The spot summarizes in a creative and unusual way five decades of the D&AD Awards, recalling memorable pieces of design and advertising that won the coveted pencil-shaped trophies.

Our creative team was given full access to D&AD’s massive archive, and started the task of picking through thousands of outstanding examples of creativity in design and art direction. Our choices were dictated in equal parts by the historic importance of the pieces and our own personal taste, while also trying to strike a balance between old and new, popular and more obscure work. The over 20 references we picked were then reinterpreted afresh, using various techniques like 2D and 3D animation, stop motion, live action and puppetry, all the while swapping characters and narratives between the ads. The resulting fragments were sequenced in a free-associative way, with elements from a scene “trespassing” onto the next creating a flowing, surrealistic narrative that reflects the ambiguous, unpredictable nature of memory.

For the print campaign we chose to redraw the D&AD logo using a wealth of different materials, like needles, glitter, seeds, liquid etc. We also probably risked ruining our laser cutting machine by using it to brand the logo on pieces of wood, bread, raw steak, cold cut slices and fried eggs.

The film was mostly seen online, and will also feature as an opening piece on the 2015 D&AD Professional Awards ceremony.

This series of absurd and humorous situations, though irreverent, never feel derogatory to the original material – after all, this is a homage, not a parody. And with more than 20 different references packed in about one minute of video, it’s also a treat and a challenge both to newbies and connoisseurs of design and advertising alike.