The gold amongst the yeast crop. Fermented into beer and enjoyed while chilled. And even when warm, it will still be remembered for its brilliance and its lingering after-taste.

The New York Festivals Annual 14 is a book you want to constantly read. Saturated with ideas, burning with passion and filled with inspiration.

The World’s Best Work. None other than the New York Festivals Annual 14. The majestic, thick, 514-page hardcover book is wrapped with a glossy black and white photo jacket of a train pulling into the New York subway station. Aptly chosen and well shot, what other icon could best represent the diversity and bustling creativity of the New York Festivals International Advertising Awards?

Published by The New York Festivals, distributed worldwide by Collins Design while manufactured by Phoenix Offset, The New York Festival's art direction is in charged by Flow Creative while Studio 31 is responsible for the book design and production.

‘The New York Festivals have had a long and illustrious history in honoring creative communications throughout the world.’

Annual 14 showcases The World’s Best Work in advertising from the past year, in 3 of the 7 competitions organized annually, in 3 major categories: Design, Print and Advertising Awards, The Global Awards and The Midas Awards. It is truly diverse and representative of the industry worldwide, featuring both winners and finalists. The NYF truly believes and represents the fact that competitions are only as good as its judges. Groups of judges representing the best in their respective industries from a dozen different cities around the world have lent their wealth of knowledge and experience by gathering to thoroughly determine and analyze the content of every advertisement. An online judging system was also introduced to enhance the judging process. United Nation Awards

Even in its quest for discovering creativity and the world’s best talents and work, The New York Festivals collaborated with the United Nations Department of Public Information and established the United Nations Awards in 1990 to honor communication messages that best exemplified the UN’s aims, ideals and global concerns. Some concerns are: peace and security, health issues, human rights, AIDS, and the fight against poverty. There were only a few entries in this section because these selected few were prestigiously awarded the United Nations Plaque. Scooping the United Nations Gold Plague was Brazil’s Leo Burnett Publicidade Ltda. The print ad featured messy and cluttered living conditions with the tagline, ‘ARE YOU SO INDIFFERENT that you didn’t even notice that this photo was upside down? ’ This print ad also took with triumph the Gold and Grand Award in the category of Best Public Service Advertisement.

Design, Print and Advertising Awards

‘145 creative directors. 39 countries. 5 live sessions. 3 weeks of online judging.’ The Design and Print Advertising competition covers a wide coverage of categories indeed, ranging from magazines to corporate identities. Packed with engaging visuals and brilliant concepts on 115 gsm Lumi glossy art paper run through a 4-color press, nothing else was more deserving. The judges have to be the most esteemed here, ranging from top agencies such as Leo Burnett to Ogilvy and Mather from all over the world. The Grand Award for best magazine ad went to Foote Cone And Belding Portugal for Grand Reportagem magazine with the brilliant concept of national flags being used as demographics, with the apt tagline, Meet the World. Another category in this competition worthy of mention was Philanthropic Appeals and Peace and Human Rights with Print Ads for clients such as UNICEF, Heal Foundation of India and Amnesty International featuring effective and moving messages about the plight of our lesser counterparts. I loved DDB Brussel’s Guerrilla’s ad, Reporters Without Borders. A fake body was convincingly wrapped up in a body bag with a tagline stick on it which read: ‘This Year, 47 Journalists Came Back Earlier Than Foreseen’. The objective was to make the general public aware of the treatment reserved for journalists in numerous countries.

On a lighter note, a very eye catching ad for category Letter/Stationery went to True North, for Art Director Danny Mycock, who used his surname featured as stationery, such as, ‘Thanks for using Mycock,’ and ‘Compliments from Mycock’, effectively using wordplay.

The Midas Awards Try selling mutual funds, loans or insurance policies. Any broker or agent will tell you that it’s definitely not easy. It’s an intangible product which you can’t see or feel. The NYF acknowledges this fact and thus, The Midas Awards are the only awards which celebrate and recognize financial services globally.

With a list of distinguished judges from the USA, Spain to Germany, you can be sure that the Midas Awards specifically awards the best work in the financial sector. Print Ads for global clients such as Washington Mutual and Citibank are featured.

‘The Midas Awards go beyond advertising to reward great thinking in design, sponsorship, online, copywriting and other skills.’

An interesting ad notably was an annual report by Antwerpes and Partner AG, for a company dealing with stocks and accounts. They took the annual report and turned it into a look-alike literature book with poetry about the financial stock market. It only managed to get in the place of finalist.

The Global Awards

‘The Global Awards is recognized as the premiere international awards show dedicated to excellence in healthcare communications, placing among the most coveted honors in the industry.’

These brilliant creatives took their healthcare clients briefs and effectively turned it into communication and marketing messages that spoke to the masses and yet managed to strictly adhere to the professionalism and high standards of the healthcare industry. Judges from the biggest and most established healthcare industries played a big role in selecting The World’s Best Work, ranging from companies such as Lowe Healthcare Worldwide, to Pfizer.

‘Ideas that interpret, that intoxicate and insinuate and incense and inform’

We are glad that this is one book that does not merely focus on the pleasures and aesthetics of design, with adequate focus on the darker side of humanity, with the UNDPI pages and Global Awards pages, reminding us that we can use our ideas, inspiration and talents to reach out to fulfill our positions as a responsible citizen of the world, and humankind.

‘And raise a glass-or an eyebrow-to our winners. Because in the end, it’s all about the work.’

The New York Festivals Annual 14 is a permanent record of things you never thought possible. Leaf through the pages and you will find inspiration and page after page of brilliant creativity and ideas. These are the ones which stood our time still…

UNITED NATION AWARDS

DESIGN AND PRINT ADVERTISING

THE GLOBAL AWARDS

THE MIDAS AWARDS

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