In 1980 the D&AD launched its first ever student awards. In January of that year 74 heads of department from Art Colleges, Art Schools and Polytechnics from all over the United Kingdom came to London to receive briefs set by David Abbott, Chris Wilkins and Rod Springett.

The first submission consisted of 254 entries and the Graphics course at Preston was to sweep the board in all three catagories “setting the standard for others to follow”.

The judges were to comment  ”there was one outstanding and very exciting presentation from Preston Polytechnic….the execution was excellent, they had thought through the briefs thoroughly and come up with some very original concepts”

Tutor Ben Casey and student Susan Lee receive the first ever first Prize from Alan Parker

The following year the Preston Graphics course was to continue its success with a futher raft of nominations and a first prize award for a poster design set by Alan Fletcher

Selecting the best work from the 1981 D&AD student submissions. Alan Fletcher – Pentagram  Geoffrey Seymour – Advertising Film Writer  Neil Godfrey – Collett ,Dickenson, Pearce & Partners

We would like to thank everyone who has invested their time and effort in creating this site. Thank you also to all those who have submitted their profile. This is a unique part of the site and a fantastic resource/archive. You are all responsible in helping to inspire the next generation of designers.

The first batch of D&AD Student Awards 2012 briefs are now online. For the first time they have opened up one brief to anyone under the age of 26 and to all recent graduates.

“The One Club and D&AD have joined forces to provide a creative ranking system for the advertising, design, interactive and communications industries at large.

At its heart is a simple mechanism: The Pencil Rankings, which are based entirely on how creative work has performed in the two most highly-regarded, rigorously-judged, not-for-profit shows in the world. The Pencil Rankings was developed between the two non-profit organizations to reflect a joint declaration of creative ideals and standards”

Congratulations to The Chase who have made it to Number 4 in the Design Agency Category!

The Pencil Rankings logo was designed by Jamie McCathie at Turner Duckworth.

Congratulations to UCLAN graphic design final year students Naseem Naeem and Matt Slade who have swept the board as winners at this years Little Chip Digital Awards and YCN with their work on the “20 Years Of Sonic” advert. Great work.

More news soon to come on the London show so keep an eye out.

For those of you who don’t know “the purpose of The Chip Shop Awards is to take the piss. To take the piss out of how seriously advertising takes itself. To take the piss out of advertising’s obsession with awards. To take the piss out of a little yellow wooden pencil elevated to the level of The Nobel Prize.
And the symbol of a chip with a dollop of ketchup on it does that very succinctly.”

Heres a selection of the winning work. You can see the rest here

The Big Chip – Chip Winner

Reversable bags to be given out by Topshop for purchases, that can then be reserved and used to fill and donate old clothes to Oxfam

Best Use of Plagiarism – Chip Winner

Best Politically incorrect – Chip Winner

Best Use of Bad Taste – Nomination

Best Remake of an Existing ad – Nomination

Best Consumer Ad or Campaign – Chip Winner

Best Oudoor Ad – Chip Winner

Best Ambient Media – Vinegar Winner

Best Use of Regional dialect – Chip Winner

“Announcing two new physical representations for its In Book and Nominated awards. Designed by Turner Duckworth, the trophies will join the Yellow, Black and White Pencils to become a cohesive family of Awards and have been christened ‘the slices’.”

“The challenge was to create awards that recognise the In Book and Nomination achievements, that have stature, relate to D&AD but are not another Pencil, which could dilute the importance of such an iconic award. The slices of pencil are relative in relation to the size and material of the Yellow Pencil award,” explains TD’s Bruce Duckworth. “They are also exactly the same shape and proportion of the D&AD hexagonal logo. Of course they are made of wood, to be quirky like the Pencil itself.”

D&AD President Simon Sankarayya added “For many years we have endeavoured to communicate more effectively the value of winning at any level in the D&AD Awards and the slices will undoubtably help to build awareness of the great level of creativity that it takes to be recognised by our juries.”

The new physical awards certainly go some way to further celebrate the achievement of having work in the D&AD Annual and nominated for one of the top Pencils.

The new slices will be launched at the forthcoming D&AD Awards evening, which takes place on June 16 at London’s HAC, Artillery Gardens.”

Although I didn’t work on this, its been really interesting watching this develop at TD! A part of D&AD’s history….thoughts?

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The Injured Jockey Fund Identity.
The Partners

The Injured Jockey Fund are like the emergency services of the racing world. They provide immediate help to jockeys who take a fall or can’t continue their racing career due to serious injury. A unique typeface was created, with each character composed from the details found within UK regulation racing silk patterns.

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Go Red Charity Identity
The Partners

Richard House Hospice wanted to build awareness of, and encourage greater participation in Wear Red, their biggest fundraiser. Changing the name from ‘Wear Red’ to ‘Go Red’ they needed an identity and approach to communications that captured the spirit of the event, encouraged participation and communicated how you can get involved. The solution was borne of the Children’s game Consequences; multiple images (and words too) jumbled together to create amusing examples of how people might GO RED!

GO RED from The Partners on Vimeo.

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Please God poster
The Partners

And there’s the ‘Please God’ poster which a couple of enterprising designers stuck up at The Partners on the morning of the England Germany game. Fat lot of good it did.

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The Scottish Chamber Orchestra’s Mozart poster.
Matt Robinson The Leith Agency.

Congratulations our friends in Scotland at The Leith Agency and Matt Robinson for this ingeniously simple Mozart poster. The Scottish Chamber Orchestra’s 2010 season launch needed a promotional poster for their season of Mozart, played at Edinburgh’s famous Usher Hall. They noticed the seating plan for the grand circle perfectly reflected the shape of Mozart’s wig. (Love it!.)

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The Great Blandini name and Identity. Interbrand Australia.
By Mike Rigby, Malin Holmstrom, Andrew Droog and Mike Reed.

Steve Bland is a re-toucher extraordinaire. Multi skilled in the mysterious ways of photoshop and a true Mac wizard. He asked us to create an identity that stood out from the usual, would appeal to the creative industry and reflect his sense of fun and humor. And so, plain old Steve Bland became ‘The Great Blandini’ and an engaging, Victorian inspired typographic identity unfolded. Referencing an era when magic was still truly magical. The identity includes ‘playing card’ business cards, featuring a different photoshop trick on each one and magic wand poster proofing tubes.

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Blackpool degree Show poster / mailer.
David Thompson

Congratulations to The Chase who enjoyed a bumper year at D&AD with 3 in books and 2 nominations.

Taking the creative from The Chase designed prospectus. Each colour represented a course at the school and was used as navigation around the complex array of degree’s available. The poster was used to communicate the breakdown of the course structures within the school and with a few crafty folds, a belly band and yards of cellophane you get a stick of rock to give away as a souvenir at education fairs and degree shows. (Lovely!.)

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Almost extinct BBC Wildlife digital calendar.
Chris Challinor and Oliver Maltby.

An online calendar highlighting the plight of endangered wildlife and places for The BBC Wildlife fund. Follow the calendar here and make a donation. This received a nomination.

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A 1,000 words paint a picture.
Ben casey, Lionel Hatch, Peter Richardson, Nick Asbury, Jim Davies.

A series of promotional pieces for photographer Paul Thompson, all of which feature absolutely no photography. Instead, use exactly 1,000 words to describe an image in Paul’s online portfolio. There are four pieces in total, written by Ben Casey and Lionel Hatch, alongside Nick Asbury and Jim Davies. This also received a nomination.

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Also a special mention for our friends Chris Doyle and Elliott Scott who have two nominations for This Year I will Try Not to. Also Johnson banks for an in book for their Science Museum work (plus two other in books for other projects). Extra pleasing that these two projects (and the 1,000 words project above) have been recognised by the worlds most prestigious awards jury, considering the preposterous amounts of criticism they both received by sections of the ‘blogosphere’ upon launch. It’s great that justice has eventually been done.

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Big congratulations to one and all and good luck with the nominations.