“The D&AD Awards 2021 Exhibition in Japan” was held at the Ad Museum Tokyo. Our brief was to develop a design concept that reflected the outstanding creativity of the previous year’s D&AD award winners, and to create posters, movies, and thematically linked decor for the exhibition venue. Our objective was not only to generate advance interest the event, but also to heighten the exhibition experience for attendees by offering them a visually engaging and thematically coherent context in which the works could be viewed.

Our idea sprang from the insight that design is continually driven by the creative impulse to make things better and more beautiful than they were before. It is an impulse passed from generation to generation, transcending genres and cultures to connect people across time and space. The designs that emerge from this process have an intense brilliance, and their evolution never ceases. We conceived this process to be a succession of “beautiful muta-tions,” and chose ever-mutating goldfish as a motif for visual expression. The D&AD Awards define a globally recognised standard of design excellence, and with our creative work we encouraged exhibition visitors to consider how the award-winning works reflect the ever-evolving nature of the design process.

We used fluorescent orange lines to express the idea of “design DNA” being passed down through successive generations of creators striving to make things better and more beautiful than ever before. We deliberately chose fluorescent orange to make the lines themselves seem to come alive, and to reflect the vital force that drives the creative process. The lines pass through the body of each goldfish, yet each fish is different, with no two having the same pattern. They are distinct individuals who follow their own path, shimmering with an iridescent beauty that is uniquely their own. Fluorescent orange lines were also used throughout the exhibition space to express the idea of “design as a process” that flowed through all of the works on display. This design accent also created a sense of continuity and dynamic flow that further enhanced the visual appeal of the exhibition venue.

Despite pandemic-related restrictions that required visitors to make reservations in advance, the exhibition successfully attracted in a wide audience and was very well attended. In addi-tion to appealing to designers and advertising industry personnel, it also proved popular with the general public, drawing in many students and families with younger children who clearly seemed to enjoy the works on display.