D&AD

Overview - Jury Designer

It was truly an incredible honor to be a part of this year’s D&AD Craft for Design jury. D&AD has a reputation for being one of the most prestigious award shows in the industry and annually invite experienced creative leaders to sit on their juries, some even traveling as long as 20 hours to be a part of the awards ( and i thought my journey from north to west London was long).  

I had the opportunity to be sat next to some very interesting people such as: Pablo Juncadella Creative Director at Mucho, Dom Roberts Co-founder & Creative Director at Mash Design, David Azurdia Creative Partner at Magpie Studio, Matthew Jones Creative Director at Accept and Proceed and Rod Longworth Creative Director at Human After All.

There was people from all over the world including: Australia, Tokyo, Brazil and America.

A typical day as a judge at the awards starts around 8am and finishes at 6pm. The day consists of viewing entries within your category looking for the ones that really stand out, that are original, inspiring, relevant and well executed ideas.

At times it can be rather demanding, as you can imagine with a room full of creatives as conflicts of interest often occur over certain pieces of work. However if you truly believe in a piece of work you have to voice your opinion and express your reason to why you think a piece of work deserves the vote.  

The D&AD space is filled with packaging, products, graphic design, posters, typography, books and print advertising work, I saw some really good work, some things that left me rather confused, some work that inspired me, simple ideas that made me think “I wished I have done that”.