What came first the pencil or the scribble?

Winning a D&AD (Design and Art Directors) award for creative excellence is the aspiration of nearly every creative agency in the world. It is the ‘benchmark’ to which all designers, young and old look to for justification, reward and recognition – it defines who they are, what they do and why they do it.

The association was founded in 1962 by a group of London-based designers & art directors that included David Bailey, Terence Donovan, Alan Fletcher and Colin Forbes (who designed the original D&AD logo).

In 1962 Marcello Minale Snr and Brian Tattersfield (our founding partners) met at Y&R (Young and Rubicam). In 1963 they joined D&AD after winning their first D&AD award (a certificate). The following year Marcello Minale Snr and Brain Tattersfield decided to leave Y&K and start their own agency, appropriately called Minale Tattersfield. Their first commission was to create an identity for themselves (the Scribble) and shortly afterwards they volunteered to design a more prestigious award for D&AD. What they created was a beautiful ebony pencil box, which contained a pencil with silver lettering. It was a thing of beauty but too delicate, so in 1966 Lou Klein designed the more durable yellow pencil we have today.

Today, D&AD has grown in membership and reaches out across the world. Although the day to day running of the association is handled by a dedicated team, they take their leadership from an appointed executive of leading design and advertising practitioners. The executive is elected by the association’s members every 3 or so years.

This year, in 2010, Marcello Minale’s son, also called Marcello Minale has stood for this year’s election. It’s a bit like history doing full circle and perhaps if appointed, we will finally find out if it was the pencil that inspired the scribble or the other way round.

If you are a D&AD member and want to cast your vote, you can do so by visiting http://www.dandad.org/category/about/

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Last week I was walking out of Liverpool Street station to meet a friend at one of those 'trendy' Shoreditch bars and I walked past one of the newly installed docking stations for the Mayor’s new cycle scheme. I stopped a while to look over this new piece of street furniture since it has received so much publicity in the press and not least because our agency did a lot of the preliminary design work. I was not alone in giving the bikes and the pay box the once over. Other people were walking round the bikes and pointing and prodding as well.

Having lived with the scheme over several months, as one of TfL's (Transport for London) design roster agencies, it was a real joy to see the scheme in the flesh. Since our work the scheme had obtained a sponsor, Barclays Bank, and the cycles were standing there resplendent in their new Barclays' blue livery. The cycles themselves look very robust. I understand they each cost a few hundred pounds.

This scheme is just what this traffic choked city needs and I am sure it will be very successful. When I walked past, several of the docking points were empty so several of the bikes were already being used. I was very tempted to take one out myself and impress my friend of my green credentials by cycling to the restaurant but then again I am not sure that there would have been a docking station at the other end. I made a mental note to get a map of where all the docking stations were.

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You can see the TfL Cycle hire work we did by visiting our site: http://www.minaletattersfield.com/