Full on design is D&AD good

The British Art and Design Direction’s 1997-98 Student Awards have a particularly professional flavour this year with a high-profile campaign. Pentagram’s John Rushworth has come up with the concept.

The campaign material will go out to every college which teaches art and design, communications or advertising. The material will lay down the briefs put together by blue chip companies.

Briefing day is 5 November, when those companies are invited to put the briefs to the college tutors.

The call for entries will contain these real briefs from the likes of NatWest, PolyGram and The Body Shop, which the students will then work on.

‘John has created a campaign which starts at the beginning and finishes with the Student Annual,’ says D&AD director David Kester. Rushworth has themed each item around the word D&AD, spelling dead. So while the briefing day invitation reads D&AD Ahead, the call for entries reads D&ADline, and one of the banners for the award ceremony next July reads D&AD Reckoning.

‘What he has done has been a real break in tradition,’ says Kester, ‘Nothing is condescending about it. You could run this just as easily for the professional awards,’ he says of the campaign.

The image will be applied to posters, advertisements, menus and the stage set, and will appear in the Student Annual. The campaign will get its first airing on briefing day.

Designer: Pentagram

Client: D&AD