D&AD 2018 winners
Last night the D&AD Awards process reached its finalé with the annual ceremony, that also brought an end to their three-day Festival, at the Truman Brewery, Brick Lane.
Along with the American SPD Awards, I’ve always thought of the D&ADs as the gold standard for magazine creative awards. As well as the awards process itself, both programmes produce a heavyweight book of winners. This is important. Exciting as it is for the winners on the night to collect their trophy and have a party, these annual publications provide a snapshot of the year’s work, an overview of what was considered good at the time.
Of course there are many disrupting factors that mean judging decisions aren’t 100% objective. The judges can assess only what is entered; each judge brings their own bias(es); and the process of judging can sometime mean more extreme work get voted down. But having judged both SPD and D&AD I can’t conceive a better working process toward fair decisions.
Anyhow, back to the annuals. Getting your work into these books is the aim. Posterity!
On that basis this year’s crop of D&AD Magazine & Newspaper winners is a pretty good reflection of what’s going on. The recognition of the The Guardian redesign is a useful barometer: the two parts of that project listed below are undoubtedly the better parts of a sometimes flawed redesign. And tired though we may be of seeing The New York Times Magazine included once again, it’s only a reflection of the quality the team continue to produce.
And note that Gail Bichler’s team are also beginning to contribute to the main newspaper – the Yellow-winning special sections include the new Kid’s section of the paper and other one-offs designed by her team. Finally, it’s good to see Francesco Franchi’s redesign of Itlalian newspaper la Repubblica win a Yellow. I regret not making more of this project here on magCulture when it first launched, it’s a fabulous piece of design.
Here are all the winners, by pencil colour (Yellow being best). Overall it’s a good mix of big and small, the familiar and the less so.
Congratulations all!
YELLOW
The New York Times special sections
The New York Times Magazine cover series
la Repubblica
GRAPHITE
The Guardian Sport section
Rubbish Famzine
Wired Italia
WOOD
Buffalo Zine
Der Spiegal Trump cover series
Der Spiegal Trump cover
Eye no94 cover
Good Trouble
Harper’s Bazaar cover series
The Guardian Journal section
Mushpit #10
The New York Times Magazine ‘New York Stories’ issue
Pulp
Wired
Yes & No
For all winners across the many, many categories see the D&AD site.