Tay Guan Hin’s jury president’s diary at D&AD

Tay Guan Hin is this year’s D&AD jury foreman for the Poster category. It’s a big honour for JWT’s Regional ECD South Asia. Here Guan gives his views on his first day of judging.

Garrick Hamm, D&AD President, made a good welcome speech at the judge’s lounge.

With over 280 creative leaders on 29 different juries, this could be the biggest judging panel in D&AD. About a third of the judges are from overseas.

This year, Graham doesn’t think there’s anything as big as this. To him it’s an absolutely monster of an event.

Also for the first time, we will be joined by a further 160 judges forthe Student’s Award. Which is at its 31st year. Probably the first timethey have combined both together.

So what gets in the book? Is it agreat idea? Is it brilliantly executed? Is it relevant to its context?In Craft, the execution comes before the great idea. Last year 25,000pieces were judged and only 690 got into the annual. 63 pencils wereawarded.

In keeping with the standards, he’s taking a tough stand onscam work and if things are looking suspicious, they’ll have theability to question, look into it and pull out if they don’t meet therequirements.

As judges, we can always give reasons for notawarding good work, so he encouraged us to park aside company rivalryor  jealously and concentrate on great ideas well executed which shouldbe celebrated.

Shortly, we were split into groups and found my way into the poster category.

Togetherwith Jon Burley from Leo Burnett London, Andy DiLallo from Leo BurnettSydney, Christian Mommertz from Ogilvy & Mather Frankfurt, DamonCollins from RKCR/Y&R, Damien Bellon from Mother, David Hobbs fromMiles Calcraft Briginshaw Duffy, Alan Moseley from Hurrell MoseleyDawson & Grimmer and Johnny Tan from BBH Shanghai, we were usheredinto our ‘POD’.

My role as Jury foreman was to work with the jury manger to ensurecriteria are understood. And inspire debate and discussion.Fortunately, I already knew my jury manger, Laura Woodroffe whom I metwhile she was conducting a D&AD Wksp in Edinburgh while I was withLeo Burnett, Singapore.

For the 1st day, it was fairly simple. What do we want to see again tomorrow?

We had to go through over 1.137 poster entries.

It was a mind-boggling experience. We used pencil and paper at first asthe system was down for a short period. Followed by the cool I-podtouch. Making judging a breeze.

I just hope that at least what I liked made it for the second cut. Stay tuned!