Perhaps one of our favorite projects showcased within the listings is London based studios Anomaly and Unit9′s ‘One thousand cranes for Japan’. By collating a variety of patterns donated by artists, users can download and create origami cranes in exchange for a donation to disaster relief Japan.

Designs of the Year exhibits from February 8 and runs until July 15 whilst the category award winners and overall winners of the Design of the Year Award 2012 will be announced at an awards event in April.

Could your next design project be an award-winner? Brief now!

It is important to remember that the reason you are in a senior position is probably your great design experience. While it is good to have others around to help you, you cannot assume that the work will be done to a high standard unless you take the creative lead.

So, here is some advice for managing your team to make sure you are using its individual members to best effect.

1)      Discover the strengths and weaknesses of each team member, and test how much they can be pushed to develop their skills on a particular task.

2)      Formulate a clear plan for everyone to follow. It is hard for others to see what is going through your head, and you may have trouble expressing it yourself. But try to spend extra time on this, since clear communication will make or break the project.

3)      Trust your team. Let them do what they do best, but don’t hover over them day and night: they won’t learn and you will waste your time.

4)      Set mini-deadlines for the project. This will give you opportunities to check that the work is on target.

5)      Have a final internal group meeting so that everyone can discuss how they approached their parts of the task, and their thinking behind it. The project may be over, but it is useful to share insights with each other. Also, you might pick up on points to share with your client.

6)      Present the final work to the client yourself, and always remember to tell them about the team effort.

In the final analysis, your job is to juggle both the technical and conceptual creative aspects of the project without neglecting the team dynamic, in order to achieve the best result for the client. Yes it is a lot of work, but with an organised head you can make it happen.

If you’d like world’s best creative agencies to work on your design projects, then brief now!

Image from Paper Boat Creative

Prepare to see stylists, art directors and photographers reaching for their pastel palettes and setting aside the obvious, digital dark-room effect that has characterised recent imagery.

It seems that we are tiring of crazy treatments, too. We are set to lose all those strong broken curves of red and blues in imagery. They were nice, but they are getting old.

And yet photographers do not want to show normal, basic colors in their pictures just yet. We spoke to photographer Michael Blann about making their blacks ‘not too black’. By taking their tones just a fraction off from reality, they are bringing a sense of other worldliness to the images.

Let’s remember the cultural and societal context in which this trend is taking place: we are entering the fourth year of a global financial crisis and saturated colors – even black – just seem too innocent for these darker and more dangerous times. After all, a beggar’s ragged coat is not deep black, it is faded and scratched and washed out.

So prepare for an onslaught of soft undertones. Cyans and magentas are already noticeable in a lot of portraiture. The imagery of 2012 will resemble the effect of cross-processing a picture in the lab, creating small, idiosyncratic errors – all very human, not very corporate.

If you want to make sure your design is 2012 not 2011, then brief the Exchange now! 

Photography by Michael Blann Image available on the Stone + Collection of Getty Images

The tree has 172 branches, from which dangle 1200 Lego baubles. It took 2 months and 600,000 bricks to build, though only 10 days to assemble in the station. The dedicated builders worked from 10pm to 4am to avoid the daytime rush. We’re officially impressed.

Bright Bricks designed and built the tree and children from local primary schools built the baubles. The company works exclusively with Lego bricks, creating custom designs as marketing tools. They’ve done a tiger cub for Stella McCartney and a 6ft high toothbrush for Phillips. Lego fanatics can even commission pieces like wedding portraits. Bright Bricks also employs Duncan Titimarsh, one of only 13 people worldwide to possess the title of LEGO Certified Professional. We’re officially jealous.

The tree works as spectacle, but it’s also a successful marketing move. In the buildup to Christmas, time-pressed commuters start to worry about what to buy the children in their lives. Seeing the tree reminds them of the looming gift deadline and offers a solution at the same time – buy Lego in St Pancras! It’s also good for Lego’s brand message. As the Marketing Director David Buxbaum said, “The Lego brand is all about play and creativity and Christmas is the time for celebration and fun. This magnificent Christmas tree is a shining example of these values.”

Bright Bricks will gain exposure from the project too. The QR codes on the baubles link to its website, and the company ran a Facebook page to keep fans updated on the building process with regular pictures. Bright Bricks’ site suggests it’s keen to attract more marketing commissions. At the very least, the high-visibility tree will encourage marketers to think about using Lego in their next campaign.

St Pancras’ retailers will also benefit from the installation. Various treasure hunts will run until the tree’s deconstruction on the 2^nd of January. Children are invited to hunt for the various Lego baubles hidden around the station to win Harry Potter Lego prizes. Children have to write down the bauble locations on a postcard, which they can get inside the station’s stores. In another competition spectators guess how many bricks there are in the tree to win a family trip to the Legoland resort. Of course, they have to go into the St Pancras Hamley’s toy store to submit their guesses.

Marketing considerations aside, the tree is just a great piece of design. We wonder how they engineered the 3-tonne structure – do the branches hold themselves up? And if you want a breathtaking piece in time for Christmas, brief the Exchange.

Extensive tests have shown that we all perceive the world differently. A claim that can be taken beyond mere colours and can be applied across the whole spectrum of life. So when you reference that really cool thing from that show, the person that you’re talking to might be thinking of something completely different. You say potato they think tomato.

The notion that everybody follows different thought processes is integral to the design process, particularly in the branding process. The classic examples are the companies with ill-chosen website addresses, such as IHA Vegas’ website – www.ihavegas.com (subsequently taken down). But the design process is a potential minefield when it comes to naming your business; potentially leading to confusion over what you actually sell.

Penguin Meat Supply Ltd.

Of course sometimes the misconception can arise after you’ve created the campaign. Accenture’s six year sponsorship of Tiger Woods is a prime example of how perception can change after you’ve created the design. Tiger used to represent clear thinking, strategy, and determination; whereas now when you mention him the associations are somewhat different.

Advert by Accenture

When it’s taken into account though, people perceptions and the interpretations that they draw can be a powerful tool in the designer’s arsenal. A playful pun, or the double meaning inherent in a design can increase the impact of a piece of branding or an advert. Like the Fedex arrow, or the Amazon smile, the hidden meanings can be the difference between design that doesn’t interest and design that people want to share. After all, if you can get people going ‘Look at this, isn’t it great’ then you know that you’ve done your job well.

Cover Photograph – Billie Segal/Cover Design – Michael Salu

If you need something designed, then why not submit a brief on to the Creative Services Exchange.

All you need to do to be a big success in advertising is turn up late to a meeting, have a scotch, and blow the clients mind with such a simple idea that only someone as complex as you could have thought of it. Or not. The glory of television is that they can skip over all the mind bogglingly dull parts of life, leaving you with a glossy facade. You can disregard the scotch and the poor time-keeping and still have a great marketing plan, but without the idea? Well then you’re really up the creek.

The creative process is often portrayed as being mystical or ethereal, usually by those who say they aren’t creative. Which is partly because no-one understands it and partly because just saying “We make stuff up” sounds like you’re not taking the client seriously. However you come to it the idea is the bedrock of your campaign. Depending on how broad and strong it is depends on how large a campaign you can build from it. This is one of the reasons why companies go to advertising agencies, as supposedly they’re full to bursting with creatives (and of course most of them are).

But you don’t need to be a big cheese at a multi-national to think up an idea with legs, they can truly come from anyone. We don’t normally blow our own trumpet on this blog but guess what’s on the Exchange right now. Two briefs looking for ideation only. You don’t need any prior experience, and you don’t have to be a Don Draper. The client is looking for fun and outrageous ideas for major football and horse racing events. As with all our briefs the budget is fair, and the more depth that your idea has the better as the client is willing to pay you more if your idea can be applied across several mediums and get lots of press and media time.

And what do you need to do to be in with a chance to pitch. Well that’s the easy part, just join the Creative Services Exchange, head to blurgroup.com and select the part of the Exchange that you think would be the most relevant. Easy as…

If you need a creative service, from a big idea to a website design, then why not submit a brief onto the Creative Services Exchange.

Though they presented a lot of benefits there were questions raised over their environmental and allergenic effect. However, the reaction to GM animals has been decidedly more positive. Of course animals have a big advantage over crops simply because they’re a lot cuter. Let’s face it, no-one has ever looked at a field of wheat and mood cooing noises (except perhaps for the keener type of farmer). The other major factor, and a contributor to their cuteness factor, is that they glow in the dark.

The use of the glow in the dark gene is actually quite common as it allows researchers to track the whereabouts of  other genes. Such as in this Nematode Worm where they used it to highlight the areas that the gene they were researching was present. Here it proves their hypothesis that the gene they were monitoring is associated with swallowing and defecating. The most recent case of glow in the dark animals being used a test subjects is a researcher in the US that is using cats to study the behaviour of HIV. The use of animal models to attempt to predicate the how viruses will occur in human models is not conclusive but it remains true that we can learn much from such models.

As with most great scientific discoveries that have great potential there will also be those who use it sell glow in the dark novelty fish. These first became commercially available in 2003. But how far away are we from genetically modified pets being the norm? The reach and impact of our grasp is increasing all the time and this raises moral questions as to how we should proceed. We have always been fiddling with nature, weeding out those attributes that we consider unsightly or useless and breeding in those attributes that we consider useful. The arrival of genetic modification has not changed that, it’s simply given us a new tool to use, though in a very complicated way.

If you need something designed then why not submit a brief on the Creative Services Exchange.

This can be incredibly effective, a  simple image with a bold statement that stops the viewer in their tracks. An advert that is so compelling that they have to go back and read it again. This is the advert that will stick with them, they’ll remember it and talk about it with their friends (probably only if their friends are into advertising though). The Natural Confectionery Company adverts have managed to do this, using simple static shots of the sweets with character voice overs means that they’ve created a very powerful advert. The phrase “BRING ON THE TRUMPETS” has begun to crop up more and more.

It’s harder to do in print as you have less material to work with, no Matt Berry voice over for a start, so when it is done well it’s even more impressive. Take a look at these examples, and if you’ve found one that beats them hands down then why not post it in the comments.

Be Patient With People Who Stutter

This billboard by the NFS (Dutch Stutter Foundation)gets across the message politely and memorably, after all no-one likes people finishing their sentences for them.

Don’t Jump – careerbuilder.com

You wouldn’t think that the top of a bus would be very effective as a place to put your ad, but how many people staring out of the window dreaming of a better job will have seen this?

Tractor – Lego

You might think that Lego can rest easy on their Laurel and Hardys, after all they’re beloved by the young and young at heart all over the world (except for when they’ve just trodden on one of the bricks). But this advert which captures the possibilities inherent in Lego so simply shows that they’re not ready to relax just yet.

Hot Wheels

Playing with reality is always a good way to get attention, and what better way could you do this than by turning a hum drum freeway into a Hot Wheels racing.

How to Build a Long Lasting Relationship

Of course we’ve saved the best till last. Whilst it might seem quite simple to follow the instructions in the poster the act of changing your approach is a challenging task. The poster is an elegant solution to getting across how difficult it is to get a marriage to work whilst also pushing the Stronger Marriage services. The background is also their background on their website, creating a great stylistic link between the two.

If you’ve got a design project of your own why not submit a brief to the Creative Services Exchange.

Quite a lot more to be honest, as well as being named the “greatest American Architect of all Time” by the American Institute of Architects (who knew that they could see into the future), Wright also left some 22,000 drawings and 300,000 pieces of correspondence. All chronicling a life, as you’d expect, that was fuller than most. Wright was a man of vision with the technical skills and knowledge to carry out his concepts. His abilities are perhaps shown at their clearest by one of the more famous stories from his career; that of the creation of the Johnson Wax building.

Wright was hired by the Johnson family to design their headquarters and subsequently gave them a design that included a sky-lit forest of tapered concrete columns to support the ceiling in the “Great Workroom”. The family were delighted by the design but the engineers were not. The columns did not meet the building code regulations in place at the time and the they felt that there was no way the columns could support the roof. Their doubts were understandable as the columns were 9 inches in diameter at their base and 18 feet in diameter at the top. Yet Wright alleviated their fears and left them shamefaced with a demonstration where the columns withstood six times the amount that they’d be required to.

Wright’s work has even led to the highest honour, that of being immortalised in by Lego.

Bruce Brooks Pfieffer, director of the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation and former Wright apprentice, has taken upon himself the enviable (to some) task of going through all of Wright’s records and sketches and producing a new book. This will be titled: Frank Lloyd Wright Designs: The Sketches, Plans and Drawings and won’t be available until October. It promises much unpublished and original material, and should provide a fascinating insight into how Wright worked. It’s not often that you get to glimpse behind the scenes and see the processes and approaches taken and for those who’re interested in architecture this book should be well worth the cover price.

If you’ve got something you’d like designed then why not submit a brief on the Creative Services Exchange.