Identity projects fail D&AD criteria

British Design & Art Direction Awards judges have found no corporate and brand identity projects worthy of a Yellow Pencil this year, blaming the economic downturn and confusion within the category for the poor showing.

The D&AD Award nominations, announced this week, feature four Design Week Award winners – Carter Wong Tomlin’s display wardrobes for clothing brand Howies, Powell Tuck’s office space for Bloomberg and print work by The Chase and Frost Design for Manchester Dogs’ Home and D&AD respectively. However, no corporate identity projects have been singled out for praise.

‘This is one of the categories hardest hit by a bad economy,’ says a D&AD spokeswoman. But while the slowdown has affected the volume of work being entered, she also points to how the discipline is changing.

‘As a category, it’s evolving,’ the spokeswoman says, with judges debating whether they should be considering ‘logos and letterheads’ or ‘comprehensive [branding] programmes’.

Meanwhile, D&AD president Michael Johnson is keen to recognise ‘integrated creativity’. But despite Johnson noting ‘the way that collaboration and integration is mixing things up’ across the board, there were no nominations for the newly introduced integrated creativity category.

The D&AD spokeswoman adds that the organisation hopes the award will take off as more people begin to understand the concept.