Perhaps you are lacking direction in your design career, perhaps you are searching for a gift for the creative director in your life who has everything, or perhaps you’re an over-zealous finance person who could do without paying that huge creative director salary every month and are looking for a cheaper alternative. Whatever your situation, these stamps from Heather Phillips are for you!

Why not buy the whole set? After dispensing some of this advice amongst your woefully inadequate colleagues, your promotion to CD is sure to be in the post.

Of course kids, don’t forget that creative direction is dangerous and should only be attempted by a skilled and experienced adult. Do not attempt to creatively direct at home or unsupervised.

Found via Angus Whines, who in turn found it via Ben Terrett, and at that point I had to find out where to buy one.

So after experiencing a taste of the judging process earlier in the year, I somehow managed to infiltrate the D&AD Awards ceremony last night just up the road from work near Old Street. In actual fact I won a ticket from the kind people at Arjo Wiggins Creative Papers as part of The Blank Sheet project.

So, yesterday saw me don an actual real life shirt and tie and go along to the awards for the first time. And it was a night of firsts, as this year the professional and student awards were handed out together which was a brilliant idea. That, and the decision not to pay Jimmy Carr to do some patter, but to use the money for a free bar and ferris wheel, resulted in many people remarking that it was certainly ‘better than last year’. Well, I wouldn’t know as I have never been along before, but from my point of view it was better than last year, as in 2010 I followed the whole thing on Twitter from my living room.

Anyway, I digress. The evening was very nice indeed, pretty lavishly staged and posh food. The awards bit itself seemed to take an awfully long time, and was a little chaotic, with the different disciplines and the students/professionals all mixed up, but while a little difficult to follow it was continually inspiring. The room was huge, which wasn’t a problem for me as I’d scored a seat right up front, but at the back, the naughty kids were all chatting, doing shots and passing notes as you’d expect. In fact it got properly all Grange Hill when Sanky, D&AD President implored the crowd to ‘take the volume level down from 10 to 3 please’.

Well, as always it was all about the winners, which are well documented on the Creative Review blog this morning, and of course on the D&AD site itself, so you don’t need me to list them, but I thought it might be worth remarking randomly on some which from my perspective as a graphic designer, working with identity especially, I just liked…

The ‘Almost Extinct’ calendar for example, by The Chase sensitively brought home the perilous situation faced by various species whilst still remaining playful.

The V&A ‘Palindrome’ installation by Troika wonderfully played with reflection and symmetry.

Mucho’s Art Out typeface was elegantly beautiful, and reassuringly traditional.

The reality of the filthy rich was graphically illustrated by CHI & Partners for The Times Richlist.

And obviously there were loads more. It was a bit disappointing again though, to see that D&AD don’t appear to be particularly interested in traditional graphic design, and specifically identity. It felt a little bit like if you had done something vaguely digital, especially using an iPad, you stood a greater chance than if you had traditionally wrestled with a complex identity project and seen it through to a brilliant conclusion. There was a lot of moving image, and loads of nebulous brand campaign type stuff, but not nearly enough wonderfully executed and inventive graphic design. And don’t tell me there isn’t any out there, because there is.

Having said that, this year the student awards were given out on the same night, and they definitely did their bit to redress the balance. A lot of the student ideas were impressively imaginative and no less inspiring than the professional stuff. For example…

This brilliant idea from students at Design Factory International would turn a whole city into a sketchpad drawn on via GPS movement. It was in response to a brief set by Arjo Wiggins, who in conversation after the awards, sounded like they were thinking of doing it for real…

This project from students at RMIT University cleverly shows how important copywriting is to advertising.

But the star of the student show was the branding work for Oxfam by students from Miami Ad School, Madrid, which focused on what Oxfam employees wanted to do with their lives once the need for their charitable work was finally fulfilled. Genius, and not done justice by the following JPGs.

The star of the professional show? Well that was Neville Brody who received the President’s Award to rapturous applause.

Oh, and of course this guy…

Overall, after feeling all warm and fuzzy towards the D&AD during judging week, when it was all informal and drenched in sunlight, this felt much more elitist as you might expect. I think because during judging there was a lot of work on show of varying standards it all felt very accessible and democratic, whereas on awards night obviously only the best got through and some of the egos and agendas in the room were tangible. One winner of a black pencil was heard to remark “I’ve waited 25 years for this” which just goes to show how very important it was to almost everyone there. In contrast to some of the po-faced professional recipients, most of the students were elated, and one even danced all the way up the stage and punched the air. After seeing that, you wondered why some of the luminaries of the industry couldn’t crack a smile.

And so that was it, I had a great evening and managed to avoid spending the night wandering around on my own. Big thanks must go to Jonathan and the guys from Arjo Wiggins for making me feel so welcome. It was especially nice to meet a few people who before that night I had only ‘met’ via Twitter too. But of course next time I go to one of these things, it would be nice to be in the running for a pencil.

I can dream can’t I?

Last week was judging week at D&AD, the week where the great and the good in the design industry get together and pass judgement on the work sent in by all the hopeful designers looking to gain their yellow-pencil-shaped approval.

Normally this is a closed process, but this year in addition to encouraging the judges to tweet their thoughts and publishing live lists of shortlisted work on their website, D&AD also offered to show groups round on judging day. Needless to say, I jumped at the chance and promptly invited myself.

I’ve been really glad to see this sort of openness finally coming from the D&AD. In the past, I wasn’t sure what to make of them. I was first introduced to the organisation as a student, and I diligently entered the student awards without really understanding the relevance of it all. There wasn’t as much information around back then, it felt like it was a mysterious private members club for the design elite, and not one a student designer who had come from a job on a trading estate in the West Midlands had any chance of ever belonging to.

Over the years I attended many of the lectures, and my various workplaces occasionally entered a project I had worked on, but the D&AD and I comprehensively failed to make any sort of impression on each other. It remained something out of my reach, the doors to the private members club stayed closed.

And then a couple of things happened. Firstly, a project I worked on, Vodafone Music, made it into the 2009 Annual. This was a big deal and seeing my name in the book alongside those of revered and respected practitioners was very satisfying. As a reward, I was given a year’s membership to the D&AD, and so little by little those austere doors started to open to me. (metaphorically of course). Things like Twitter had opened up design conversations too, and for the first time I found myself ‘talking’ to my design heroes directly, getting an insight into what lay inside the club, and a sense of the guts of my industry. I scoured eBay and started collecting the Annuals (at the time of writing I have every one from 1994 to present, plus a few others), studying the projects that made it – and those that won the coveted pencil – trying to figure out what they had in common. What was the formula for gaining entry to the winners’ hexagon, what was I up against?

This was the year that Matt Dent won the almost mythical black pencil for his UK Royal Mint coin designs. Something clicked. I had assumed these people were Dan Brown’s Illuminati, and I was going to have to learn their handshakes, but in actual fact you didn’t have to have studied at a legendary design school, have worked in a world-famous studio, or hang out on the yachts of monied industry figures to win a pencil. You just had to have a great idea and do it well. Matt was proof. That’s what all the winners had in common. (well, most of them anyway) Although both the Illuminati and graphic designers do share a love of ambigrams…

So flash forward to the present day, and there I am walking around in the Grand Hall at Olympia, looking at the work through the eyes of a D&AD judge (metaphorically of course). Some of it was already famous from the blogosphere, some was new and some things you could tell weren’t going to make it (including a poster of mine, but that’s another story). The judges were all debating the merits of things and there was an atmosphere of warm sincerity to the whole thing. Everyone was taking their duty very seriously. Work was laid out anonymously and each piece got an equal shot at greatness. It was inspiring, some of the work was phenomenal. I did genuinely feel welcome (even if I comprehensively failed to find the courage to talk to anyone important), and it seemed that newcomers with a good idea can get noticed in such an open forum. It’s tough, but possible.

I was left with a renewed sense of possibility and the feeling that the D&AD was there for me if I wanted it (and had the money of course) and that all it really was, was a bunch of nice people who all loved design as much as I do. Perhaps I had judged it unfairly, perhaps if I stopped feeling intimidated by it all I could get involved.

I managed to hang around, to be present at the launch of the new White Pencil, which was quite a moment. A selfless award? An award which it’s promised will recognise a good solution be it large or small? An award which only costs £25 to enter? £25 for a shot at making the world a better place? That sounds like real progress. I’m in.

The evening ended at the pub, which, outside of the studio, I guess is the natural habitat of any designer. It was a warm spring evening and the beer tasted good, but of course it wasn’t the real world. Not the real world of clients, deadlines, briefs and budgets, and not the world I live in during working hours. So as welcoming as the D&AD are, and as tempting as it is to get drawn into – it seems to me that the best course of action is to stay in the real world. To look past the famous names, familiar JPGs and talismanic pencils, and focus on doing the best work possible. To win my own and my clients’ belief first and just hope somewhere along the way, some people stood around in the epic Olympia Grand Hall of the future see something they like. If they do, great, and if they don’t? Well I can come back sharper next year.

So it’s business as usual then, but somehow now after seeing it all from the inside, anything feels possible. And the door’s ajar…