D&AD: 50

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Ron Stanley Editor

TASCHEN, Cologne, Germany, 2013, English, French, German

Nonfiction, Graphic Design

9.8 x 12.5 inches, paperback, 360 pages

ISBN: 9783836539364

Suggested Retail Price: $59.99

From the Publisher. The annual D&AD Awards honor outstanding creativity, originality, technical excellence, and innovation in design and advertising. Every year, thousands of entrants submit a host of crazy, beautiful, thought-provoking, sublime and, occasionally, winning entries. Panels of rigorous judges debate, sometimes for days on end, to decide on the best work, which all appears in the annual book; the best of the best get nominations, favorites receive a Yellow Pencil, and sometimes but not always, there are entries that are so incredible that they receive the highest accolade: a Black Pencil.

For this special anniversary volume, each of the last 50 years is represented by a D&AD president or other key figure who shares his or her favorites from the year. Interspersed stories, biographies, and a timeline document the history of D&AD and the development of the industry, through the experiences of creative individuals who have been most involved with its evolution. From the birth of TV advertising in the sixties to the digital revolution of the 2000s, D&AD has lived through it all and helped to shape what it is today. This is the chance to explore the best from the world of creative communications over the past five decades.

A Designers & Books Notable Design Book of 2013

On 1 book list

Norman Weinstein

On Norman Weinstein’s Notable Books of 2013 list

This sprawling and carnivalesque catalogue of award-winning UK advertising design coheres through anecdotal commentaries by past presidents and sundry luminaries associated with the D&AD, a British educational charity formed to catalyze creativity and chutzpah among design professionals. Most D&AD members find their home in advertising for print, television, and the Internet. Their annual awards for design culled from the organization’s half-century history take up the bulk of this gorgeously produced catalogue. Punctuating these award-winning photographs and illustrations—every image eminently worthy of serious study—is palaver from D&AD bigwigs. Many of their cogent remarks center on the boundary-breaking advertising designs of the 1960s. “In line with the liberated times, graphic design was becoming much sexier and more risqué, pushing boundaries that our parents’ generation would have found beyond the realms of good taste, “ nostalgically notes former D&AD president and designer Terence Conran. That nostalgic air regarding the ’60s extends into commentaries about subsequent decades. Comments shift tonally as excitement and foreboding accompany the growth of digital design tools in the 1990s and beyond.

Not every D&AD head honcho in his free-form espousing (good old boys club self-congratulatory solidarity prevails here) is particularly profound. So it would be no sin to treat this book chiefly as a wildly stimulating and nervy eye-candy collection displaying a dazzling high artistic order of advertising creativity. Think of this as a tonic for old-timers in graphic design needing a fresh jolt of inspiration, or for students starting their careers.

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