Bruce Duckworth Announced as this year’s D&AD President

Cristina Blanaru Creativity, Festivals & Awards

Bruce Duckworth, principal at Turner Duckworth starts his year as D&AD President and with this new beginning, is a renewed focus on the power and importance of design.

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Each year D&AD appoints a President from the Board of Trustees to lead the charge and shape the conversations for the year ahead. The job of the President is to galvanise the creative communities and bring them together to inspire and celebrate the finest in design and advertising. With D&AD Festival returning for a second year in 2017 as well as an international roster of President’s Lectures, Bruce is sure to have his hands full, however he still wants to use this year to set an agenda of his own.

Bruce wants to raise the profile of designers, to elevate great design and to strengthen the relationship between D&AD and the design community. To give design a louder voice, whilst still bringing all the different communities within D&AD together under one roof.

Bruce explains how he plans to achieve this:

This year I’d like to strengthen the relationship between D&AD and the design community. To bring the design community back into D&AD. And to give design a louder voice.How? We need to make D&AD a hub for our creative community. A place where the different creatives come together. One of the things I love about D&AD are the conversations I have with people from other disciplines, from different industries, people with different ways of seeing things. I find it energising, inspiring, and creative.We have to work together, and the best creative work comes about when we do work together, from established greats to people embarking on a creative career, that’s where the magic is. So we have to get the different communities within D&AD talking, design and advertising, sharing ideas. Embracing the “&” in D&AD.All this year we will be talking about design. The Festival that was the most inspirational thing I’ve ever been to will be even bigger and better than last year, bringing people together and sharing ideas on how to shape our future. The President’s lectures will focus on how design excellence is central to business success, and we’ve got some fantastic names booked. (Fingers crossed).There’s a real opportunity to help creative practitioners stay in control, and lead business through creativity, not accountancy. We need to help creative people become better business people. There are lots of small brilliant companies that would love to be bigger brilliant companies, but don’t know how to get there. So we’ll be looking at a program of professional development to help creative people who run companies to understand business better and to take creative excellence to more people.And by educating people about the opportunities that exist within the creative industry, and with exciting programmes like D&AD New Blood Shift, I want to help D&AD to continue to bring new kinds of people into the industry. New kinds of people with new ideas, which is so vital for us all.

In addition to the new President, there have been eight new creatives elected to sit on the D&AD Board of Trustees: Alexandra Taylor – Consultant Head of Art, Mrs. McGuinty, Bruno Maag – Chairman, Dalton Maag, Graham Shearsby – ‎Chief Creative Officer, Design Bridge, L.A. Ronayne – Creative Director, Havas London, Kath Tudball – Design Director, The Partners, Paco Conde – Group Creative Director, BBH London, Steve Spence – Lecturer, London College of Communication, and Thomas Manning – Junior Creative, Havas London (New Blood Trustee)

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The D&AD Board of Trustees represent the full breadth of the advertising, design and digital industries. As a member-run organisation, the elected board are responsible for the overall direction of D&AD, its programmes and where its money is spent. Any awarded member of D&AD is eligible to stand for election to the Board of Trustees, which is voted on by D&AD Awarded and Full members. Each elected trustee serves a term of three years and New Blood Trustees serve for a year.

Tim Lindsay, Chief Executive D&AD: 

I would like to extend a warm welcome to Bruce who brings with him experience from a stellar career in the design industry. It comes as no surprise that he has big plans to bring the D&AD design community closer together and we are excited to see how his leadership will help to guide and shape D&AD over the coming year.

September always brings change here at D&AD but this whole year has been one full of new beginnings: the first ever D&AD Festival, the launch of New Blood Shift and we are days away from the inaugural D&AD Impact Awards. I’d like to thank Andy Sandoz on behalf of all my colleagues at D&AD and the Board of Trustees for his fantastic commitment over five years culminating in a great Presidential year.

With an international calendar of events, some big plans for D&AD Festival, and some ambitious plans for our New Blood programme it’s sure to be another fantastic year.