Simon Langley’s D&AD report – Day Three
Simon Langley, (who picked up a yellow pencil last night) is ECD and partner of 303Lowe Australia and a judge on the D&AD Outdoor jury. He writes exclusively for Campaign Brief.
Quite often I use “I don’t think it’ll keep the jury awake at night” to review an idea that’s not quite cutting it. Well, I woke up at bloody 4am today, so I must have seen some great stuff yesterday…or the jet lag is still hanging around. Either way, I find myself a little tired this morning.
As for the weather, it’s not quite the stunning sunshine of the past few days, and we’re back to the London I know so well. Cold and wet. Luckily, the day’s proceedings are sure to fire us up, as we head back to our igloo to decide on the final in-book selection, nominations and pencils.
We go over our shortlist and everyone has the opportunity to bring things back for debate, suggest other things get the cut, or chat about specific pieces. Surprisingly we’re all pretty aligned on most things and after a few debates here and there, we agree on the final in-book selection. Stage 1 complete. Success. There’s 30 odd pieces in the book, and that feels pretty good. Not too generous, not too harsh.
On to nominations. This is where I expected the knives to come out and the debate to last for hours, but to be honest it was a really pleasant experience that was over quite quickly.
Our jury has been fantastic, and everyone’s opinion has been respected and listened to. We arrive at 8 nominations and I’m very happy with all of them.
We move on.
Ah…the yellow pencils. These are bloody tough to win, and the work has to be exceptional. We go back over the list and have a long hard think about what we believe is worthy of one of these little yellow blocks of wood. I wish Icould say we argued for hours, threw chairs and had little tantrums, but wedidn’t. The work spoke for itself and we walked away awarding 3 pencils and all our friendships still intact. Not bad when you consider we started with over 900 entries…
All in all, it was a fantastic jury of talented people from around the world. It’s a real privilege to be invited over and the experience was everything I’d hoped for.
Now, time for a reality check, as soon I have to get back on a plane to Sydney for 27 hours.
Cheers.