CLOSE-UP: NEWSMAKER/MICHAEL JOHNSON - New D&AD president may be a mystery to adland.(Brief Article)

Michael Johnson wants to integrate advertising and design, Jenny Watts writes.

It's all very well being described by The Sunday Times as 'The Government's favourite designer' and 'bright, fluent and relentlessly articulate' by The Guardian. But if Michael Johnson, the incoming president of D&AD, is best known in adland as 'the bloke who did the 1994 annual cover with the squishy pencil case', he may well need his industry credentials broadcast more loudly.

Johnson will succeed Abbott Mead Vickers BBDO's executive creative director, Peter Souter, as president in January. At 38 years old, Johnson is one of D&AD's youngest presidents. 'I'm younger than Peter, which pisses him off,' Johnson jokes. But he knows he needs to raise his profile in the ad industry. 'One of the downsides of being 38 and a designer means I'm painfully aware no-one in advertising knows who I am,' he rues.

So who is he? Johnson left university with a first in design and marketing to start work in London.

And the proud owner of five yellow Pencils is no stranger to advertising, having spent some time in Sydney as the art director to a then little-known 19-year-old Australian called Dave Droga. However, in 1992 Johnson moved back to London to set up his own company, Johnson Banks, at the age of 28. The company now counts the Government, Carlton and Procter & Gamble among its clients.

Droga, now Saatchi & Saatchi's executive creative director, thinks Johnson's relative anonymity in adland will be to his advantage: 'He can come into the job with fresh eyes. He doesn't have agendas passed on to him and doesn't have to be worried about putting noses out of joint because he doesn't know whose noses they are.'

How much can be achieved in a one-year tenure remains to be seen in an organisation once mired in corruption, but which has since put its house in order. Under D&AD's current chief executive, David Kester, it has now built a reputation for being an efficient, well-run operation. However, the void between the advertising and design camps is still prominent.