The shortlisted entries for the Metro Wrap design competition have been put up on the D&AD blog.

The brief was to take over the front outside and inside cover of commuter paper Metro for one day in April to give Londoners an inspiring and motivational message to start their day. It’s a great that the space usually reserved for desperately flogging a new mobile phone or deodorant is given over to something needlessly creative for a change.

The entry above which I really liked is by Clare McKenzie/Clare Theophane, Miranda Bolter, Freya Defoe & Steve Hickory of The Partners and requires readers of the paper to fill in their own news and doodle their own cartoons. Lovely.

I’m afraid most of the rest of the entries were a bit disappointing, many opting to print a rhetorical visual pun on the front cover instead of actually getting to grips with the brief itself and thinking about how to communicate with Londoners, let alone what to say to them. One of The Partners’ other entries (they dubiously have 5 out of 10 shortlisted) is a newspaper printed like an umbrella, to hold over your head in case it’s raining that April morning. Yawn.

One entry has the paper covered in knitting. Presumably because the designer, erm, likes knitting. Each to their own.

Another entrant has printed transport upholstery patterns on the cover, which I heartily approve of, but I’m not sure how thinking my false teeth have fallen out, or that I’ve dropped a quid is going to set me up motivationally for the day ahead. If you were stupid or partially sighted enough to fall for it, it seems to me that it would just make you anxious.

Anyway, all of this is most likely sour grapes, because you see, despite my previous emotionally scarring experience of a Metro design competition, I entered this one too and my entry didn’t make the grade. I’ll dig it out and share it with you once I find my false teeth. Now where did I put them…?

This sums up the last couple of days for me.

From Animals on the Underground.