By: Print staff | October 30, 2010
The 35 pieces selected for Print’s 2010 review of the best business-related graphic design from around the world, Creativity + Commerce, demonstrate that, in any year, it’s the unexpected work that becomes truly memorable. Our judges Timothy Goodman and Anisa Suthayalai, along with Jeremy Lehrer who selected our Green Award for sustainable design, were looking for entries that went beyond style and, in the words of Goodman, “used truth as a threshold for great storytelling.”
First place: Design Army
The first place winner, “OMG Addys,” designed by perennial favorite Design Army (the studio has five pieces in this issue), is both timeless and relevant to the times. The use of emails, texting, Facebook, and Twitter has reduced our dialect to abbreviations. This piece turns up the volume on that idea with its clever use of text talk. The colors, the typography, the scale, and its playfulness makes this piece a delight.
Second place: Motion Theory
Also speaking directly to the current times is the second place winner Motion Theory for its Google Chrome video demo, a benchmark for digital experimental thinking. “The public wants to live with a product, not just buy one,” says Goodman. And this commercial is the perfect example of that notion.
Third place: Knock, Inc.
In third place, design studio KNOCK, Inc. uses one of the world’s most well-known jokes and puns to tell its incredibly charming story through the use of design restraint and elegant typography. And who doesn’t love typography knocked out on a dark wood background? (No pun intended.)
Green Award: Willoughby Design
Our Green Award went to Willoughby Design for their packaging of New Leaf Paper’s line of sustainable premium stationery. There were several great projects, and a tough choice to be made between the New Leaf project and a Sappi paper promotion that presented issues related to sustainability, but ultimately, Lehrer felt that “the degree to which New Leaf walks the talk won the day.” The combination of green initiative mixed with career planning seems an apt metaphor for the times we’re in—a world desperately in need of a sustainability makeover filled with job seekers in a tough economy.
The 2010 Creativity + Commerce JudgesAnisa Suthalayalai is founder of Default, a New York- and Bangkok-baseddesign practice. Before that, she worked at studios such as 2×4,DesignMW, VSA Partners, Segura, and Propaganda.
Timothy Goodman currently lives in San Francisco and works for AppleInc. He was formerly a senior designer with the experiential design firmCOLLINS: in New York City where he worked for clients such as CNN,Motts, and Microsoft.
Current Issue
October 2010
It’sthe international issue: Irish animation, Russian stamps, Mao kitsch,and 35 winners of our Creativity + Commerce competition. Plus, topdesigners reveal their favorite psychological tactics to get clients tosay “yes.”
Also: Rick Poynor on design as dictator, Khoi Vinh asks how to effectively archive digital design, and Paul Shaw reviews Trilby.
Read the full Table of Contents