Last week, our Creative Team descended upon Georgetown for the 58th Annual American Advertising Awards Gala (ADDY®s). This year’s gala took place at Gypsy Sally’s, an intimate live music venue, nestled under the Key Bridge in Washington, D.C. The venue proved to be a fitting environment for this year’s theme, “Resist the Expected.”
There were over 500 entries in this year’s competition, coming from 77 firms, agencies and individuals in the immediate D.C. area. During the gala, 45 Gold ADDY® Awards and 54 Silver ADDY® Awards were announced.
This year, our team batted .1000 with an unprecedented two award wins for two entries. Our Merritt Group Holiday Party Poster won a Gold ADDY® Award. This screen-printed poster featured a custom illustration and metallic gold ink. Our Merritt Group Holiday Party Invitation won a Silver ADDY® Award. The invite was also screen-printed with white and metallic gold ink on jet black matte paper. Both pieces strongly reflected the 1920s theme of our holiday party.
Attending the ADDY® Awards is always an inspiring occasion. It’s exciting to see the year’s best work on display and rub shoulders with the area’s most creative minds. It seemed like illustration was a common theme, along with strong hand-crafted typography and bold palettes. There were not as many standard photography-based campaigns, and the pieces that did use photography tended to be juxtaposed with illustrative elements.
The ADDY® awards has three-tiers, including local, district and national competitions. Gold winners from the D.C. competition will move on to compete in the District Two event — which includes New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware and D.C. Merritt Group is crossing its fingers for a first-ever District award win for our Holiday Party Poster.
This award win builds on past design honors from organizations such as the Hermes, the Summit Awards, Graphic Design USA and MarCom.
Check out some other examples of Merritt Group’s award-winning design work to see how we’ve helped companies of all sizes enhance their brand!