Bruce Duckworth is speaking about the “future requirements of the design industry and who is shaping the future of design” by kicking off the first Cheltenham Design Festival on April 20-22. The new festival has attracted many sought after speakers including: Stefan Sagmeister, Sir John Hegarty, David Hillman, Kenneth Grange, together with McLaren cars design director Frank Stephenson and many more.

David Turner will be the closing speaker at this year’s FUSE conference on Apr 20 in Chicago, with “Back to the Future”. David will discuss how brands can celebrate their past without being stuck in it and how they can build a stronger connection with consumers by creatively managing their heritage. He’ll use examples from both the Turner Duckworth portfolio and the world at large to illustrate his ideas. FUSE is arguably the most prestigious annual design conference in the US, celebrating the influence of brand identity and packaging design on consumer brands. Attended by both clients and design professionals, speakers come from the areas of graphic, industrial and interactive design.

Turner Duckworth turns 20 this year! We celebrated with an opening party in our new London studio—located one floor up in the same building at Voysey House in Chiswick.

Half of our San Francisco crew flew over for a fun filled couple of nights to celebrate in full Brit style!

popchips, the fastest growing potato chip brand in the US, expanded its global reach by launching five popular potato chip flavors in the UK. Turner Duckworth was tasked with adapting popchips’ compelling US packaging for its first international launch. The design’s innovative branding helps differentiate it from other potato chips snacks in the UK. popchips was also recently named # 4 on Forbes’ list of “America’s Most Promising Companies”.

Bruce Duckworth is President of this year’s Cannes Design Jury. Comprised of 15 design professionals from around the world, the jury will review thousands of submissions in categories including Brand Identity, Packaging, Digital and Environment Design.

Turner Duckworth won the first ever Grand Prix for Design the year the festival introduced the Design Lions in 2008. This year’s winners will be announced at the 59th International Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity June 17-23 in Cannes, France.

Turner Duckworth is pleased to announce the hire of Planning Directors Tim Owen and Emelia Rallapalli in London and San Francisco respectively. Tim and Emelia have decades of experience between them with complementing expertise: Tim in design strategy and Emelia in qualitative design research.

Emelia brings a diverse brand strategy and market research background to our group. Her experience spans a cross-section of consumer and business categories. Prior to joining our team, Emelia spent nine years with Greenberg Brand Strategy, where her client portfolio included Visa, Gap, Allergan, Dell, and Symantec. During her planning career in advertising, she spent time at McCann-Erickson, Lowe Lintas & Partners, and Anderson Lembke, and advised brands on their global advertising strategies. Emelia attended Boston University, and graduated with degrees in Philosophy and Political Science.

Tim is one of only a handful of British planners to specialize in design strategy, and packaging design in particular. He started his planning career at Holmes & Marchant, where he developed brand and design strategies for Unilever, Pernod Ricard, and Coors, amongst others. He was made Board Planning Director in 2004. Since leaving the agency in 2008 Tim has worked with some of London’s most awarded design agencies (B&B Studio, Lewis Moberly, Turner Duckworth) on projects for Mars, Procter & Gamble and Kraft. Tim lives near the Thames at Cookham and likes old boats, books and hedges.

The D&AD Yellow Pencil is the world’s most sought after award for the Design
and Advertising creative industry.

In the past, getting in the D&AD annual, a feat in itself, or even getting Nomination
for a Yellow Pencil was rewarded by a certificate. Yet these two levels of accolade
are more difficult to achieve than big, shiny trophies at some design competitions.
To recognise these achievements D&AD decided to create two new physical
representations for these levels.

Bruce Duckworth said “The challenge was to create awards that recognise the In
Book and Nomination achievements that have stature, relate to D&AD, but are not
another Pencil, which could dilute the importance of such an iconic award.”

The slices of pencil are identical in size and material to the Yellow Pencil award.
They are also exactly the same shape and proportion of the D&AD hexagonal logo.
They are made of wood and like the pencil, have a very tactile quality. They come
in a presentation box that opens like a book which means they can be displayed in
the box or standing up on their own.

The In Book award

Speaking about the introduction of the slices D&AD President Simon Sankarayya
said, “It’s an honour to have these new physical representations of two incredibly
hard-won, uniquely D&AD, prize levels being launched during my year as President.
For many years we have endeavoured to communicate more effectively the value of
winning at any level in the D&AD Awards and the slices will undoubtably help to build awareness of the great level of creativity that it takes to be recognised by our juries.”

David Turner said “We will enter the design for D&AD awards next year, and if we
can, win one ourselves”.

Turner Duckworth redesigned the bottle structure and graphics with great respect for the history of this highly regarded brand.

The whole portfolio of products has been considered from the 15 year old French Oak Reserve which has been given a new clear bottle, to showcase its golden colour. New carton designs for both the 12 yr and 15 yr complement the primary pack design.

The Glenlivet 18 year old was designed to align with the ultra-premium 21 and 25 year old whiskies, featuring a bottle with a heavier base, packaged in a permanent gift carton to signify its new premium position within the range.

Special editions have also been designed. The recent expansion of the Distillery in Ballindaloch, Banffshire, Scotland–the first since 1973–was celebrated with the introduction of The Glenlivet Founders Reserve.

Chivas Brothers brand director Neil Macdonald says, “The Glenlivet is recognised by whisky aficionados around the world as an exquisite, premium whisky, and our new elegant packaging will confidently reflect this quality with its striking new shape and luxury cues.”

Bruce commented, “I can highly recommend The Glenlivet 18 year old.”

Turner Duckworth came away with three of the five First Place Statuettes in the packaging category at the Mobius Awards, for our designs for Kraft’s Miracle Whip, Coca-Cola 2010 Summer Packaging and Coca-Cola 2010 Winter Olympics Packaging and Premiums. Our work on Waitrose Pizza won a Certificate of Outstanding Creativity. To top it all, we won Best In Show for the Coca-Cola Winter Olympics design.

Mobius is an American design award, recognized internationally, with entries from more than 25 countries. It is one of only three American design competitions that factor into Design Week’s annual design consultancy survey.

Read their Turner Duckworth profile article here.

I’ve got a feeling that this year is going to be a pretty exciting time. I’ve just come out of days of meetings, planning our creative goals and financial targets for Turner Duckworth in 2011. The list of ‘things to do’ is a long one, but I find it fires me up.

Like any designer who runs his own company, whatever its size, you need a complex set of skills, not all of which are taught at art college. The intuitive, creative side of solving design problems, which is the main reason that we all got into the job in the first place, is. Knowing how to set the strategic direction of the company, which is the fun part of running your own business, isn’t.  Neither is appreciating and understanding the often rather dry world of the accountants’ numbers that make it all tick.

The numbers have always been the hardest part for me to get interested in; these days my accountants show me accounts in more visual ways like pie charts or Venn diagrams. Anything colourful and diagrammatic beats columns of numbers in 6pt type every time. Meetings without any visuals can be so dull, and although these days there are others in the company whose responsibility it is to manage the numbers, I think that a real understanding of what is going on is still an essential part of my responsibility. The business of a design company is as important as the creative output, because without each other nothing works properly.

I have the greatest respect for those design agencies that combine creative success and commercial success. There is no shortage of businessmen in the design industry happy to offer advice on how to run a design business effectively. Also there is no shortage of great designers who care so much about their creative product, they nearly forget to make any money. It seems that great creativity often comes at the expense of business success or vice versa, which is a shame.

My New Year’s resolutions are all to do with topping up the inspiration reserves for me and everyone in the studio. In the past I’ve found myself either feeling guilty about, or not giving enough time to indulge in inspiring activities. Even though, the effect of actually doing them is so energising.

I’m determined this year to introduce our studio back to the handcraft of design, to reunite everyone, including me, with the reasons we started designing in the first place. I’m going to organise drawing, photography, printmaking classes, etc., in the evenings and encourage everyone to have a go. I’d like everyone to get their hands dirty and remind themselves that design is so much more than searching for inspiration on the internet. Everyone spends so much time on the web, and it’s not nearly the most interesting place to hunt for inspiration.

I’m going to reinstate something we used to do when we first started over 18 years ago. Wherever we traveled for meetings, we’d find out something inspiring about the place we were visiting and make time to visit an exhibition, gallery or some building of architectural significance, old or new. We fell into the trap last year of turning up in an amazing foreign city for a meeting and just seeing the inside of the meeting room and the airport. What a waste!

And, I’m determined for me and my team to go to every D&AD lecture in 2011, no excuses, because I’ve never been to one that hasn’t been inspirational on one level or another.

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Click here to read about D&AD’s upcoming President’s Lectures.

‘Tis the gift that keeps on giving!

Cheers to being museum-worthy!

David Turner spoke of honey, death and happiness at the 11th annual Design Thinkers Conference for RGD Ontario in Toronto, Canada. Design Thinkers is Canada’s largest and most influential design conference, catering to over 1,000 attendees from the graphic design profession.

David and Bruce to be keynote speakers at DesignYatra in Mumbai on the 4th of September.

Their speech titled ‘Iconic brands’ explained their views and experiences on creating award winning work for some of the world’s greatest consumer brands. DesignYatra, now in its 6th year, is India’s foremost and largest design conference. Past speakers have included Stefan Sagmeister, Michael Wolf, Neville Brody and Paula Scher .

www.designyatra.com

The international FAB awards celebrate the best design and advertising in the food and beverage market.