ISTD Awards 2014

On Friday evening I was lucky enough to be at the International Society of Typographic Designers (ISTD) awards held at the wonderful De La Warr pavilion in Bexhill on Sea. It was a wonderful evening at this amazing location. The De La Warr pavilion is a modernist building by the architects Erich Mendelsohn and Serge Chermayeff which opened in 1936. The enlightened town council opened this new space which was to provide culture and entertainment for the masses – a people‘s palace.

Following renovation in 2005, the pavilion hosts many shows, exhibitions and cultural events. On Saturday their new Magnum exhibition just opened:  http://www.dlwp.com/event/magnum-photos-one-archive-three-views

The evening started with drinks on the rooftop terrace, which was delightful as it was a beautiful evening.

Stewart Drew

We were welcomed by Stewart Drew, Director and CEO of the De La Warr Pavilion, who explained why they were so pleased to be part of the ISTD awards and to have an association with the society - they also hosted the judging in June.

As with all ISTD events, there is a real warmth and friendliness, which may be because of the international dimension or maybe the society just attracts the nice people in the world!

The dinner and awards was held in the wonderful restaurant with the panoramic windows looking out to sea.

These international awards attracted entries from 25 countries across a wide range of graphic design disciplines. In total there were 84 certificates of excellence and 20 premier awards made - awarded for outstanding typographic achievement. Although, not everyone could make it the awards, there were many people who had travelled long distances, including Wing Lau from Australia and Astrid Stavro together with Pablo Martin from Design by Atlas in Spain, who left laden with awards!

Bryan Edmondson from Sea, collecting a Premier Award (for Pencil to Pixel/Monotype exhibition) 

Andy Altmann (Why Not Assoc)

This year was the highest number of awards made, but this reflected the far higher number of entries. For the first time the Overall Winner was a joint award, going to MM Koehn for a book titled Eros Und Thanatos and Why Not Associates for their 'Comedy Carpet' in Blackpool in collaboration with artist Gordon Young.

http://whynotassociates.com/recent-work-2/the-comedy-carpet/the-work

All the award winners deserve congratulations and it was lovely to see some projects which had been produced on Fenner Paper materials, particularly Air W1 by dn&co, which I've featured on this blog and which was awarded a certificate of excellence:
http://justinsamazingworldatfennerpaper.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/airw1.html

It was an excellent evening which showed a fantastic array of international typographic design excellence. It is SO important for the design industry that we retain organisations such as the ISTD and we must take every opportunity to try and encourage membership, thus ensuring their continued viability.  ...and if you aren't a member, have a look http://www.istd.org.uk/- it costs less than £10 per month - excellent value!

Congratulations to the awards team: David Coates, Belinda Magee, Clare Playne and Freda Sack - a huge amount of time and work goes into these events and it is fair that they should be recognised and applauded. The awards catalogue perfectly illustrates the awards, the diversity of media and approach and an inspiring overview of international typographic design - and I shall write about that next!

The results are now all online here: http://www.istd.org.uk/awards/awards-results

www.istd.org.uk
www.dlwp.com
www.playnedesign.co.uk

Posted by Justin Hobson 06.10.2014