My D&AD President’s dinner handover speech.
I wanted to share a few excerpts from my D&AD President’s dinner last week where I wrapped up my year and passed the torch to this year’s president, Harriet Devoy from Apple.
If you could imagine a room full of some of the most iconic and influential creatives in the history of design and advertising and me...
From Neville Brody to Michael Johnson. Tony Davidson, Kate Stanners and Steve Henry. I found myself speaking to Michael Wolff at the end of the night thinking to myself how I’d followed so much of his work throughout my career as a designer.
Here goes:
Firstly thank you everyone for joining us tonight for this special moment where we pass the torch onto our next president who will go on to represent this great organisation to the world and not only preserve it's legacy but also ensure that it remains relevant and a source of inspiration future generations.
When I was made aware of the opportunity to initially become a trustee three years ago, which then led to becoming Bruce's deputy and inevitably president for this year, I really had no idea what to expect nor what I was getting into...
The huge responsibility not to mess it up but also the incredible opportunity to bring a bit of myself, my background and upbringing and help shape a narrative for my presidency; to identify and support individuals from similar backgrounds who may not have had the opportunity to study, and learn about this amazing thing that we're part of and hold so dear.
I initially thought that I'd bring an agenda forward very much rooted in technology something of which I'm a huge proponent of and that has made a huge impact on my life.
But I learned very quickly that creativity trumps technology and that imagination is what drives innovation.
These pure expressions of thinking are what I wanted to ensure that young people all over the world from diverse and disadvantaged backgrounds without degrees and connections into the industry understood the true power of.
Creativity and the incredible power it yields to make things better and a more beautiful world.
From the manifesto I wrote (probably the most daunting task I've ever embarked on) was able to put something together that could maybe act as a call to arms and help support Hilary and her team in their efforts through the Shift program to identify and support these individuals and ensure that we judge people only on their raw ability and not their backgrounds.
Where we nurture and give them their first glimpse into the worlds of design, advertising and creativity.
One of our fellow president's somewhere in this room (Andy Sandoz) had this great notion during his presidency that our beloved D&AD annual should also act as a sort of manual of sorts to go on to inspire and inform the next generation of creatives.
I very much took this idea to heart and we designed this year's annual to reflect that idea.
As you can see this year's annual is also a manual dedicating part of it's cover to this guidebook on creativity.
One part acting as a record for the year of creativity at its best and there to inspire, while the other half acts to inform and ideally recruit the individuals into our industry and act as a feeder to the annuals of the future.
Through the countless hours with Jana and her team, with limited budgets and technical constraints and through the amazing collaboration with Ben, Natasha, Jess and their team at Magpie we were able to pull this off.
Again an incredibly daunting task as there have been so many iconic annuals that we wanted to ensure we did justice to.
As well all know every year we put on two awards festivals, the Professional and New Blood where we hold our judging, awards and events including speakers, workshops and a ceremony recognising creativity at its finest.
It was amazing to see the reception we received at this year's Professional awards festival which we heard was one of the best to date and continues to to draw record attendees testament to the power and relevance of this great organisation and brand.
The second major event we put on and dedicated to people just starting out in the industry is the New Blood awards and festival.
The ceremony which I was asked to host was not only one of the highlights of my presidency but of my life.
I didn't really feel qualified to stand on stage and MC an event like this, but the energy exuding from the room and raw emotions on stage from the winners of the awards made me proud to be part of it and hopeful for its future.
The role of the president also means playing the role of ambassador and requires (a bit) of travel to promote and speak on behalf of the D&AD.
It was a busy year, from: Onbrand in Amsterdam, Creativision in Shanghai to the Creativity world forum in Denmark where I met Dorte Nielson who provided us with the invaluable information to make our manual which I just shared.
ADCE in Barcelona to ADC in Hamburg working with Doerte Spengler-Ahrens from our international advisory board.
And lastly Adweek in London and New York where we continue to invest and grow the incredibly important D&AD Impact Awards.
Some additional highlights were speaking at the RARE event where we support women and individuals from diverse backgrounds and continue to help them grow from within our industry, to the D&AD bootcamp my team put on for the new blood academy to my New Blood talks at the festival.
From Portfolio surgeries to Workshops there was never a dull moment.
I wish you all the best Harriet and know that you'll have an incredible presidency.
Bring a bit of yourself to your presidency and what's important to you and make it personal and you'll be fine.
I hope I've been able to make a small dent through my presidency and want to thank you for providing me with this opportunity and leave a better human being.
I'm excited about our future.
Our relationship with the Guardian will allow us to reach new audiences and scale outside our immediate industry.
To my fellow trustees for your time, energy and ideas. We could only have achieved all of this with your continued commitment.
To each and every one of the past presidents for everything that you've done and continue to do for this amazing place.
Thank you Google for allowing me to devote the time across everything I just mentioned as well as my wife and kids for all the time I spent away from them in doing this.
I recently met a woman at the Nigerian embassy as I was getting my visa for a project we're doing in providing internet access across Lagos to individuals without any other means in accessing the web.
She was dressed cool wearing a colourful t-shirt which I complimented her on.
She told mean that her young son had designed it and was very creative.
I told her about D&AD, I told her about the New Blood festival and guess what. She showed up with her son.
She sat attentively in the from row as I delivered a talk on the power of creativity and who knows what he might go on to achieve being exposed to everything on offer at the festival that day.
That's kind of what we do and what we're here for.
Thank you so much everyone for everything.
