On Wednesday I was lucky enough to be part of the judging panel for this years D&AD graduate academy. The afternoon consisted of me, and a collection of fellow design bods, locked in a boardroom reviewing a large selection of entries over coffee and sushi. This is the first time I have taken part on a judging panel like this and I found it an extremely gratifying experience, so thank you to D&AD for the privilege.

The work itself was mixed and interesting. The brief – written by academy sponsors HP – was open and creative: Create a campaign/idea to communicate HP workstations as the alternative to Macs within the design community.

Students had six weeks to answer the brief, and for the first time it was not only open to this year’s graduates but previous students up to and including the 2009 intake; a great opportunity for people still trying to get into the industry.

So, some comments about the work. As I mentioned the standard was mixed, some exciting ideas vs what seemed like some less complete and notional ones. It was the more resolved ideas and campaigns that stood out and grabbed the judges’ attention. This wasn’t necessarily all about polished macced up visuals, just an idea with insight that had been followed through. Branding, advertising, and design is an incredibly exciting world to be in these days with such a multitude of communication channels and platforms, it was the work that felt dynamic and made the most of these that went through. With so many people competing for places on these important stepping stones into the industry it’s really important to go the extra mile – it gets noticed.

Personally speaking, when it comes to creativity the idea is always king. Sure, make it look cool, but the work needs to have substance and originality to inspire and motivate. A large part of branding is telling a story. You’ve come up with a great idea; now show me how it comes to life and where it goes. Also: do the unexpected. Ultimately so many people are saying the same thing so it’s imperative to find a new angle to hijack your audience’s imagination. It was work that involved these more unique and captivating elements that I championed.

My own involvement in the process made me think back to when I graduated and what life was like vying to get early recognition. Now I’ve been in the industry for several years, it’s very easy to gloss over that initial struggle and take it all for granted. You forget how ridiculously competitive it is when leaving university and how hard an arena it can be to make inroads, especially over these recession years. I was always schooled that talent will win out, if you have good ideas, ambition, and enthusiasm then opportunities can and do arise in this industry. I certainly feel this is still the case so for anyone reading this looking to get a job – just keep on going.

As a insight to future applicants push yourselves creatively and enjoy the process. Ideas can be as big as you dare, just ensure they are communicated clearly and in a way that immediately grabs the judges’ attention.

Congratulations to all entrants that make it into the academy (winners will be announced shortly) and the best of luck to those that didn’t.

Apologies for the lack of visual stimuli in this post, the work is currently under wraps at D&AD but will be released shortly.

This week (November 2009) the latest table was published. The Partners is No.1.

Now this blog isn’t a place to be boasting – we’ll do that elsewhere, I’m sure – but we thought it deserved a mention nonetheless.

Thanks to everyone, within and without, who has helped us achieve that. It feels kinda good.

After the success of our make-it-yourself catalogue for last year’s Jerwood show ‘an experiment in collaboration’ (featured in the Creative Review annual, Design Week Awards runner up and winner of a Platinum award at Graphis) we were asked to make a catalogue for Jerwood’s latest show: Laboratory.

The Laboratory is an experiment: three artists take over the gallery and, starting from nothing, build a show as they go – a totally unpredictable process, with no way of knowing what the work will be like from one day to the next. Everything they do exposed to scrutiny and comment, from the resident writer and photographer to the public and press.

With an experimental show that is one big work in progress we set out to make a catalogue in the true spirit of the show: unpredictable, exposed and experimental. We decided not to design a catalogue. Instead we designed a process,  a way of creating a catalogue that we couldn’t predict and couldn’t control, a way of gathering and documenting everything that happens in the show in real time, built, like the show, in the gallery itself, and only finished as the show closes. We’ve just let it unfold…

Blog
The process started with the Laboratory blog. The artists, curator, writer, resident photographer and designers posted real-time updates on the show to the blog which also automatically draws in related content from external sites like twitter and flickr. Each post has a print option which we use to output content in real time for the printed catalogue. Every post prints the size it appears in the blog, so no two pages are alike.

Catalogue
Each day’s posts are added to the catalogues which are on display in the gallery so you can see the them growing as the  show grows. Posts are joined vertically to make one continuous chronological document. The catalogue kept growing right up until the moment the laboratory closed its doors.

Every entry is rigourously assessed by a team of hard-nosed typographers and designers (our own Jack Renwick and Mike Paisley included), and only the best submissions are deemed good enough to be awarded. The students are also offered membership of the society, which is a nothing to be sniffed at, with only around 30% of students making the grade.

We were especially lucky to have Alan Kitching, a revered typographer, and printmaker with us, presenting the awards to students; all of whom seemed inspired and excited to get a chance to meet him. Or was it the free bar that got them going?

Congratulations to all the students who collected their certificates on the night, and of particular note, Chris Mahoney, of Lincoln University who not only managed to receive a commendation for his typographic representation of Pink Floyd’s The Wall, but also collected the Vincent Steer Award; named after the Societies founder – the highest accolade available, awarded to the single most outstanding submission. Clever boy!

Chris Mahoney, University of Lincoln

Finally a different sort of congratulations go to the affectionately dubbed ‘Drunken of Jordanstone’ students from Dundee. Who managed to withold the long-standing tradition of drinking the bar dry and being the last jolly mob to leave. Well done guys and girls, you make us proud – There’s more work featured after the break…

Oh saintly one

On Friday we paid homage to the creative lifeblood of The Partners (TP). For the second year running we have recognised the feast of St. Aziz‘s Day with an internal awards ceremony to celebrate the wonderful efforts people within The Partners go to in order to make this place so great.

Our patron saint on this auspicious day (1st June) is non-other than one of our founding partners Aziz Cami (although he’s not dead yet of course, just figuratively canonized by us for his contribution to design). We try to hold the ceremony as close  to the 1st June as possible, however this year we were busy with pitches on the 5th June and as Aziz himself would have wanted it to be, we made work the priority. Always a martyr to the pursuit of design excellence, it is quoted that in his earliest scriptures he rallied dedicated followers with prophecies such as “Make us the most creative agency in the world”. This tireless ambition is still driving the agency today.

In recognition of the creative greatness The Partners has become (and the fact that we love nothing more than an excuse to finish half an hour early on a Friday, drink plenty of cava, eat some fancy nibbles, and make plenty of noise) we hand out awards to remarkable individuals within the company who have been voted up to ‘semi-saint’ status by their co-workers

There are 6 categories in total and then an overall winner of a High Priest/Priestess award for the individual deemed to have most embodied the holy spirit of The Partners over the past year.

The category candles

Several weeks ago we were all asked to make our nominations for candidates in each category (apart from the High Priest/Priestess category which is decided by the divine intervention of the Gods aka: the partners). See below for the categories and the holy winners and holy nominees:

TP Virgin of the Year – best new person, person in a new job, or person getting out of their comfort zone.

Nominees: Sam, Nathan, Leon & Dave.

WINNER – SAM

Left to right: Nathan, Sam and Dave

TP Heavenly Operator - for the most efficient, or effective, or money-making, or money-saving, or teamworky type thing.

Nominees: Andrew, Elsie, Greg & Hannah

WINNER – GREG

Left to right: Greg, Andrew, Elsie and Hannah"Greg, Andrew, Elsie and Hannah

TP Martyr of the Year – for the biggest sacrifice to TP.

Nominees: Alex, Jack, Michael & Pip

WINNER – JACK

Left to right: Michael, Jack and a bit of Pip

TP Gold is in the Detail – for the best attention to detail, management of detail, or craft.

Nominees: Claire, Miranda, Sam & Steph

WINNER – CLAIRE

Left to right: Miranda, Claire, Sam and Steph

TP Preacher of the Year – for the best performance at 2C’s, or other presentation.

Nominees: Helen, Jack, Sam, Tim & Rob (team)

WINNER – TIM & ROB

Left to right: Jack, Tim, Sam and Helen

TP Miracle of the Year – for the most creative or imaginative idea of the year

Nominees: Miranda, Nick, Pip & Tim

WINNER – PIP

Left to right: Tim, Pip, Nick and Miranda

TP High Priest/Priestess – Best in show. The thing that best embodies the holy spirit of TP.

Nominees: Claire, Greg, Jack, Pip, Sam, Tim/Rob

WINNER – GREG

If you look closely you can glimpse the tears he shed on his acceptance. Awwww bless.

We had a wonderful evening celebrating the holy spirit of TP. The cava flowed, the cheers erupted, and the tears were shed (in Greg’s case anyway).

Well done to all our winners and nominees.

~ End of sermon ~

It’s rare for any designer in their lifetime to get awarded with the highly coveted Black Pencil so for Matthew to achieve it at such an early point in his career is testament to some undeniable immense natural talent that’s bubbling beneath his surface. We can’t wait to see more from this guy.

We know just what a struggle it is to get your mitts on a D&AD black pencil (‘for goodness sake’ as Michael Johnson exclaims on his blog), we are lucky to have a row of Yellow Pencils adorning our shelves, but the Black Pencil, had until last year, eluded The Partners for 26 years. Greg was one of the judges this year and he was passionate about ensuring the coins did well, because “not only was it was a great idea, beautifully crafted, but also because they were for a client that until very recently has not been known for its creativity that needed recognition” We want to be one of the first to congratulate Matthew.

Keep up the exceptional work Matthew!

As this years D&AD Education Chairman, our own Greg Quinton was there to assist in the process. He said; “Student Awards work was judged with the professional Awards this year, and frankly it was difficult to tell the two apart – a testament to the quality of the work submitted. The creative standard is simply brilliant this year. Answering a Student Awards brief is a big challenge and the judging (like all things D&AD) is of the highest standard possible.”

Click here to download a pdf of all the nominations and inbook results.

Michael Johnson wrote on his Thought of the Week “One of the ironies of life in design consultancy is that the projects that can take months, sometimes years and push the boundaries of brand identity can remain resolutely ignored by design juries.” I agree, and sometimes it’s hard to fathom how judges select the things they do.

Paul, Donna and I have spent a year and a half working on the strangest but most interesting project I can imagine. The brief: find an unforgettable way of packaging gourmet Indian sausages. The solution: the world’s first branded sausages. We think Mr Singh’s Bangras are great and it’s been disheartening to see something we believe in so much remain largely ignored for so long. So when it scooped a winners trophy at the Design Week Awards on Tuesday night, we were over the moon. Bring on the Bangras!

Mr Singhs Bangras

Sausage photography by Ben Monk, food styling by Sarah Stott.