Judging at the D&AD industry awards

Gyles writes:

Back in April I was very fortunate to be invited to take part in the judging of the D&AD Awards. As you'll know from plenty of posts on this blog over the years, D&AD is the advertising and graphic design industry organisation that has these world famous awards at its heart. The 'pencil' awards are widely recognised as the pinnacle of peer-reviewed excellence in applied, commercial creativity.

I was invited to observe the Press Advertising category of the industry awards at Olympia, London. Here are some Hipstamatic photos to give you an insight of what it was all about:-

Waiting to go in. You could sense the tension and excitement of the judges.

The huge number of boards showing all the entries in all the categories. I was there on day three of judging so many entries had already been removed as they were rejected in earlier rounds (hence the empty boards).

Space-age inflatable viewing igloos for the screen-based categories dotted around Olympia.

On the end panel of each category was a poster reminding the judges of the criteria/definition of each of D&AD's famous awards.

Judging criteria and definitions of the D&AD industry awards.

The vast Olympia hall with the judges lounge in the foreground.

The Press Advertising judging panel at work.

Lots of discussion, disagreement and heated debate.

Anonymous voting was via iPod Touches (pictured here is Ben Tollett, Creative Director - adam & eve and Florence Bellisson, Creative Director - BETC Euro RSCG).

The Press Advertising jury (listed here) with yellow D&AD ties finely-fashioned from yellow PostIt notes.

You can view an interesting video here of Ben Tollett, creative director at adam & eve talking to Robin Fitzgerald, creative director at Crispin Porter + Bogusky, about day 3 of judging the Press Advertising category, getting down to the nitty-gritty, and why the category is such a great medium to judge.

All the final nominations are listed on the D&AD site here.

The final 'pencil' awards are announced at the very exciting Awards Ceremony on June 16th. As you'll have read in an earlier post, Lincoln's very own Anna Gladwin & Becky Fuller are nominated in the Integrated Communication student awards. Fingers crossed they'll bring home another pencil for Lincoln's Creative Advertising course.