After Wednesday night’s celebrations (and deliberations over Agency of the Year) it seemed like a good week to focus on awards and judging angst.
In a week that saw both the CIPDs and the AGR being announced, I thought we’d take a break from our part of the world and look over the fence into consumer. Tom started the discussion last week with his links to some nice work to be recognised by D&AD, the Designers and Art Directors Association. A D&AD pencil is the award most consumer creatives in this country aspire to, but it’s a different story outside the UK. In the US, The One Show rules the roost and opinions are divided whether the UK or the US produce and feature the best work.
Take a peek at some of the work below and see which you prefer? English Mustard or New York’s Finest?
First up is We Choose The Moon, a site that Russ pointed out a few months’ ago. This has recently won a Gold Award at the One Show Interactive and apparently the little Lynchs have been unable to tear themselves away from this for many weeks now.
Closer to home, D&AD were awarding a Black Pencil, their highest award, to the Apple website, which has baffled many but you may see the method in their madness. (Easy on the eye and simple to navigate, but is this really the best the web has to offer?)
Meanwhile, over in New Yoick the recently awarded One Show was attracting a lot of great work, including one of my favourites – a site for HBO, the American TV channel. If like me you’re a Robert Altman fan and like your stories told from many angles, this is a thing of beauty.
Finally, I’m going to point you in the direction of GoodBy, Silverstein and Partners and a campaign for Crest. Goodby are a San Francisco-based agency who consistently top the Gunn Report, a ranking of the world’s most creative agencies. Their site, which interestingly focuses entirely on their clients and says very little about themselves, is packed full of well-observed, funny, engaging and brand building work – which are exactly the qualities displayed in the very lovely Crest campaign.
All of which suggests the Americans are going to edge it on humour – or does it? Oh no, the angst….