Tihar Jail, Save Aarey creatives win big at Kyoorius Designyatra

If you thought a conference in Goa would just be an excuse to celebrate, then Kyoorius Designyatra (KDY) was the wrong place to be. For, it’s certainly not an event where people go to spend time in the lobby, drink away at the bar or head to the beach. Designers, creatives and a mix of marketers and brand practitioners, flock here for their annual dose of gyaan and stand-out creative thinking. 

For ad industry honchos Ravi Deshpande (Whyness) and Anil Nair (L&K Saatchi & Saatchi), a visit to Designyatra is like an annual pilgrimage. Well, almost. Both underscore the great attention paid to the content of the conference. And what they may not say in so many words is that the stuff dished out elsewhere doesn’t raise the bar and that perhaps a comparison of KDY with Goafest is incorrect given that that their target groups are different, even though both celebrated their 10th anniversary this year.

The interesting news for Indian adland is that its constituents have done rather well at the third D&AD-governed Kyoorius Design Awards. Of the 29 Blue Elephants and two Black Elephants awarded, eight were won by Ogilvy, and three each by JWT and Alok Nanda Company. But the biggest awards of the night – the Black Elephants, and there were two of them awarded – were bagged by TBWA\India and the Delhi-based Guerilla Art & Design.

A total of 488 entries were submitted across 10 categories: Branding & Identity, Design for Packaging, Design for Communication, Design for Space, Design for Books, Design for Editorial, Design Craft, Writing for Design, Product Design and Design for Good. The 29 Blue Elephant winners included Thought Blurb, Out of the Box, Sisterconcern, Open Strategy and Design, J. Walter Thompson, Ogilvy & Mather, Landor, MuseLab, Studio Lotus, TBWA/India, TenArt Private Limited, Star India Pvt. Ltd, Godrej Properties, Open Strategy and Design, Guerilla Art and Design and Ek Type.

Guerilla Art and Design’s Black Elephant-winning work ‘Tihar Jail’ had the design firm working with local sign painters to illustrate an emotional poem written by one of the inmates, on the four walls of the prison. 

TBWA/India was awarded a Black Elephant for ‘Rakhis from Aarey’, where the agency created letters on behalf of the trees and rakhis made from discarded material of the same trees, which were sent out to 2,000 influencers.

Said Rajesh Kejriwal, Founder CEO of Kyoorius, on the awards: “Our winners can confidently stand up against some of the best international work, thanks to the rigorous standards and judging criteria laid down by D&AD and Kyoorius. We are committed to nurturing and stimulating Indian creative talent through the awards, which help to fund our educational initiatives.”

About the three-day conference, Kejriwal was ecstatic. “We were blown away by the creativity, passion and dedication on display,” he said. In a session entitled ‘10 Years of Designyatra, 10 years of Design’, that followed, Designyatra regular Harsh Purohit of Cognito, did a survey of 10 years touching on the things that have changed and those that have stayed the same.

There were several speakers who were standout on the three days. Nick Law of R/GA, Lydia Winters (Mojang/Minecraft), Satya Raghavan (YouTube) and John McHale (SapientNitro) on Day 1; Jon Wilkins (Karmarama and, earlier, Naked), Morihiro Harano (Mori), Dave Trott (Author), Armin Vit (Underconsideration) and Max Weisel (innovator) on Day 2, and Jessica Walsh (Sagmeister & Walsh, who has done the new Frooti identity) and Neville Brody (Brody Associates) on the last day.

Meanwhile, work has already begun on the 11th edition of KDY. Planning ahead and with uncompromising rigour with regard to curating content, are the key to Kejriwal’s success with Designyatra. Indeed.

In Arrangement with MxMIndia.com