2009 Penguin design award ceremony!

On wednesday night I went down to London for the Penguin Design Award 09 award ceremony! It was such a great evening, my guest that I was going to bring fell ill so I went down on my own, but it worked out great because I met loads of cool people and we had a really awesome evening :)

First off, Penguin HQ is ridiculously grand and expensive-looking. I felt a bit special, I must say. The awards were taking place on the 10th floor (ohh yeahhh) and it was an amazing view off the balcony:


A random picture of a cool little boat:
Me with Ed Essex, one of the 3rd place winners:So like I said, I met a few of the other finalists, along with Ed, also Lianne Harrison and Paul Saag, and a few of their mates. I also got chatting to the Penguin Art Department (such a cool bunch of people), Amelia Noble of Kerr|Noble who was so nice and had tonnes of useful and really interesting things to say, and Jonathon Barnbrook, who also came for a drink with us after which was so random but immensely cool. He was ace, so down to earth and not a scary design-type-person at all. Needless to say, I had a really good night and it was so nice to meet new people and revel in our 'how did we end up in the penguin HQ again?' wonderment.

All of the shortlisteds/winners/etc got given Seven Hundred Penguins in our little goody bags, which I was tres happy about because I've wanted that book for a while. It's amazing, just stuffed full of inspirational/weird/random/funny/clever/classic Penguin book covers, I've been flicking through it ever since I got back.

All in all, a pretty special night, and I can't wait for D&AD next week! Bring it on, London.

To see all the posts about this year's Penguin Design Award including my entry etc, clicky here.