Simon Langley’s D&AD report – Day Two
Simon Langley, executive creative director and partner of 303Lowe Australia, is a judge on the D&AD Outdoor jury and writes exclusively for Campaign Brief.
The Jet lag feels worse today, which is weird as I should be feeling better. I’m sure the beers I had with fellow judges last night would not be helping my cause. Anyway, the sun is shining and London is looking rather beautiful on this chilly morning.
Entering the venue on day two it looks just as amazing, and we spend a good part of the day wandering the aisles beneath this awesome structure.
Today is much faster, as good posters should be, and we rattle through.
I’m inspired by a lot of things I see on the walls and have quite a few “wish I’d done that” moments.
The usual suspects like Samsonite are here and I’m sure that will do well…again. Wish I’d done that one!
Harvey Nichols is in there too with some beautifully simple work. What a great client they must be.
There are lots of really strong ideas, and getting a shortlist that doesn’t appear too generous is tough.
Today we started discussing the work and you quickly realize there are quite a few different opinions, which leads to healthy debate. One of the hot topics was outdoor versus print and the lack of classic posters. In fact, not one Economist poster graced the walls. Not one. How can you judge D&AD Outdoor and not see an Economist poster! Pity, I think they would have done quite well this year.
Many campaigns did themselves a disservice by making the logo and copy too small, and a lot of good ideas end up on the floor. You can’t just enter your print campaign into outdoor and expect it to do well. It’s tough. When you have people like Simon Dicketts and John O’Keeffe on the jury who’ve seen a few decent posters in their time, it needs to be well thought out or it will be punished.
The craft of some of the entries here is amazing, and unfortunately I think that hurt a few of the Aussie campaigns that were initially up for discussion. The ideas were strong, but when you saw them side by side, they didn’t cut it. It’s worth sweating over the details folks.
All in all it was a great day, which saw some lovely work make it through as the knives came out on a lot of stuff. I’m sure the debate will continue tomorrow as we finalize what makes it into the book, and then the next challenge will be deciding what’s worthy of a nomination or pencil.
If today was anything to go by, I’ll need to get a good nights sleep as it’s going to be a long final session! Can’t wait.