When Audi decided to enter the small MPV (Multi-Purpose Vehicle) market, the A2 set a benchmark for the company in this new vehicle segment in terms of design and technology. Audi’s creative brief for the A2 was to “transport four people from Stuttgart to Milan on a single tank of petrol”. The car, which utilises the company’s outstanding expertise in aluminium technology, is very recognisably an Audi, even though Audi had never before built a small MPV. The company aimed to sell 50,000 A2 vehicles worldwide during 2001 and had already reached 30,000 before the summer. The Audi A2 won a Silver Award for Product Design in the 2001 D&AD Awards.

As Britain turned from a nation of tea drinkers to embrace coffee culture in the late 1990s, Costa Coffee, owned by Whitbread, was struggling to hold onto its mantle as the UK's leading branded coffee shop against fierce competition from US chain Starbucks. Appointed to create an advertising campaign to counter this threat, Mother went much further to completely redesign the brand right across marketing literature and in-store. By skilfully reinforcing Costa’s authentic Italian credentials, Mother enabled Costa to maintain a lead in awareness over its closest rival despite spending 40 per cent less. Mother’s brand identity for Costa Coffee was nominated for a Silver in the Corporate and Brand Identity category of the 2001 D&AD Awards.

MTV2 is an alternative music channel in Europe that aims to bring together two of the most important areas of MTV’s operations - television and the internet. MTV wanted to update the MTV2 website and build a greater degree of interactivity into the process that would keep people revisiting both the site and TV channel. Digit produced a fully working site and new-look on-air graphics for launch in June 2000, based on the idea of a three-dimensional view of moving blocks that change colour and size as you navigate through each section. Before the redesign, the old MTV2 website was getting 300 submissions a week from viewers to have their hour’s worth of music played. The new site now receives up to 1,000 requests a week. The project was nominated in two categories of the 2001 D&AD Awards (Interactive & Digital Media and TV & Cinema Graphics).

When the new £50 million Wellcome Wing opened at the Science Museum in July 2000, all eyes turned to a spectacular new visitor attraction for London. One feature appeared to hold it all together - a unique installation entitled ...comment which hangs on the back wall and is 26 metres high. It looks like a giant train set featuring small lines of light shooting up and down the tracks. These 'light trains' are digitised information - taking visitor comments inputted into terminals and turning them into a stunning visual display. The Wellcome Wing has contributed to growing numbers of visitors and school parties at the Science Museum. comment won a Gold Award for Environmental and Exhibition Design at the 2001 D&AD Awards.

Call centres have been dubbed 'sweatshops of the 21st century'. So when Ric Lee, chairman of Cellular Operations, decided to open a new call centre in Swindon, a town with practically no unemployment, he recognised that a completely fresh approach was needed to attract and retain staff. The resulting call centre, sensitively sited in a semi-rural Wiltshire park and styled with a spectacular curved glass extension, has become a local hi-tech landmark. Not only has the building been recognised for its beauty and originality in the D&AD Awards 2001, it has given a small, fast growing company an iconic headquarters, which is both functional and cost-effective.