Top videogames take home prestigious design awards

The global D&AD awards, widely recognised as the most prestigious and sought-after awards in the design world, have handed out the first awards in the newly formed games category to Capcom's Resident Evil 4 and Nintendo's Nintendogs.

Both games received the "Yellow Pencil" award, the second highest honour which can be conferred by D&AD - with only 54 Yellow Pencils being awarded this year from across the entire spectrum of design, a list whittled down from over 24,500 entries from 61 countries.

Also nominated for the Yellow Pencil awards - with a nomination itself considered to be a high honour in the design world - were Activision's Call of Duty 2 and Sony's God of War.

Resident Evil 4 (PS2, Cube) is one of the most highly regarded titles to appear during the 2005 calendar year which was being judged at the awards, while Nintendogs (DS) is widely acclaimed as one of the year's most innovative titles - and credited with stretching the very definition of gaming as well as its target demographic.

Among the other winners of Yellow Pencil awards were Apple's iPod Nano and Sony's much-acclaimed advertisement featuring countless coloured balls bouncing through the streets of San Francisco.

Although largely unknown in the videogames world, the D&AD Awards are the Oscars of the wider design industry - to coin a phrase - and luminaries such as Apple's Steve Jobs often turn up to collect their awards in person.

While Grand Theft Auto won an award in a more general category last year, this is the first year in which Games have had their own category - and D&AD is hoping to build awareness of the awards in the videogames industry and entice wider participation from publishers in next year's awards.