Norman Weinstein

Critic; Writer / United States /

Norman Weinstein’s Notable Books of 2013

1 book
Ron Stanley Editor

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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