Creative Inspiration 2024
This December our design team (just some of the beautiful crew above) have been looking back at the design work that has inspired us in 2024. The final list is by no means exhaustive – there are many more contenders that have influenced our thinking and creative output – but it gives us a chance to critically review the work of designers worldwide.
That’s resulted in a Top 50 pieces of work. As we say, there were many more, but they didn’t all make the cut. Sorry.
At The Team, we have a mantra: abandon assumptions, look for the simple human truth, and create positive disruption. It’s how we design.
In assessing the work on our collective radar we have focused on the simple human truth and positive disruption.
When we focus on a simple human truth, we are looking for an idea that taps in the human psyche of the moment. As our Applied Behavioural Scientist, Mark Hauser would say, “it’s about understanding what motivates people to act; the authentic truth that instantly removes barriers to action.”
Once you have this truth, then a designer can be creative within that space.
And, as designers, our job is to create enough disruption for our clients that the work stands out positively. This positivity is essential. There is no point in doing something so counterintuitive that the work fails to tap into the brand heritage or fails to engage with the target audience.
As our Executive Creative Director, David Recchia says, “Great design is an idea that leaps off the page effortlessly. If the recipient needs to work too hard, then it has failed to do its job.” In essence, it just has to work. To make sense immediately.
“Great design is an idea that leaps off the page effortlessly. If the recipient needs to work too hard, then it has failed to do its job.”Executive Creative Director, David Recchia
As a design team, we assessed each piece of work against these criteria. The winner, Tesco, was selected by our Senior Designer, Laura Ring.
It’s a little bit of pure brilliance. The Tesco brand is now so iconic in the UK that a creative team can play with it in the knowledge that the audience will come with them. As our Design Director, Ryan Miller says, “the semiotics at work here have been so well ingrained in the British public that you can put your thumb over the logo and still instantly know which brand is talking. Or in this case, they have removed the logo altogether!”
With this piece of work, the graphic visual of the underlines mixed with product photography spells out clearly what’s being sold. To then be able to add in T for tomato, E for eclair, S for spring onion etc. is just a bit of beautiful playfulness that the brand has earned the right to do. No call to action, no set messaging, just a clever campaign that shows Tesco as a staple brand.
We have been blown away by some of the work we have seen this year. We’re honoured that our clients show trust in us, to bring the simple human truth and positive disruption to life, in the work we do for them. When a client let’s us do that, it makes coming to work exciting.
And as our Design Director, Simon Mannering says, “When positive disruption—challenging the norm—meets a simple human truth, like the need for comfort or connection, truly brilliant ideas emerge. These designs not only solve problems but also resonate emotionally, leaving a lasting impact.”
