Organisers of the Cannes International Advertising festival have added a design category to next year’s awards.
Design Lions will recognise the creative and innovative use of design for the brand and product communication and development. Categories will include packaging design, brand identity and environmental design.
Entries will be rewarded for creativity, originality, execution and consumer engagement. The winners of the first ever Design Lions and Grand Prix will be announced in Cannes on 18 June next year alongside the Press and Cyber Lions winners.
Rodney Fitch, chairman and CEO of Fitch Worldwide, will chair the inaugural Design Lions jury. Fitch has served as a member of the UK’s Design Council and been a president of the Chartered Society of Designers. In 1990 he was awarded a CBE for services to the British design industry.
Fitch said: “I had often wondered why Cannes never honoured design; for isn’t design the very platform on which so much creative endeavour is based? Now that the world has come to its senses, I’m greatly honoured, and not a little humbled to be the Design jury’s inaugural president and am confident the work we shall see will be inspirational and help make these Lion roar even louder.”
Information regarding categories and how to submit entries to the Design Lions competition will be available from 2 February 2008.
