The D&AD Awards 2023

Marketing & Design excellence aiming for a place in the history books

We love a challenge here at mustard md, so we’re going to give you a Design History lesson in five sentences. Up for it? Great!  

We’re going to take you back in time to 1962 – a hallowed year for the design industry. Back then, the names that were fused with stardust included David Bailey, Terence Donovan and Alan Fletcher – and they mean just about zilch to Gen Z-ers these days. But these were the hip creatives who paved the way for today’s design heroes. 

And it’s today’s design heroes who’ve just been honoured in 2023’s D&AD awards. D&AD was the 1962 brainchild of a group of designers and art directors who decided it was time to celebrate creative communication and raise standards within their industry…and those creatives included David Bailey, Terence Donovan and Alan Fletcher. 

The history lesson is officially over, but you may not leave the classroom! Don’t worry – you haven’t got detention. Last week D&AD announced the winners of its coveted annual awards, and we want to have a look at a few of the winners who brought tears to our eyes in the Branding and Packaging categories. 

These beauties nabbed the coveted D&AD pencil out of thousands of potential winners worldwide. Now that’s a badge of honour! 

First up, we’re covering Branding, and mustard md’s pick number one is The Future Factory. The Future Factory is a lead generation company working with creative agencies. In short, it helps people find new business. They believe that “people buy from people, not from pushy selling, cold calling or mass mailing”. The logos take the form of a variety of animated typographic conveyor belts. A shorthand version exists in the form of a conveyor in the shape of an ‘F’. And we just love it! 

Our second pick really needs no introduction, as nothing is as iconic as an Aston Martin. No, not even you, Mr James Bond. The brand with the ‘it’ factor now has a new platform. “Intensity. Driven.” It’s designed to capture the human emotion of the driving experience and the performative luxury of the sports cars themselves. Aston Martin explains: “Long-form copy was always part of the overall brand strategy to evoke the sensation of driving an Aston Martin. Each piece of writing, whether for a brand film, print advert, or social film script, uses emotional, poetic language that is above all authentic to the brand.” And if a brand loses its authenticity, it loses its credibility. 

The first of our two picks in the Packaging category is very, very unusual. It’s called Flutwein, and at first glance appears to be trying to sell mouldy old wine bottles. We couldn’t have been more wrong, for this entry was a rescue mission with substance…and great design. Please click on the Flutwein link, as it has to be seen to be believed. It was White Rabbit Budapest’s response to a catastrophic flood in the Ahr Valley: “White Rabbit created a special collection of wines that survived the disaster. The collection, branded as Flood Wines, was sold on a crowdfunding platform dedicated to rebuilding the wine region.” 

Our last offering in packaging is a simply lovely effort by Soapume Papier. Soapume Papier is a paper-thin portable soap packaged in a paper sleeve. The name Soapume came from the words ‘soap’ and ‘perfume’ – both of which it takes very seriously. “Underline Graphic replaced the typical plastic case with a compact paper sleeve, which is cut from a combination of thick papers so that it is strong enough to carry the soap. The sleeve is made out of 100% recycled paper, making it environmentally friendly. The soap comes in three scents – Relax, Refresh, and Concentrate – to match different moods.” 

You may now leave the classroom if you wish, but, if you’d like to hang around and discuss some of the amazing job opportunities we have in the design creative industry, we’d love to chat. Our mustard md team is at the end of a line, so please give us a call.