New Blood

Yeah, so it was a little while ago now, but I thought I'd write up my feelings on D&AD New Blood. Beforehand it had been banded about that the theme this year would be digital and that extra emphasis would be given to work with new technology. When it came to it though, I couldn't see any difference from the year before in terms of the work on show. A lot of digital agencies were invited to the private viewing, but it seemed many were walking round frustrated.

For this very reason, any ideas mocked up on an iPad or displayed on a laptop were given a bonus 5-10 seconds to be stared at, but that wasn't enough. Set in a whitewashed warehouse as usual, the show immediately felt akin to an art gallery with a 'hands-off' vibe that noone had aimed for. This works well for showing illustrations and posters, but it always takes a little bit of time, nudging and smiling to get people to pick up anything hand-crafted, let alone interactive!



At this point it's probably best I address the bias in my writing - I was displaying my work on the Twitterwall hashtag aggregation project. Having a digital project at New Blood was actually great and I got to meet a lot of nice people through it. Sadly it went unnoticed in the judging. Meanwhile, three doors down a student from University of Huddersfield won a Best New Blood award for his Twitter project aggregating tweets with the hashtags #love and #hate. Gutted, but in all seriousness, congratulations. Still waiting for that email if you want to collaborate mate.



Our Ravensbourne stand still attracted a fair bit of interest, thanks mainly to the big yellow arrow won by Mike Scott for his portfolio of work. I particularly liked his stamps depicting Olympic world records — as clinical as Usain Bolt on a race track.



Bournemouth University won best stand with an impressive collection of work, elegantly displayed. This Talk To Frank poster caught my eyes in several ways.



The stand of Loughborough University caught my attention too, with their milk float branding designed by Ben Marsh. Having had a good look at his site he's got a lot of neat projects: from animated titles for Tron, to condoms packaged like Gameboy games and even a sharp, spikey Scouse font, like. I also really admire his sketchbooks which are just as interesting to look at as the final outcomes.



There is also a write-up on Creative Review about New Blood 2011 that is worth a flick-through. Although this poster below summises my general feelings on the show.

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