Pencils at the ready
13 May 2005. Inspired by .
A brief lull in work and a dip in the weather here lets me spend some quality time indoors with this year's D&AD award nominees. While we still don't know if any black pencils are being awarded this year, there's much goodness there for a design junkie, and much to ponder in the complete lack of any worthies in illustration and online advertising.
Although the images for many of the campaigns are far too small on the site (and only press types can download hi-res images - would it have hurt to have included a middle-sized screen-res image for design fans? Yes I know I could probably register for the download, but still), they do host small QT movies of all motion and audio nominees. This is probably the only time this year you'll voluntarily watch adverts, but these are worth it.
Here's my picks of the year, if you didn't already catch them: Getting Dressed (just lovely), Prison Visitor (lol), Grr (not 100% on this but the visuals and music are great - download the tune from the Radio category), Spooks Interactive (ARGtastic, and good fun too), Blinded by the lights (banned on UK tv for showing drug taking, but a very clever twist on the very visual lyrics), Y Control (for freaking me out with children), Hope Super Lights packaging (well, it looks very cool on the bleached-out mini jpeg), Brains (for proving there is still room for creativity following The Missing Piece), Carbot (well, duh), those remarkable Channel Four idents (never tire of those, particularly in context), Mano Japones (possible mild racism, probable high humour in execution), Worms (very, um. Japanese actually, despite being Thai), McDonald's reply to SuperSize Me (I don't agree with the cause, but it proves that smart communication works both ways), the opening credits for Dawn of the Dead (not great use of old news footage but still very chilling, better than the film, they say) and the Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopaedia (for doing exactly what it says on the tin).
Plus extra kudos for them nominating GTA: San Andreas for Art Direction - perhaps the first step towards an overdue Game Design category away from Interactive advertising.
And there you go, while writing that, the sun came out, I've had eight emails, two phone calls, and I'm busy again. A quick addendum for doorbell fans: truth is beginning to imitate my fiction.