For the first time in its history, D&AD - the veteran organisation that exists to promote excellence in design and advertising worldwide - has launched up a free tier of membership available to anyone in the creative industries and beyond.
And most excitingly, they're also making available their entire awards archive for free online - which promises to be an incredible resource. (If you want to know the kind of thing we're talking about, check our selections of the winners from the 1960s (opens in new tab), 1970s (opens in new tab), 1980s (opens in new tab) and 1990s (opens in new tab).)
Beginning with the 16 Yellow Pencils bestowed at the inaugural D&AD Professional Awards in 1963, every awarded ad, design campaign, product, agency and creative will be made available to browse through and search for free, including all New Blood Award winners. (Note the words 'will be': right now you can only search back as far as 1990, but D&AD promises the full archive will be online for August 2014.)
New D&AD site
The announcement coincides with the launch of D&AD's new website (opens in new tab), which has gone live today. There you can find the first results from Judging Week in the next lot of D&AD awards - they'll be announcing winners as they happen on the live blog (opens in new tab).
The new site was created by JP74 (opens in new tab), and provides both members and individuals a personalised experience through intelligent capture and use of data. "The personalisation systems allow D&AD to build and maintain a strong connection with its users and members," explains JP74's managing director Pete Walker.
"Content exploration is key and the new site also allows D&AD to curate user journeys that are relevant to different types of users, eg graphic designers and copywriters."
