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Matt Dent’s UK coins are among the graphic design nominations at D&AD

The nominations for the 2009 D&AD Awards have just been announced. After last year’s furore, will graphic design figure this time?

The good news for graphic design is that there are 13 nominations this year as opposed to two last year (112 entries are in-book). Traditionally graphic design has a high conversion rate from nominations into pencils so it looks as though there should be a healthy number of graphic design awards this year.

If there are, it will be the result of a lot of hard work behind the scenes. After last year, D&AD worked hard to engage with graphic designers and encourage entries, reducing the price and specifically targeting certain studios. It looks to have worked – Build, for example, has a project in the book this year and I can’t remember them even having entered before (Michael, correct me if I’m wrong).

Elsewhere, Environmental Design and TV & Cinema Crafts lead the nominations, with 14 from each jury. On the ad side, mobile has nine nominations as the field finally starts to turn up some interesting work. There are only five nominations in online advertising, but 19 in press and poster (plus the 14 in commercials) denoting something of a traditional fightback. Also, music videos has an encouraging 11 nominations.

It’s hard to spot too many Black Pencil candidates though – maybe Orange Ballonacy (a Best in Book in the CR Annual) or perhaps D&AD will follow Cannes and award Turner Duckworth’s Coke rebrand the major prize?

We’ll put up more images, links and analysis on this later but in the meantime, the full details are below.

And here are all the in-books for graphic design (sorry for the eye-straining size but it’s the best way to get the information up quickly)