About the Reviewer: Pann Lim is the Co-Founder and Creative Director of Kinetic Singapore, K+, Holycrap.sg and Rubbish Famzine. He is addicted to design, advertising and communications and strongly believes that creating work without an idea is a sin.
Title: The Dancing Letters
Agency: McCann Worldgroup, Mumbai
Client: Maharashtra Dyslexia Association
I really love the intention and thought put into The Dancing Letters. It is a book designed for dyslexic kids and every alphabet/letter that have effects on the reading disorder is clearly demonstrated in a ‘fun’ and intuitive way. I managed to judge this piece of work at both Adfest and D&AD and the reactions from the two differing jury panels were both the same. Both panels were torn between a thoughtful idea vs the average design execution outcome. In my opinion, the design direction and typography execution could have be done better so as to fully justify the effort, research and paper engineering put into making the book. Whether it wins an award or not, this book was really designed for a good cause, so winning becomes a bonus.
Title: Agatha Christie Stamps
Agency: Royal Mail Stamps & Collectibles
Client: Royal Mail Stamps & Collectibles
Beautifully executed stamps to mark the centenary of Agatha Christie’s first crime novel and her 40th death anniversary. Brilliant thinking to use the act of investigation to uncover all the hidden visual clues using techniques like thermal ink, UV varnish and micro text that could only be read using a magnifying glass. The photos online of this project does not do justice as it was such a great experience discovering the clues using a magnifying glass (that came together with this special collector’s edition), when touching the stamps, the heat from your fingers revealed more clues (thermal ink). While it was beautifully and flawlessly illustrated, I am torn whether it was a D&AD yellow pencil winner because the illustration technique is not groundbreaking nor fresh since it was submitted under the category crafts for design / illustration.
Title: HRC 2016 Annual Report
Agency: Design Army
Client: Human Rights Campaign
Not sure whether my opinion is biased but I have always loved projects designed beautifully using one color. Another love of mine is bold typography set against a strong color. Annual reports are usually perceived as boring ‘publications’ but in this case, designed to be read in a newsy ‘broadsheet’ style, it brings to mind that the topic on LGBT should be made more aware because I do believe love is love.
Title: The Field Trip to Mars
Agency: McCann New York
Client: Lockheed Mars
This project never fails to put a smile on my face. I am a huge advocate for anything relating to education and I fell in love with this idea because I can imagine the impact it had on the kids. I have watched the case film since it was launched and months later, watching it again still makes me jealous. There are many case videos out there that over dramatized the promise with visual effects, clever edits, attractive motion design and emotive music but I know for sure that this ‘Field Trip To Mars’ school bus is definitely a magical ride with or without a case video. While the idea might look simple, it is packed with awesome relevant tech stuff. Here are the specs lifted off their writeup online ‘The bus was gutted and equipped with custom electric glass that switched from transparent to opaque, plus 4K transparent LCDs, while preserving its school bus appearance. Integrating our Mars landscape, custom screens, GPS, accelerometer, magnetometer and laser velocimeter, the bus became a VR headset. When it moved, Mars moved and when it turned, it turned on Mars.’ Wow cool!
This article was published on the adobo magazine Design 2017 issue.
