Five lessons from the D&AD Festival

The D&AD is a global festival for creatives. Students supported by the Ideas Foundation regularly attend. These are some things our students who visited in 2016 learnt;

Talk to people
Talking to people was one of the best parts of the day for me, there's no judging a book by their cover in the creative industry. I ended up speaking to some very important and influential people and they looked like the average person. So don’t go suit hunting and look to talk with people with the most expensive handbags.
Ideas are key
I knew this already but seeing good work displayed reinforces that even more every time I see it. Without a core idea and message you will have to replace a lot of the groundwork yourself. You’ll know when its a good idea when it takes off all by itself and you can just sit there and watch it grow.
Technology is changing
A lot of ideas now are introducing new forms of technology, some of which I was lucky enough to get my hands onto and have a go with. When you’re thinking of ideas in the future remember there are going to be new ways to give people an experience you may not have been able to do before.
It's quite easy to miss a room
I went around the building quite a few times and found myself in the same room more than three times! By this point it was annoying and I didn’t know where I was going. I was just trying to make sure I didn’t miss anything, its quite a confusing building.
Listen to the talks
The talks were the most influential part of the day for me, hearing first hand a campaign that went viral and changed the lives of people from a chat over lunch in an office one day really shows how ideas can come from anywhere and if you truly believe it can work then you can make it happen.