Hasta La Ideas

D&AD has published its 51st annual, designed by 24-year-old Bath Spa graduate Fleur Isbell.

CR first featured Isbell as one to watch in September 2011. A designer at Wolf Ollins, she was commissioned to design the annual by D&AD chairman Neville Brody, as part of a commitment to recruiting new talent.

The striking cover design features data visualisations based on latitudinal and meteorological data. 196 countries are represented by code-generated ‘horizon motifs’ incorporating various metadata from the day the call for entries was issued. Inside, each entry is tagged with the geographic co-ordinates of the city from which it originated. Users can also create their own location-based pattern online.

“This is a significant year for D&AD as it is a chance for the organisation to set the agenda tone for the next 50 years,” says Isbell. “With this in mind I asked myself, ‘what’s changing about how we create and what’s the role of technology and digital media in all of this?’ And particularly, ‘how does this influence how we can connect globally? It seemed a perfect opportunity to represent and celebrate D&AD’s role in bringing all these aspects together,” she adds.

The Annual features some outstanding work and Isbell’s code-based patterns are used to beautiful effect in the opening pages. The navigation could be clearer – there are no dividing pages between sub categories, page numbers appear centred at the bottom of the pages rather than the bottom right or left corners (making finding an entry using the index harder than it need be) and the text is extremely small – but there are some lovely touches, such as the use of geographical co-ordinates and coding style typeface on chapter dividers.

D&AD also released three short films this week in which Dan Wieden, Jessica Walsh and Ian Tait of Google Creative Labs discuss the advertising, design and digital projects they wish they’d been responsible for. The videos feature some lovely animations by Factory Fiften and you can watch them here.

The D&AD Annual 2013 is published by Taschen and priced at £44.99.