In music you have it, in art you have it, in film you…well, had it, if you think of French film noir, Czech fairy tales and the still very strong “Bollywood” style of India. I’m talking about a country-specific influence.

But in design and art direction today there seems to be a universal language. I suspect that this is due to international advertising festivals like Cannes, the One Show or the Clios: the winners of these awards set new standards and suddenly everyone follows. Designers and art directors all want to imitate the “winning style”. For example, the influence of multi award-winning creative Erik Vervroegen and his team was very apparent during his time at TBWA\Paris.

Creating stuff by simply following a “winning-formula” – I find this disappointing and sad.

Last year I was the president of the design and art direction category at the Golden Drum festival in Portoroz. I could sense the potential of this region. And yet I couldn’t see it. Most of the work followed international trends – about one year behind.

Rather than blaming the region’s creative talents, I would like to challenge them to show us how, by exploring their artistic roots, they can make design and art direction part of a country’s culture and history.

Imagine you open the archive-magazine and you don’t see the sea of sameness but ads strongly influenced by local styles: the typical Slovenian art direction, the famous Czech design or the unmistakeable Russian style.

The ad world today is a little bit like entering a restaurant from a global fast food chain in New York, Moscow or Tokyo: same food, same style, same standards. But tomorrow I want to enter local places – for a taste of chevapcici, borscht or just vodka.

Kurt-Georg Dieckert shares his experience judging international award shows exclusively with the readers of mad-blog.com. Last year he was leading the Art Direction and Design jury at the Golden Drum Festival. Kurt-Georg is Chief Creative Officer of TBWA\Germany  in Berlin.

If you have any comments or suggestions please email Kurt-Georg Dieckert.

Former Leo Burnett adman Donald Gunn founded The Gunn Report in 1999. Like all big ideas, it was deceptively simple: combine the results of the leading award shows all around the world to come up with an annual global ranking of the world’s most awarded agencies and their work. Ten years later, what’s changed? How does Donald see the internet? What does he think of the concept of Media Arts? And just what the hell is All Gunns Blazing? The man himself answers these questions and more in an exclusive interview with mad-blog.com:

If you have any comments, suggestions or simply want to learn more about The Gunn Report please email Donald Gunn (donald@gunnreport.com) or Ulrich Proeschel (ulrich@mad-blog.com).