Non-profit advertising association D&AD (formerly known as British Design & Art Direction) has appointed Bruce Duckworth, principal at Turner Duckworth, as president in addition to eight new members to the board of trustees.

Each year, D&AD appoints a president from the board of trustees. The job of the president is to galvanise the creative communities and bring them together to inspire and celebrate the best in design and advertising. Duckworth will also oversee D&AD Festival returning for a second year in 2017 as well as an international roster of President’s Lectures.

Duckworth says, “This year I’d like to strengthen the relationship between D&AD and the design community. To bring the design community back into D&AD. And to give design a louder voice. One of the things I love about D&AD are the conversations I have with people from other disciplines, from different industries, people with different ways of seeing things.”

“There’s a real opportunity to help creative practitioners stay in control, and lead business through creativity, not accountancy. We need to help creative people become better business people. There are lots of small brilliant companies that would love to be bigger brilliant companies, but don’t know how to get there. So we’ll be looking at a program of professional development to help creative people who run companies to understand business better and to take creative excellence to more people.”

In addition to the new president, there have been eight new creatives elected to sit on the D&AD board of trustees. The elected board are responsible for the overall direction of D&AD, its programmes and where its money is spent.

Tim Lindsay, chief executive of D&AD, says, “I would like to extend a warm welcome to Bruce who brings with him experience from a stellar career in the design industry. It comes as no surprise that he has big plans to bring the D&AD design community closer together and we are excited to see how his leadership will help to guide and shape D&AD over the coming year.”