Fu'aad Kasu, creative director at Duke Group

Like the Indian Simon Cowell! But, in all seriousness, super excited.



I’ve been in the industry for about 13 years now. Still no regrets. I’m currently a creative director at Duke and loving it! It was my first time judging for the Loeries. It was also my favourite category, print! It was such an honour and privileged to judge with some of the industry greats.



I called my mum, obviously.



That there’s a new judge in town, move over Judy.

It’s such a great achievement and quite an honor to be chosen for Africa and Middle East’s most prestigious creative awards’ ceremony.

As I said already, I judged my favourite category, Print.



Learning from others and seeing work differently. It’s also great to see all the work that’s out there and what agencies are producing, be it an award piece or not.



Innovation and quality! With Print being such an old medium, work really needs to stand out and be fresh and different.



Like most industries, Covid has messed things up. As a creative industry, we thrive on challenges and our job is to find solutions to problems. During this time, we had to think a bit differently and ideate smarter but at the end of the day, work was work, and the context of Covid was just a ‘minor’ extra mandatory on every brief that came through.



What happens at Loeries, stays at Loeries ;)



Probably a lot of ‘during Covid, we were faced with bla bla bla’ - that’s almost a given. I hope I’m proved wrong on the awards night though. What was nice about judging print is that none of the work actually played into that. It almost went back to old school ideas that were visually beautiful, crafted and smart.



South Africans are such diverse people, and we have so many unique insights about our daily lives. I believe that this brings an interesting dynamic to the judging panels, and allows us to celebrate work that is distinctly South African.



Suiting up and sharing a non-alcoholic beverage with some industry folk - in person.



For me, it’s simple - just keep fighting for cool creative work. That idea that you’re too afraid to present or you think is too crazy is probably what the idea we should be making. We’re so bombarded with boring and safe.

In some categories, we can no longer differentiate between brands anymore. We need to push; we can’t only be ‘creative’ when it comes to award entries, it should show in all the work that we do.

Make work cool enough that your mum will share it in the family WhatsApp group.