and the nominations are...
The votes have been counted, the nominations and in-books have been revealed… so I can safely share some thoughts about judging Writing for Design without fear of vicious reprisals from the D&AD police. First of all, entries were up (though surprisingly there was not a single digital entry), and the overall standard was far superior to four years ago, the last time I donned the old horse-hair wig. We also had two quite brilliant, stand-out nominations in Nick Asbury’s Corpoetics booklet and the Christopher Doyle™ Identity Guidelines.
In Adrian Shaughnessy quite rightly asked the question ‘what’s the point of this, what’s it trying to say?’ To which I’d answer, it shows that there’s poetry hidden somewhere – in even the most mundane paragraph – if only you know how to find it. It’s also a wonderful calling card for Nick – without puffing out his chest and telling everyone how great he is, he’s demonstrated that he has a talent for an original idea and a great appreciation of words. Corpoetics really is one of those ‘wish I did that’ pieces.Mike Reed’s ‘And…’ and Radley Yeldar’s ‘The sad story’). You have to admire the initiative and effort involved in getting these pieces out there, but when there’s no client to answer to and no commercial imperative, such quietly subversive, lateral work is far more achievable.