High Five: A Nod to Innovative Solutions

Rohit Iyer, creative director, London > 'Breathe: 2022' is a fascinating collaboration between artist Dryden Goodwin and Invisible Dust for the borough of Lewisham in London, to which I moved earlier this year. I spotted these intriguing pencil drawings wherever I went and naturally wanted to learn more. Featuring over 1,000 drawings by Goodwin and appearing as large-scale still and moving images on sites close to the heavily polluted South Circular Road (I can vouch for this!), the project depicts ‘Six individuals from across the borough bear witness to the impacts of air pollution and the power of activism through their bodies and their breath.’ The primal and universal nature of the drawings and the striking effect of seeing them in my immediate environment have ‘left a mark’ on how I see my community, public artwork and the climate crisis. 

Andrea Lau, creative director, Singapore > So much has been said about NFTs, but so little good has come out of it. Until 'Buy My Cancer'. By putting actual cancer cells under the microscope and turning them into NFTs, Ogilvy transformed the very thing that was killing patients to the thing that could save them. This revolution in medical funding proved our agency’s conviction to be true: that tech is indeed a force for good.

Nick Alden, senior creative, London > Ace & Tate’s ‘Bring on the Sun' campaign was created almost entirely without showing a pair of sunglasses. Instead, the creative took the ‘product subtraction’ approach. The portrait imagery shows people squinting as a bright sunshine hits them in the face. The striking ads evoke warm feelings of nostalgia and longing. Great job, Base Design!

Jim de Zoete, global executive creative director > Pet insurance - it’s hardly the most exciting category. And yet, this is a wonderful, life-affirming campaign about how pets make us all feel better (based on research around the benefits to our physical and mental wellbeing). Great thinking, but it’s the execution that really punches through. Joyous to look at, they made me actually want to touch the posters. An art directional wonder.

Across the Pond creative team collectively > What’s more valuable than creating exciting work? Doing it for a really important cause. We lucked out in that regard when we made this film for Education Above All, a charity working to protect children around the world from attacks on their human right to education. Using the idea of the classroom ritual of calling attendance, we showed where children end up when they are displaced by intentional attacks on education. It’s a film that’s close to our hearts: a simple concept for a serious and urgent global issue.