Create a Beautiful Future
A Peacock Made Entirely of ADC Cubes Fans Its Tail to Court the World's Designers
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AI Translation Summary
To call for entries to the ADC 105th Annual Awards, this campaign built a peacock's fanned tail out of nothing but ADC Cubes — the award's own signature object. The idea is that inviting entries is a courtship display: the ADC spreading its feathers to woo designers who love their craft. Tens of thousands of cube arrangements were simulated by computer, then deliberately broken and rebuilt by hand to find beauty within imperfection. Entries from Japan rose 27%, the wider Asia Pacific region rose 11%, and the work was picked up in 92 articles across the globe.
Cultural Context
The peacock fanning its tail reads across nearly every culture as pride, beauty, and courtship, so the central metaphor needs no explanation. Two quieter references: 'ADC' is the Art Directors Club (New York), not to be confused with other ADC acronyms, and the cube-mosaic 'beauty within chaos' echoes the composition of Japanese byōbu folding screens.
Entry Information
Summary
The main goal of the work was to call for entries from around the world for the ADC Annual Awards. However, we wanted to go beyond this immediate goal and reconfirm the purpose and brand equity of the ADC.Our starting point was the ADC Cube, which we identified as a physical manifestation of the love for design. Using only cubes, we constructed the fanned plumage of a peacock, visually conveying how 105 years of accumulated love for design can trigger a reaction that creates a beautiful world. The peacock suggests that the call of entries is a courtship ritual aimed at creative talent across the world.We went back and forth between technological and analogue approaches to shape our idea, developing a motif that was neither 2D nor 3D—a new dimension.
Strategy
The ADC Annual Awards call for entries is a courtship ritual, one where the ADC courts people who love design. To express this idea, we chose the peacock as our motif. A symbol of pride, authority, beauty, and courtship, its fanned plumage became a metaphor for the ADC itself. Inspired by the ADC Cube, we created the peacock entirely from cubes. Rather than seeing the Cube as a symbol of glory, we saw it as a physical manifestation of the love for design shared by designers and art directors. We imagined this love gathering for 105 years, overlapping, calling, and responding to one another to create a beautiful world and future. This is the love the ADC courts.
Execution
We began by using technology to simulate tens of thousands of cube combinations with different sizes, rotations, and camera angles. Free from human limitations, the simulations helped us explore possibilities beyond human awareness. However, we never used the results as they were. We rejected and rebuilt them repeatedly to create something imperfect. Symmetry, order, and a “correct” answer felt too predetermined to be beautiful. With just one rule—that all imagery must be created from cubes—we combined the formal beauty of Japanese folding screens with contemporary graphic sensibilities to express beauty within chaos.
Results
-Entries from the Asia Pacific Region increased 11% year-on-year, while entries from Japan increased 27%. The campaign also increased awareness and participation from creators and artists in Asia, specifically in ADC’s Design categories. -A total 92 articles published in North America, South America, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and the APAC region either featured or discussed the campaign branding, spreading the ADC’s ethos throughout the world. -Website traffic reached 121% of the previous year’s level, marking the highest level in the past three years for the same period.