Hasta La Ideas

McCann Erickson Melbourne’s Dumb Ways to Die and 4Creative’s Meet the Superhumans were the big winners at this year’s D&AD Awards, with Black Pencils also going to Gov.uk and Thomas Heatherwick’s Olympics Cauldron

Heatherwick’s magical Olympic Cauldron (above) won a Black Pencil in the Spatial Design: Installations category.

The 4Creative Meet The Superhumans spot, directed by Tom Tagholm, won Black in TV & Cinema Communications: TV Promotions & Programme Junctions. Meet the Superhumans also picked up three Yellows, in Film Advertising Crafts: Editing for Film Advertising, Film Advertising Crafts:Direction for Film Advertising and Film Advertising Crafts: Use of  Music for Film Advertising.

The other two Black Pencils this year are for public service or at least public information projects: Gov.uk and McCann Erickson Melbourne’s Dumb Ways to Die for Metro Trains.

Gov.uk won its award in the Writing for Design: Writing for Websites & Digital Design category, curiously missing out on any Pencils in the digital design area.

Dumb Ways to Die, the charming animation promoting safety on Melbourne’s railways, won Black in Integrated & Earned Media:Earned Media Campaigns (where those 46m+ YouTube views must have swayed any doubters) plus four Yellows in other categories: Outdoor Advertising: Poster Advertising Campaigns, Digital Advertising:Web Films, TV & Cinema Advertising: TV Commercials 120–240 seconds
and Writing for Advertising: Writing for Film Advertising

Adding to this spirit of creativity in a good cause is the first White Pencil winner since the category (launched last year) was merged into the main awards. Congratulations to Droga5 for a project that offers a practical solution to a huge problem. Help I Want To Save a Life marks the fruition of a ten-year project begun by Droga5 creative Graham Douglas. Donor registration kits are included with packs of Help Remedies plasters. The kits require a small sample of blood, though as the donor is likely to be bleeding anyway – hence reaching for the plasters – this is a simple action. The samples are then sent to DKMS, the donor centre affiliated with the project, which will follow up upon receipt.

In the Yellow Pencils, McCann Worldgroup won in Writing For Design: Writing for Brands for its LOCOG Gamesmaker project for the 2012 Olympics volunteer programme

R/GA won in Crafts for Advertising: Sound Design & Use of Music for Digital Advertising for One Copy Song. Adam Tensta is Sweden’s biggest hip-hop artist. To promote his song Pass It On, R/GA created a Facebook app that allows only one person to listen at a time before passing it to the next person in line.

Mars Petcare: Donation Glasses from Colenso BBDO, Proximity New Zealand and FINCH won in Direct: Direct Response/TV & Cinema Advertising. NZ cinemagoers were given a choice – donate to help rescue abused dogs and receive a pair of yellow glasses, or pay nothing for the red pair. In the ad which followed, those who watched through yellow saw a happy ending

In Graphic Design: Annual Reports, Brighten the Corners won for its Zumtobel Annual Report. For the Austrian lighting company’s 2011/12 annual report, Brighten the Corners worked with artist Anish Kapoor to create a two-volume publication: one book contained the facts and figures for the year, the other was a printed version of a 1998 video piece by the artist, Wounds and Absent Objects

And there was a Yellow in Branding: Brand Expression in Print for Leo Burnett London’s Pantone Queen, a Diamond Jubilee tie-in documents the colours that the Queen wore on 60 different occasions during her 60-year reign, including the Primrose Yellow she wore at William and Kate’s wedding and the Canal Blue she chose for Ascot in 2008

The much-garlanded #CokeHands from Ogilvy & Mather Shanghai picjed up yet another award, this time a Yellow in Crafts for Advertising: Illustration for Advertising

While there was another win for Droga5 came in Film Advertising Crafts: Production Design for Film Advertising for the Kraft Moreing campaign. To advertise the Boost chocolate bar, Droga5 came up with the Boosted Inspiration Series of mock-documentaires. In this first film we meet the artist behind ‘M0reing’, a new trend/art project involving doing everything in multiples: wearing four hats, watching three TVs, walking three dogs. Scarily plausible

PARTY took a Yellow in Graphic Design: Moving Image (Graphic Design) for its Kanji City film. The City of Kyoto is represented as a series of 16 Kanji animations, each of which symbolises a tree, river, temple, gate and so on found in the city itself

In Outdoor Advertising: Poster Advertising Campaigns there was a Yellow for the Parkinson’s: Everyday campaign by The Assembly in which everyday images, such as a cup of tea or a pair of shoes, are mixed up to represent how Parkinson’s can affect messages the brain gives to the body

In Branding: Branding Schemes/Medium Business, 6D-K won Yellow for its charming icon-based identity scheme for Japanese agricultural co-operative, Minds

And Singapore-based WORK won in Branding: Brand Expression in Print for its Louis Vuitton: Yayoi Kusama Fine Book 2012, a limited edition book for Dover Street Market Ginza formed part of a wider collaboration between Louis Vuitton and Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama. The book features images and works drawn from the last 50 years of Kusama’s career.

There was also a Yellow for Sagmeister & Walsh’s Now is Better film in Craft for Design: Typography for Design (of which more later, as the work’s inclusion was the subject of some debate)

The Guardian’s modern-day retelling of the Three Little Pigs, which re-imagined the tale as a contemporary news story illustrating the multiple platforms for news-gathering and reporting utilised by the paper, won in TV & Cinema Advertising:TV Commercials 61–120 seconds. Director: Ringan Ledwidge
.

In Film Advertising Crafts: Cinematography for Film Advertising, F/Nazca Saatchi & Saatchi in Brazil won for Leica Store São Paulo: Soul, teling the story of the Leica M camera and its role in 20th century history. The film also won Yellow in Film Advertising Crafts: Direction for Film Advertising

There were three Yellows for R/GA and its work on Nike+ FuelBand, in Integrated & Earned Media, Integrated Digital Advertising: Digital Solutions and Mobile Marketing: Mobile Interaction & Experience

Wieden+Kennedy New York’s Southern Comfort: Beach won in TV & Cinema Advertising: TV Commercials 41–60 seconds

While another Brazilian agency, Leo Burnett Tailor Made, won in Integrated & Earned Media: Earned Media Campaigns for My Blood is Red and Black. To combat a shortage of blood donations in Bahia, Brazil, local football club Esporte Clube Vitoria changed its red and black striped kit to white, pledging to change it back stripe by stripe until donations reached the target amount.

Film Advertising Crafts: Special Effects for Film Advertising saw a Yellow for 4Creative for the 4Seven idents it created with ManvsMachine

In Snickers’ You’re Not You When You’re Hungry Twitter campaign, five celebrities were asked to tweet out of character. Katie Price tweeted about economics and Rio Ferdinand confused his followers by talking about his new hobby of knitting before eventually revealing the gag. It won Yellow in Integrated & Earned Media: Earned Media Campaigns forAMV BBDO/AMV Pulse

Radio produced two Yellows this year. In Radio Advertising: Radio Advertising over 30 seconds, Y&R New York won for Campbell’s Soup: Poetry in which the opposing characters in a passive-aggressive mother-daughter row describe the action as it happens, with much door slamming and storming off. Listen here

And in the same category, DraftFCB New Zealand won for Prime Television: Call Girl. For a new season of TV show Secret Diary of a Call Girl, DraftFCB hired an actress to engage in ‘call girl-like’ behaviour across the road from a radio station. The watching DJs soon started commenting on what they saw

In Packaging Design: Packaging Design there was a win for Family Business for Absolut Unique. Some four million unique bottles of Absolut vodka were created by converting machines on the bottling line to spray paint randomly onto them. Each one was numbered

Film Advertising Crafts: Direction for Film Advertising saw a win for We Are Pi and director Körner Union for Human Arabesque. Introducing the TEDX Summit event, this film combined dancers and kaleidoscopic effects to create beautiful patterns from the letter x.

ONLY Jeans: The Liberation won for Uncle Grey Copenhagen in Crafts for Design: Sound Design & Use of Music for Websites & Digital Design. A combined movie, catalogue and game, produced by North Kingdom, click at any time and the film would freeze and load a still via which users could like, share or buy clothes

Volkswagen: The Bark Side, by Deutsch LA and directed by Keith Schofield won in Film Advertising Crafts: Use of Music for Film Advertising

And these Long-Tongued Animal Shoehorns for Closed by gürtlerbachmann won in Packaging Design: Packaging Design

And Johnny Hardstaff’s eerie David viral for Prometheus picked up Yellows in Film Advertising Crafts: Production Design for Film Advertising and Film Advertising Crafts: Direction for Film Advertising

In Digital Design: Websites there was a Yellow for The Martin Agency and its JFK Presidential Library & Museum: Clouds Over Cuba project. In this interactive documentary experience about the Cuban Missile Crisis, extra background material in various forms was made available at key points of the narrative.

Let’s Make Some Great Fingerprint Art by Mrion Deuchars and art directed by Angus Hyland won in Crafts for Design: Illustration for Design

R/GA picked up another Yellow Pencil, this time in Branding: Digital Brand Expression for OneNike which nified more than 70 Nike brands, plus commerce and social media functions

And Apple (it wouldn’t be D&AD without an award for Apple, would it?) won in Product Design: Consumer Product Design for the 27-inch iMac

In Film Advertising Crafts: Animation for Film Advertising, Good Books: Metamorphosis, animated by Buck for ad agency String Theory won Yellow. A Hunter S Thompson-style character goes in search of a copy of Kafka’s Metamorphosis in this film promoting Good Books, the online bookseller in aid of Oxfam

In Digital Advertising: Web Films, AlmapBBDO’s From Love to Bingo for Getty Images, a love story told in 873 stock images, won Yellow

And in Digital Design: Digital Design, Local Projects won for Cleveland Museum of Art: Gallery One. Interactive installations, including a 40-foot multi-touch Collection Wall, allow visitors to explore the permament collection at the Cleveland Museum of Art

In Art Direction: Art Direction for Poster Advertising The Monkeys/MAUD won for their Diageo: Mixionary campaign where series of cocktails are broken down graphically into their constituent parts

And the final Olympic-related project to win was Barber Osgerby’s torch, which won in Product Design: Industrial Product Design

A supplement listing all the winning work, plus details of the President’s Award, will be published with the July issue of CR, out June 19