As D&AD president, it is Laura Jordan-Bambach’s job to choose a designer to shape the look and feel of the Annual. She has chosen five.

The cover design is the work of Técha Noble and Emma Price from Australian performance artists, The Kingpins, a quartet of women on the wild side. The group, that began in Sydney’s drag scene, creates performances, videos, installations, clothing and paintings. In May, 2013, The Kingpin’s created the first video artwork to be commissioned by Artbank, the federal government initiative that has been acquiring art and hiring it out for more than 30 years. Their work is subversive, satirical and humorous. They appropriate elements from mainstream media, pop culture and art history, and remix them to comment on issues of gender, public space and consumerism.

THE KINGPINS from The Kingpins on Vimeo.

2nd contributor is Brazillian book designer, Elaine Ramos. She works at Brazil’s largest art and design publishing house, Cosac Naify, and became a global name in design through her work on Linha do tempo do design gráfico no Brasil. In English, A Timeline of Graphic Design in Brazil, the book is considered the most comprehensive history of Brazilian graphic design ever created, chronicling two centuries of print, production and visual culture.

India’s Codesign  is the 3^rd contributor. The collaborative design practice won best-in-show Black Elephant award at the inaugural Kyoorius Design Awards, with Dekho, an anthology of inspirational conversations with Indian designers. It is considered to be one of the most important design projects in Indian history.

4^th contributor is Japanese digital design collective Rhizomatiks. It is known for its ability to blend the physical and the virtual to create vast, immersive experiences and has won its accolades for digital creations for brands including Nike, Intel and Universal Music. Rhizomatiks won a Black Pencil in the Sound Design & Use of Music for Digital Marketing category at this year’s D&AD Professional Awards for Sound of Honda – Ayrton Senna 1989 with Dentsu Tokyo.

Vietnam multidisciplinary creative agency Rice Creative is the 5^th contributor. Just three years old, the agency that was launched in 2011 by design duo, Joshua Breidenbach & Chi-An De Leo, is already being seen as a global design phenomenon. It has created beautiful visual identities for brands the world over, including Coca-Cola, Hennessey, Prudential and Marou Chocolate.

Laura Jordan-Bambach, D&AD president, commented, “In my year as D&AD President, I’ve spent a lot of time exploring design communities and cultures all around the globe. I’ve not only unearthed so much incredible work, but I’ve learned about what design truly means in these places. Therefore, for my Annual, I knew it would be a wonderful platform to showcase a new wave of emerging design, which shakes off the shackles of the white, middle-class, western, male perspective, traditional in our industry.

“Bringing together five very different and distinctive artists, whilst creating a cohesive editorial design is a huge challenge, but I’m incredibly excited to see the final product.”

The D&AD Annual is published by D&AD directly and has a limited run of 3,000 copies.

So it is wise to pre-order now from the D&AD Shop. The D&AD Annual 2014 will be officially launched during this year’s London Design Festival on 16 September.

You can see the full list of work in this year’s annual here.

Retouching, colour management, general reprographics and production for the D&AD Annual 2014 was provided by Hogarth Worldwide.