THE BRAND
For over 40 years, D&AD has nurtured and rewarded the creative excellence produced by British designers and art directors. But the industry has grown and evolved. D&AD knew it wasn’t just reflecting design and art direction in Britain. The organization, after all, is recognized internationally in all sectors of creativity.

D&AD acknowledged the need wanted to stand for more than just excellence, investing all their proceeds back into education and increasing their links and association with enterprise. And with this, in autumn 2005, Rose was assigned to rebuild a visual statement on D&AD being The Global Symbol of Creativity. Rose were therefore asked to take ‘a fresh look’ at how the existing D&AD identity elements could be used and ‘applied consistently to all corporate materials’.


THE HISTORY
Formerly founded as Designers & Art Directors Association of London back in 1962, D&AD is dedicated to celebrating creative communication, rewarding its practitioners and raising standards throughout the two disciplines when the interests of the British design and advertising communities coincided in London in the early 60’s. It was established to encourage the understanding and commission of good design in publicity, graphic communications and advertising material of every nature. While D&AD further demonstrates and gains recognition for the part that imaginative design and art direction play in the context of modern society, it also defines and improves the current standards of all forms of graphic design in practice in Great Britain.

A year on, Colin Forbes, of Fletcher/Forbes/Gill, designed D&AD’s logo by using a pre-digital 3-D modeling technique of sticking the four characters into the visible sides of a wooden cube and photographing the result. In 1966, Lou Klein designed the most dynamic representation of design and creativity, the Yellow Pencil: Globally recognized as the true marker of creative excellence today.





THE BRIEF
The need to be more than just excellent in being a charitable organization, D&AD wanted to increase awareness of the organization’s status and introduce the line “and not for profit”. D&AD also felt that exact clarification on what they do is necessary by further introducing the three facets of the organization: Excellence, Education, Enterprise, and D&AD’s purpose with an increased awareness of a not-for-profit institution.

On top of this section of the entire re-branding, D&AD also felt the need to reflect a global shift in outlook. Agreed that the corporate typeface family and existing marque would be kept, Rose were asked to take ‘a fresh look’ at how the existing D&AD identity elements could be used and ‘applied consistently to all corporate materials’ with a strengthening element to D&AD’s corporate color association which had more recently been weakened.


THE PROCESS
Given that D&AD’s increasingly global perspective is widely associated with the highest standards in creativity, Rose felt it was important to create a marque to combine all the required elements; including the colors, with a simple idea. Something to help D&AD position themselves as ‘the international authority on creativity’ and to enhance what they are already well known for - the Yellow Pencil. Those who didn’t necessarily recognize the name ‘D&AD’, were more likely to know them as “the yellow pencil people”.

Thus, Rose created a marque that used the “yellow people” connection, giving them the opportunity to re-introduce the yellow on all D&AD materials. With this in mind, they took the original logo and combined it with a yellow hexagon – the shape of the pencil, when up-ended – to both represent the pencil, and communicate the new multi-faceted D&AD. The original marque sits in the middle of the hexagon – like the lead in the pencil – running through the core. Wherever you cut it, it is always the same. The hexagon marque can also be used in isolation, to act as a ‘seal of quality’ – rather like a kite-mark – providing the organization with opportunities for accreditation within business and commerce, as they assert themselves as the international authority on creativity, going forward.





The ‘not for profit’ statement sits underneath, hand-written appropriately in pencil to give the line a human ‘by the way’ feel and to provide a gentle reminder that D&AD is a charity organization. All of the elements work with the hexagon device, creating a lock-up, which is used on all corporate materials to promote the organization and its events. Rose used this principle, together with the new design elements, to create appropriate but more interesting solutions to a variety of applications. So, an alternative to the formal business card, Rose suggested D&AD’s staff to present a yellow pencil to the communicating recipient with their contact details on one facet.

Membership cards use the latest technology in production techniques to compliment and practice the organizations principles. The marque in the center of the card is transparent. When all of the cards are stacked together, they would make one enormous pencil – every member’s card, a slice with D&AD running through the core. On the other hand, signages use the facets. Projecting signs protrude from walls like large pencil sections, carrying directional information on the different facets. Wall mounted plaques have been designed using a slice of the pencil, creating three visible facets. To help build on the idea of international authority on creativity, Rose suggested that all publications carry a yellow spine, so in every studio around the world, it is easy to recognize something from D&AD sitting on a shelf or bookcase.


THE RESULT
The identity has helped D&AD re-connect with their strong visual heritage across a variety of applications, encouraging creative ideas and inventive implementation, rather than stifling it. The work that D&AD now publishes, such as their members magazine, Ampersand, carries a yellow spine, and events like Xchange, Congress and New Blood have already adopted the new identity.



© 2006 by TAXI Design Network. All rights reserved.