D&AD Brief Presentation and Workshop

D&AD are a not for profit company. Any profit goes into the D&AD Foundation and New Blood program which help the next generation get the most out of their creative industry. The foundation itself help promote diversity an stimulates a more sustainable future.

There are three sections to D&AD, the awards, festival and academy.

The festival is a great way to meet people from the industry, there are big named judges and there is the chance for a ceremony to look and evaluate your creativity. If you are lucky enough to win one of their awards, D&AD will do their best to remain in contact with you and will assist you with interviews and mentor you as a creative to help you progress further in your chosen industry.

We looked at some of the available briefs given to us last Monday, firstly:

Monotype

Expressive communication through typography. I thought this would be relevant in response to the recent events in Paris and other countries where ISIS have caused terrorist activities. A possible approach would look at or express the negative behaviour from the minority towards muslims and other religions as a cause of terrorist behaviour from extremists groups who use religion as a fake front for their actions. However, this is a sensitive topic and can cause controversy over many ethic groups. This can also be a great way to express attitudes towards the Syrian Refugees whom are being housed within the UK. Positive expression and awareness could have beneficial factors to help and support the refugees and aid their settlement into the community.

The judging is completely anonymous and so if you have won an award it truly is because of your creative ability.

Criteria

• Does it have a great creative idea?
• Is it well executed
• Is it on the brief
• The idea is king – “Bake the idea before you ice the cake.” without an idea your designs fall flat and unrefined.
• “A strong idea will always beat something that looks nice.”
• Be bold
• Treat technology with caution, with apps – what is the core insight, how does it connect people to the situation or task at hand?
• Focus on the brief first not the technology you want to use
• Do more than the brief

Surge – Powered by BBC – Gold Award winning D&AD Concept

http://www.dandad.org/awards/new-blood/2015/bbc/2686/surge-powered-by-bbc/

• News for the digital generation
• Voice your opinion
• News that matters most

After our lecture, we had workshop to analysis the D&AD’s own brief given to us. We were asked to look through the brief and highlight any important words and sentences that we felt structured the brief. We were asked to choose 16 words from the brief, then from this 8 words. In the end we ended up with 2 very important words which we felt best explained the brief.

In pairs we used these 2 words to create insights and an idea to pitch to the year group.

Our words were Courage and Industry

Our insights were Embrace Change & Comfort Zones

Here is our creative team’s concept:

C R E A T E H E R E

“A creative matching service to encourage long-lasting relationships  between old and young professionals alike”

We drew on dating sites such as match.com, POF (Plenty of Fish) and Tinder to produce a creative-industry equivalent service where young and old professionals can meet and exchange experiences and tips with other local creatives. Refinements such as age range, gender, distance, experience in years and even a chosen industry.

For example

Simon (23) who is currently in his second year of Product Design uses the service to find a creative between the ages of (25-35) in Graphic Design with 3 years of professional experience to improve his industry networking and ask for guidance and feedback on any recent projects.

Application:

We felt that a Tinder-styled app that could display a short portfolio of one creative’s ability where another creative could swipe to match with potential networking associate, would be appropriate and could encourage the user to match based on the creatives work, not personal appearance. This procedure would maintain professionalism throughout and help creatives to find and discover local ability easily and efficiently.

From this quick exercise I feel our creative team worked well on the apps potential and I feel it would be a great project to experiment with during our spare time. Submission is March 2016 and so it is possible to get our concept into practice in time for submission.

Further note

• “All the best ideas had a great insight” – Insight is import as it’s how a recipiant can relate and connect to your solution and outcome  “All the best ideas had a great insight”
• Share your ideas, don’t keep them to yourself, to get peoples views
• Be original – Don’t rush into your first idea, usually others will have thought of it.