The archive · Design & Visual · Product decision · 2023–2024
Serviceplan's TWELVE issue is 100 handwritten answers to 'Why are you creative?'
Serviceplan Group's annual industry magazine devotes its 2023/24 edition to handwritten replies from 100 renowned figures to one question
Serviceplan Group
What it had to solve
Serviceplan Group publishes TWELVE, an annual coffee-table magazine that gives the communications industry a platform for opinions. The 2023/2024 edition took 'Expanding horizons through creativity' as its theme: in challenging times, individuals and organizations must embrace creativity to stay competitive, and the design itself had to reflect that claim.
How it works
Serviceplan Group publishes TWELVE, an annual coffee-table magazine that gives the communications industry a platform for opinions. The 2023/2024 edition took 'Expanding horizons through creativity' as its theme: in challenging times, staying competitive means individuals and organizations must embrace creativity, and the magazine's design had to reflect that mindset rather than merely describe it.
The answer was to let the proof be the content. The editors selected 100 responses from renowned figures in culture, politics, fashion and sport to a single question: 'Why are you creative?' The replies, often scribbled on scraps of paper, carry the edition's argument that everyone is creative — the raw handwriting is the message.
The result is an issue whose medium makes its case: the unpolished, personal answers of famous people demonstrate that creativity is a human act rather than a professional privilege. D&AD kept the edition in its awards archive as a record of the idea.
Why it lands
- Handwriting from famous people carries a proof no essay can: the unpolished reply shows the act of creating instead of describing it.
- Choosing respondents across culture, politics, fashion and sport argues that creativity is not confined to the creative industries.
- Scraps-of-paper roughness makes the magazine's design itself the evidence for the theme that everyone is creative.
- An industry platform earns attention by asking its audience a human question instead of publishing more commentary.
What it did
No readership or sales figures appear on the record. What the piece changes is how the argument is made: instead of commissioning essays about creativity, the magazine shows famous people answering in their own raw handwriting, making the medium itself the proof that creativity is not an elite skill. D&AD kept the edition in its awards archive.
What you can take
When a publication's theme is that everyone is creative, prove it in the medium — print the famous answering in their own unpolished handwriting.
Since then
The 2023/2024 TWELVE is one edition of an annual publishing program Serviceplan Group runs as a platform for the communications industry; the D&AD archive page records no circulation or response figures. The transferable idea is that a publication can make its medium carry its argument — when the claim is that creativity belongs to everyone, showing 100 famous people scribbling their answers does more than another essay on the subject.
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