Seen and noted: 7 winners from D&AD 2014 Press Advertising

The results of the 2014 D&AD Awards are out. Design and Art Direction (D&AD, formerly known as British Design & Art Direction) is a British educational charity which exists to promote excellence in design and advertising. D&AD ‘exists to stimulate, enable and award creative excellence in design and advertising’. It is a highly respected award and recognises great design beyond advertising – some of the categories include Product Design (in 2012, Apple was named best design studio and best brand of the past 50 years), Book Design, Graphic Design, Music Videos, Packaging, Spatial Design and Writing for Advertising.

Needless to say the focus is on design, be it in packaging, illustration in advertising or digital design. This year, like every year, a lot of the winning work is common across many award shows but there area few ‘exclusives’. Herewith a selection of ads which caught my eye (they may have been winners at other award shows too) from the Press Advertising category.

1. Lidl

It is so refreshing to see a long copy based campaign. The task: Everybody knows that Lidl is inexpensive. But everybody presumes this is because the products are lacking in quality. Our ‘Surprises’ campaign aims to debunk that.

Agency: TBWA London

2. BITC: CVs

Here’s a campaign which forces you to read every word of the copy. The layout is striking too, as it looks like a typical CV. The task: get employers to get over their prejudices when it comes to interviewing applicants who were ex-offenders.

Agency: Leo Burnett, London

3. Maggiemite

The task: To promote a supplement on the life of Margaret Thatcher, the weekend after her death. Loved and loathed in equal measure, she was the first British politician since Winston Churchill to have a state funeral. But at the same time many others around the country held parties to celebrate that ‘the witch is dead’. The ad plays on the peculiar tasting British foodstuff Marmite’s famous advertising line ‘You’ll either love it, or hate it’ to allude to the polarising nature of the former Prime Minister’s reign.

Agency: BBH London

4. The Observer: Fergie

What a brilliant tactical ad. The juxtaposition of those visuals with the copy brings a smile. The ad is made memorable because it went against the grain of the typical ‘sad day’ articles, when a sporting legend retires.

Agency: BBH London

5. Nanking:

Some fantastic writing here. The task: produce powerful print executions that educated both English and Japanese-speaking audiences about crimes the Japanese committed at Nanking, China in 1937.

Agency: Ogilvy & Mather, Vietnam

6. Attix Roof Storage

Lovely use of media space. A creative idea rooted in consumer understanding: a large proportion of West Australian homes don’t utilise roofs as storage space effectively.

Agency: SHEDcsc

7. The Sunday Times – Rich List

The work for the Sunday Times Rich List supplement has consistently been great over the years. In this campaign, each portrait used a careful selection of different photographs (one for each year they featured in the publication) which were then pieced together to create a unique image of the featured millionaire. A bar graph illustrating the changes in both their faces and wealth over the last 25 years, nicely completes the picture.

Agency: Grey London

Which ones were your favourites? See the full list of winners here – some of the great work there have been winners in other creative awards too. I will also share winning work from other categories like Writing for Advertising in a later post.