any insight on the work that was entered or the reasons that graphic design did so poorly this year. That being said, I think it's important to listen to the conversation and try to gain some insights into what happened. To help with that, I will be listening to Graphic Design on The Radio on Resonance FM this Friday (8:00AM PST and 4:PM GMT). The show is presented by Adrian Shaughnessy, one of the judges of this year's awards, and Simon Waterfall, the current president of the D&AD. In last week's episode, Adrian briefly mentioned the controversy, the blog reactions and suggested that the topic would come up on Friday, but it's too bad that we'll only get to hear one side of the story. Despite this, it should give us the perspective of the organization and what it thinks of the state of graphic design. Perhaps their discussion will provide the best answer to the question: is the D&AD relevant for graphic design?.
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