Our brief was to develop a cohesive design concept that could be applied to posters, promotional materials and venue décor for the 2023 D&AD Awards Exhibition at the Ad Museum Tokyo. In addition to attracting visitors to the exhibition, our objective was to encourage people to consider the role of design in today’s world, and how D&AD award winning works perform that role while also reflecting the trends and values of our times.

Although design is often appreciated for the aesthetic and decorative role it performs in advertising, our creative idea sprang from the insight that the true value of design lies in the the functional role it plays in message delivery. This role is often under-appreciated, but in fact, a great deal of thought and effort is required to create designs that actually ‘work’. We distilled this insight into the phrase, ‘It works’, and as a visual symbol, we chose the towers that support high-voltage power lines. These towers are a familiar feature of landscapes everywhere, and although their existence is often taken for granted, they are symbolic of the interconnected ways in which people use design to create a better and more beautiful world.

The function of a transmission tower is to support the power lines that deliver electricity to homes and businesses, and in executing our designs, we paid particular attention to the way the power lines that carry electricity were depicted. We used a combination of silk-screen printing and offset printing to give the lines an organic, analogue appearance with slight shifts and inconsistencies in ink application. What appears at first to be a single line, on closer inspection is revealed to be composed of multiple coloured lines overlayed on each other, with variegated gaps between the coloured segments. This gives the transmission lines a sense of movement that represents the flow of electricity and the dynamic nature of functional design. It also reflects the extraordinary effort and behind-the-scenes attention to detail that are required to create designs that move people’s hearts and empower society.

With our thought-provoking design concept and creative output we successfully attracted visitors to the D&AD Awards exhibition and raised the Japanese public’s awareness of the stature of the D&AD awards in the international advertising community. Despite the shorter duration of the exhibition period compared to last year, the number of visitors increased by 108%. In addition, the average amount of time visitors spent viewing the works was longer, and many visitors participated in a voting scheme that allowed them to rank their favourite works.