Project diary: D&AD 50

May 03, 2013 | Be the first to comment

When D&AD asked Planning Unit to design a milestone book to mark the organisation’s 50th anniversary, the result was a model exercise in creativity and craft

D&AD decided to celebrate its 50th anniversary by creating a publication about its own history, featuring accounts from key names who had been involved with the organisation between 1962 and 2012. London studio Planning Unit was asked to design the book.

THE DESIGN BRIEF
Jeff Knowles

The 50th anniversary of anything is cause for celebration, but in D&AD’s case, the organisation’s anniversary in 2012 sparked the idea for a book that would look back at its history through the eyes of the people – the D&AD presidents and dignitaries – who were part of its long and illustrious history from 1962 to the present day. Marking a milestone in D&AD’s history, it represented a prime opportunity to talk to virtually everyone involved and get their unique insights and perspectives not only on the organisation, but also the wider design industry over the last 50 years.

D&AD first approached us regarding this project in January 2012 – it was the first anniversary of the modern-day Planning Unit, which Nick and I co-founded. We had both already worked very successfully with the organisation during our time at Research Studios – Nick designed D&AD’s 2008 annual, and I had worked on the designs for its 2010 and 2011 Student Awards, so the organisation knew our backgrounds and that we could deliver what it needed.

One of the first things we had to do was create a ‘blad’ for the book’s publisher, Taschen – essentially a sample chapter that it could approve before giving the go-ahead for the publication. Unusually, it liked our design almost immediately and signed it off within a day.

Planning Unit co-founders Jeff Knowles (left ) and Nick Hard (right) took a unique approach to the design of D&AD 50, mixing D&AD brand assets with new additions, such as Pantone Gold

We had determined from conversations with Jana Labaki and Holly Hall in D&AD’s Awards team that instead of avoiding brand assets for the book – as is normally the case with the annual – we were going to embrace them. The final design combines assets like the Franklin Gothic typeface and striking yellow brand colour with new additions, namely Pantone gold, to commemorate the organisation’s 50th anniversary.

WORK IN PROGRESS
Nick Hard

Right from the get-go, the aim of the D&AD ¬ book was to create something that was very different and not just another annual. There were commercial considerations that inevitably meant we had to make some compromises – for example, on paper stock – along the way. Taschen effectively presented us with a menu of 10 to 15 choices, of which we could make around five, because that’s what we could afford. If we wanted a hard cover, we couldn’t have the transparent dust jacket; if we wanted page ribbons, we couldn’t have the gold stock, and so on.

Originally we had planned to have 50-odd pages of uncoated stock at the start and another 12 pages at the end, with high gloss stock in the middle. However, because of the other choices we had made, we ended up at the stage where we could only really use one stock.

Taschen steered us in the direction of some of the other publications it had done, which we looked through at Taschen’s flagship store in Chelsea. In the end we decided on Sappi’s HannoArt Bulk stock, which works really well with images, especially black-and-white ones. It was also the only option that gave us quite a punchy colour. This was important because there wasn’t going to be much colour in the book, so we had to make sure that the colour we did have wouldn’t bleed into the paper too much.

Overprinting black on gold proved to be a particular challenge for Planning Unit and Taschen

CONCLUSION
Jeff Knowles

The 360-page D&AD 50 book was finally published by Taschen at the end of 2012 – and it’s received some pretty good press. Awards manager Jana Labaki from D&AD was certainly pleased with the result, and told us it worked out even better than expected. To quote her: “When I got my first advance copy of the book, I was blown away by how gorgeous it looks. And we’ve been overwhelmed by the positive feedback about it since. Of course, it is a great publication because of the amazing and inspirational content, and the wonderful words of so many greats – but also because it’s a work of love. It’s important to work with people you respect, and who respect your project and will give it the attention it deserves. Planning Unit and Rod were really excited and passionate about it when working on it and that shows in the final result. It will please many people reading it, but it was at least as exciting putting it together.”

For Rod Stanley, who edited the book, the project proved equally rewarding. Not only was he lucky enough to meet and interview many of D&AD’s past presidents, he also learned a great deal about the development of the industry and how it was affected by the technology and the politics of the time. As he puts it: “We succeeded in creating a vibrant, entertaining and informative history of both D&AD and, in a wider sense, the explosive development of commercial design over the last 50 years that will hopefully be relevant to students and enthusiasts for many years to come.”

We were really pleased with the way the project turned out too. It was pretty straightforward once we had agreed the blad with Taschen and D&AD, and there weren’t too many frustrations along the way. We still meet with D&AD regularly and we’re looking forward to heading down there one afternoon to look through all the annuals and see what other original Planning Unit work is in there. Hopefully there will be quite a lot.

Discover 10 amazing examples of experimental design at our sister site, Creative Bloq.

AT A GLANCE
Jeff Knowles explains the key stages that D&AD 50 went through

1: Convincing the client

Our first task was to create a ‘blad’ – which included a few ideas for the cover and intro pages, and some sample chapters – so that the publisher Taschen could approve the design. It did. And in a single day, which is very unusual in the book publishing business.

2: Our first problem

Our next job was to find the assets. D&AD doesn’t have a complete digital archive of all the materials submitted over the last 50 years, so we had to go through previous annuals to find them. Sourcing the work became harder the further we went back.

3: Solution: part one

Luckily, D&AD was able to locate some of the assets using a third party company. For other work, like TV adverts, we turned to sources like YouTube. Ultimately, though, some of the material was only available in the various annuals themselves.

4: Solution: part two

The only answer was to scan the old annuals. Although we only needed to do rough scans for our layouts at this stage, we needed around five to 10 images per annual, from around 40 annuals in total. The entire process took us around two weeks to complete.

5: A pleasant surprise

During our scanning process we found some work from the original Planning Unit, founded by Nick’s grandfather – which Derek Birdsall picked out from the 1965 annual. We decided to use an example of some of this work in telling our own story – in a way, completing the circle.

6: Locating the copy

As book editor at D&AD, it was Rod Stanley’s job to interview or get written submissions from past D&AD presidents and so on. Once the copy (60,000 words from 60 contributors) was in, Rod refined it and checked that each contributor was happy with their entry.

7: Designing the page

One of the decisions that we took early on was to have copy intermingled with images. This helped make the book accessible and easy to read – and also enabled us to get over the problem that some of the earliest images from the annuals were relatively small.

8: Testing special inks

An important stage of the process was to test different elements to make sure they worked. One of these involved printing black on gold on the inside pages of the book – something our printer said couldn’t be done, but we proved that it could.

9: Dealing with stakeholders

With D&AD as client and Taschen as publisher, there was inevitably some back and forth during the process as we sought approval for certain things that we wanted to do. Luckily, any changes were pretty minimal because both were onside from the blad stage onwards.