A Letter from D&AD Chairman Tim Lindsay

Hello, and welcome to the 2021 D&AD Annual. Perhaps your work features here? If so, many congratulations. Perhaps you aspire to get work into a future edition? You’ve come to the right place – to learn, be inspired, be stimulated. Perhaps you’ve come along to celebrate the strength, resilience, adaptability and sheer brilliance of our amazing industry? Thank you for your time and interest.

You may recall that last year was the first time in our 59-year history that D&AD didn’t publish a printed ‘Book’. It caused some consternation, particularly – although certainly not exclusively - amongst our older members. We respect tradition as much as the next person – and yield to no one in our love for books. But honestly? The time had come.

Without going through the whole debate again, the two sides of the discussion boil down to a) 2,000 printed books distributed mainly in the UK at a cost of £80 per copy failing to show the winning work in anything like its full glory vs. b) a richer, deeper product, showing the work as its creators intended, with articles, interviews, judges’ comments, trend reports and tons of other inspiring, educative content to boot. Distributed globally. For nothing. Our Board of Trustees made the right decision.

Or did they? Well of course they did. The digital Annual was seen by 75,000 people around the world, 60,000 of whom were newcomers to the D&AD website. And 12,000 of whom were young creative practitioners. 76% of visitors were from outside the UK – the exact reverse of the printed Annual distribution profile. And visits and usage continue to build through the year.

The digital Annual is becoming what we intended – a source of inspiration and enablement and a cornerstone of our learning programmes – New Blood, Masterclasses, Shift (now generously supported by Google) – throughout the year.

Our role as we see it, in the new pandemic era, is to provide as much support via our awards, content and programmes to as wide as possible a creative audience in the most accessible way. As our way of helping our industry do the best it can do and be the best it can be.

So what do we do now? Make the Annual even better, of course. Our friends at Studio Dunbar continue to help us make it look as good as possible – an important tradition from the printed Annual that we will, of course, continue.

And instead of inviting a single, centralised authority to identify, analyse and number-crunch this year’s trends and themes, we have invited a glorious diversity of voices to write with deep and specialised knowledge on a wide variety of topic areas, to provide their uniquely personal perspectives.

So what does our long-time friend Sulaiman Khan have to say about the winning work that attempts to provide better experiences for disabled users? What does writer and expert on trans issues Shon Faye think of Mastercard’s True Name project? And what does Jess Crombie think about our winners’ use of empathy as a communications tool, from her position as a senior advisor to NGOs for many years?

These and many others are hugely important positions and perspectives to consider as our world becomes more complex and the challenges facing our business – and humanity – become more obvious, more pressing, requiring more of our creativity and ingenuity to solve and resolve.

(You can even contribute personally to the richness of these views and perspectives by curating and sharing your own favourites from the Pencil-winning work in the Annual. We hope you feel inspired to do so.)

We must never forget, of course, that advertising and design’s primary function is to help our clients build their businesses. But we must also never forget that  – for all our sakes – that has to be done in a way that is sustainable; that preserves and conserves resources for future generations. (This, by the way, to forestall the nay-sayers, is the most pro-business stance it is possible to take.)

So wherever you’re approaching this from, and wherever you’re accessing it from – thank you for engaging with us. The central tenet of D&AD’s raison d’etre – the tentpole that supports all our endeavours – is an abiding belief that excellence in commercial creativity is worth fighting for. Because it creates better outcomes all round. And because if a thing is worth doing, it surely must be worth striving to do it well.

The fact that you’re even here, reading this, strongly suggests that you feel the same. There’s definitely a battle to be fought; against the powerful influences that would have us return to the old ‘normal’. And against those powerful factors that make great work harder to do in the third decade of the 21st century.

But for now, enjoy the 2021 digital Annual.