Eight NZ ad agencies feature among the finalists for this year’s New Zealand Best Design Awards – Colenso, Special Group. Strategy, FCB, Saatchi & Saatchi, Resn, Y&R, and Whybin/TBWA. Here’s a summary of the best of Best 2016 …
Pedigree A Dog’s Story by Colenso BBDO – Finalist in Design Craft
Globally the number of dogbite incidents is increasing – in New Zealand they’ve been growing by over 10% each year. At the heart of the Pedigree brand is the desire to make the world a better place for dogs. A Dog’s Story is an educational application that teaches children dog safety. The app has a classic storybook feel, reminiscent of a bedtime story for parents and children to enjoy and learn from together. The illustration has a painterly, hand-drawn style with expressive brushstrokes that layer up to give each scene depth and scale across six different experiences.
All Good Drinks by Special Group – Finalist in Graphic design
All Good, a small company in New Zealand, believe that if you’re going to drink something that has sugar in it, it should at least be organic and Fairtrade. In 2014 they developed three soft drinks: Karma Cola, Gingerella Ginger Ale and Lemony Lemonade with ingredients coming from developing nations with profits from the sale of each bottle returning to communities and encouraging growth. Special Group designed three heroes – one for each beverage – that had distinct personalities with a non-corporate appearance designed to stand out as the ‘good guy’ in the chillers of cafes, bars and summer festivals.
CoCA Vertigo Sea by Strategy Design & Advertising – Finalist in Design Communication
The Christchurch Centre of Contemporary Art (CoCA), reopened in February 2016 after five years of closure following the earthquakes. In creating the campaign for their second ever show, Vertigo Sea, SDA focussed on the hero exhibition – an hour-long film by artist-filmmaker John Akomfrah exploring humankind’s relationship to the ocean, touching on issues such as colonialism, refugee migration and whaling. To create a sense of foreboding, the design features a large imposing triangle with a slightly angled waterline swallowing it as if to echo a submerged iceberg or the hull of a massive ship. To create more visual traction on the street the graphic poster was flipped upside down to create an even more dominant, eye-catching shape that echoes the feel of submersion and reflection. For social media applications an animated graphic shows the horizon line rising and falling to swallow the triangle.
FCB Drafties Awards – a finalist in Self Promotion
As NZ’s only advertising internal awards, The Drafties are important in promoting FCB to prospective employees and clients. The design needed to excite staff for the awards night, and inspire them every day to contribute to creating great work. The final concept was to create and celebrate eight distinct ‘Draftie personas’ which reflect each of the award categories, together making FCB what it is. The humble office desk became the key campaign element for showcasing the attributes and requirements of each awards category. For example, ‘The Boat pusher’ desk featured a mediocre brief transformed into a glorious paper swan. With a record number of entries in 2016, it showcases the important role strategic design can take to lead staff engagement, build memorable experiences and change behaviour for the good of staff and company.
Saatchi & Saatchi Design Worldwide and Osborne Shiwan Govett-Brewster Art Gallery by c – a finalist in Design Communication
The Govett-Brewster has very demanding requirements for their communications while having a small internal team who are responsible for delivering all the marketing for the gallery. Saatchi & Saatchi conducted interviews and collated information before designing a solution for the client and delivered a comprehensive system that was robust and simple to manage. It comprise of ‘simple rules’ such as using a single colour for economical print runs, as well as training on specified grid templates and typographic rules. Since delivery of the project, marketing collateral output is up by 65% while the rebrand has seen an increase in sales of more than 200%.
Resn and Y&R Auckland McWhopper – a finalist in Interactive Marketing
September 21st is the International Day of Peace. To raise awareness of Peace Day, Y&R and Burger King enlisted Resn’s help to make an unprecedented peace proposal to McDonald’s: join forces and create the McWhopper. They created a custom interactive Tumblr experience which served as an open letter from Burger King to McDonald’s. The website detailed every aspect of the Peace Day plan, from the co-branded designs to the recipe for the McWhopper itself. Although McDonald’s declined the invitation, people around the world celebrated the idea, even creating their own McWhoppers. With over 2 billion web impressions, more than 700,000 users on the website in the first 48 hours, and the campaign making headlines around the world, the response exceeded all expectations.
Whybin/TBWA ANZ Rhapsody – a finalist in Environmental Graphics
ANZ are strong believers in diversity, inclusion and respect. As such they have supported the Pride festival in Auckland for over a decade. Last year the bank’s respect was shown through GAYTMs. This year, in celebration of the thirtieth anniversary of homosexual law reform in New Zealand, Whybin/TBWA upped the ante. They commissioned an artist to design an exterior for the ANZ 3 Lamps branch in Ponsonby. 500 studio hours later, the initial designs became 209 individual pieces of production ready finished art. The work comprised of 3600 lineal metres of colourful printed vinyl adhesive – enough to cover half a rugby field or 10 full bus wraps. In music, a rhapsody is a one-movement work that is episodic yet integrated, free-flowing in structure, featuring a range of highly contrasted moods, colour, and tonality. For the installation this colour range represented the broad spectrum of individuals that shine within our fantastic community.
Young + Shand. The Originals – New Zealand’s Best Interactive Design
The winners will be announced – and published in M+AD – in October.
- More about Best here: bestawards.co.nz
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