UNITED ADWORKERS 2022
99 AWARD SHOW BOOK

In late 2022 I was presented with the opportunity to design the highly coveted award show book for the United Adworkers 2022/23 Ninety-Nine Award Show. I presented the opportunity to my employer and they were eager to support this venture. With a team of four designers, I took the lead as art director to see the design through from start to finish. The theme we landed on was “A Common Thread” speaking to the common thread that ties us together as designers. We landed on “Grandma’s Basement” as a way to cohesively bring all of our ideas together. It also allowed us to embrace the weird. To break normal. We thought about who grandma was and what she would do. Has grandma taken her meds lately? Is grandma a hoarder? It all made sense in the weirdest way possible.

The result, if I may speak for the team, was a fun, engaging award book. My biggest takeaway is that sometimes the weird ideas are the best ideas. It’s inside all designers. And, while there’s a time and place for everything, if you get the opportunity to put your heart into it and just have fun with it, let it happen. Let those opportunities fuel your passion. The result will be well worth it. Oh, and it won an award!

And I can’t forget to mention that all of this was made without AI. Just good-old-fashioned photoshop.