Last week I spent a couple of great days on the jury of the 2013 D&AD Awards at Kensington Olympia after being invited to judge the mobile marketing category.

I loved the experience, I got the opportunity to chat with some of the smartest people in the design industry and by the time the judging was over I felt inspired and energised by some of  work I had seen, not just in mobile but in branding, packaging and poster design too.

My biggest surprise was the scale of the operation, I heard someone say that there was over 20,000 pieces of digital and physical work submitted to the D&AD over all the categories, that’s insane.

The staff were really friendly and patient, especially when the jury is in full flow and debating whether entries should make it to the next round, which can sometimes last hours (or days in some categories!).

We had the opportunity to test out every app and site and talk about what we liked and disliked about it. If someone thought the claims made in the entry video were unrealistic we could also request further information from the brand or agency.

I firmly believe that the future of the mobile category belongs to products and services. I hope to see more entries from startups, problem solving products and creations made at hackathons.

That’s why I loved Secret Fishing Spots and Pothole Season, two apps with a great story behind them but also try to fix specific problems in a clever way.

Another favourite of mine was Easy Way Subtitles, a service that takes live TV subtitles and translates them on-the-fly with Google Translate.

You can view all the results here.

I also took a ton of photos of all the entries I liked in the other categories, check them out below (click to enlarge)

Thanks to everyone at @dandand for having me, really enjoyed myself and it was definitely one of the highlights of my career so far.

– @mutlu82