D&AD invokes creative powers of five agencies to design limited edition showcase Annual
D&AD has unveiled the 2014 edition of its famous annual which documents the industry's finest creative work at a special launch event at the London Design Festival last night.
The front cover of this year annual
The annual, produced in partnership with Hogarth, is widely considered to be the year’s authoritative advertising guide, with works hand-picked from the 2014 D&AD Professional Awards and New Blood Awards.
On a yearly basis, the president of D&AD is tasked with selecting a theme for the publication within which, all the year’s finest works will be displayed.
This year, for the firm’s 52nd edition, D&AD president Laura Jordan-Bambach, decided to create one of the most ambitious publications yet including input from five designers from around the world.
The Kingpins, from Australia, Elaine Ramos of Brazil, Codesign from India, Rhizomatiks based in Japan and Vietnam’s Rice Creative were selected to each design one of the book's five sections.
Técha Noble and Emma Price from The Kingpins, who were tasked with a segment of the annual said: “We wanted to make the D&AD Annual look like a book of spells and elude to the magic and alchemic projects that lie in it.
“We also wanted to treat the book as an object, so that the image reads differently depending on where you are in relation to the object. This strategy of image making, which we’ve used throughout various projects, destabilises the ontological form and extends the physicality of the body using cheap tricks, we like to make images that amuse us.”
On its section design, a spokesperson from Rhizomatiks said: “We created a series of graphics based on the brain data of firm director Seiichi Saito while he was watching specific film ads.
“We devised a programme that records the activity of brain waves and translates them into a visual. The device captured the alpha, beta, gamma and theta brain wave frequencies and translated them into graphs. The activity of these waves is affected by emotions and sensations such as tiredness, excitement, agitation and relaxation.
“So, in effect, we could see the brain activity change and ‘calculate’ emotion depending on the ad watched. To finish it off, we applied colours to the graphs.”
This year’s annual will see a limited run of 3,000 copies printed, it will also come with a DVD listing last year’s best work.
Earlier this year, D&AD announced a partnership with YouTube to unearth the next generation of talented aspiring filmmakers to give them recognition for their work.
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