D&AD Crowns 186 Pencils for New Blood Awards 2022

D&AD has revealed the Pencil winners for the 2022 New Blood Awards, the organisation’s annual awards programme that celebrates emerging creative talent and creates opportunities to work on industry-set briefs.

This year, emerging creatives were invited to respond to a series of briefs set by leading global brands including Audible, BBC, Disney, Duolingo, Google Fonts, Netflix, Penguin and Snapchat. Covering a wide range of disciplines including UX/UI, animation, advertising, typography and PR, the briefs were designed to provide new talent the experience of working on client briefs that tackled varying commercial challenges and social issues.

186 Pencils were awarded in recognition of the exceptional creative responses to these briefs, including one Black Pencil – the highest accolade – 27 Yellow, 46 Graphite and 108 Wood Pencils. Four White Pencils were also awarded for outstanding work that uses the power of creativity to do good. For information on all of the Pencil-winning entries, please see the D&AD website.

Winning a Black, White and Yellow Pencil this year was standout entry Clout, created in response to a brief set by Do The Green Thing and Pentagram. As the detrimental environmental impact of fast fashion becomes more pronounced, this solution from Sam Pilkington-Miksa and Holly Killen from the School of Communication Arts gives people the means to extend the life of their clothes through upcycling. By teaching people to sew and repair their own garments, Clout hopes to influence consumers to keep their clothes for longer as part of the fight against fast fashion.

Also responding to the Do The Green Thing brief, and winning a White Pencil, is The Conscious Merch. Sergio Del Hierro and Elena Casas Espejo from Miami Ad School Madrid created a new way of selling fashion that turns any pre-owned garment into merch by stamping these with eco inks. It is hoped that The Conscious Merch could help combat the impulsive buying of unneeded garments through the power of “fandom”.

A further White Pencil was awarded to Belong Here, created in response to the Google Fonts and HMCT brief. Will Engebretson and Flavio Arnizant de Zorzi from Miami Ad School New York created a graphically led campaign that used typography to promote peace, dignity, and universal human rights around the world, using Google’s Noto typeface as their inspiration. The result is a campaign showcasing how a technological achievement can translate to a humanitarian endeavour.

Winning the final White Pencil was Matthew La Croix from the School of Communication Arts, London, for his response to the Penguin brief. La Croix identified an opportunity for Penguin to create safe spaces for the LGBTQ+ community in the metaverse, by creating reading rooms dedicated to queer literature, as well as classic books. It is hoped the spaces will connect new audiences for the first time to amazing books, and to each other.

The Pencils were awarded at the closing of this year’s New Blood Festival which has been taking place this week (11–14 July). The festival took place digitally for the third time and offered aspiring creatives a number of opportunities ranging from talks and insights which provided inspiration and practical tools, as well as boosting the year’s top talent with collated graduate shows and portfolio showcases. Five in-person portfolio events were hosted by industry agencies in London, São Paolo, Berlin, Edinburgh and Liverpool, as well as 400 online 1:1 portfolio reviews taking place across the Festival week.

More than a quarter of all entrants accessed the D&AD New Blood Toolbox by Canva. A new partnership with the global visual communications platform provided free access to premium templates, fonts, videos and features to support the ideation, design and execution of brief responses and pitch decks. This empowered strategists and advertising creatives, copywriters and animators to present their ideas. And designers found plenty in the Toolbox to aid their craft as well. Creative and strategic agency, The Digital Fairy, were creators of the 2022 New Blood creative across New Blood Awards and Ceremony, Festival and Academy, as well as taking part in judging for New Blood Awards.

The winners of this year’s awards were celebrated during the New Blood Awards Ceremony, which took place virtually at 2pm on Thursday 14 July, with local watch parties encouraged. To find out more please visit the D&AD website.

New Blood Digital Festival

Over the four days of the festival, leading industry professionals shared their advice and experiences through a series of talks aimed at helping emerging creatives navigate the constantly shifting industry as they launch their careers. This included Leo Burnett’s Sam Shepherd, who discussed his creative journey. Leo Burnett was awarded two Black Pencils at the D&AD Awards this year for The Lost Class for Change The Ref, which sensitively spotlighted the toll of gun violence.

This year, D&AD also collaborated with advanced website creation platform Editor X on New Blood: The Portfolios – a brand new competition recognising creatively excellent portfolio websites across several disciplines, including advertising, animation, illustration, graphic design and digital.

Judged by industry professionals, the work of the winners will be profiled, celebrated and highlighted to industry, providing them with exposure and an opportunity to land their first job. Those selected are also eligible for a place on the prestigious New Blood Academy, a two-week creative bootcamp with WPP agencies. Now in its ninth year, historically, 92% of those attending the Academy secure a job in advertising or design.

D&AD president, Rebecca Wright, said: “D&AD is committed to nurturing the next generation of creative minds by bridging the gap between creative education and the creative industries and improving routes of access to the industry for young and emerging creatives. New Blood is a great example of that work in practice. Just last month, a winning brief from last year was commercially released by Kraft Heinz, for example.

“Having witnessed 181 winning pieces of work, chosen by 168 judges, from over 5,000 entrants and sent in from 57 countries, I am excited that the next generation of creative talent is pushing the boundaries when it comes to applying creativity to live briefs and to addressing the big issues of our times. The fact that we awarded four coveted White Pencils this year is evidence of this, and it has been a joy and a privilege to see this ambitious creativity first hand.”

Paul Drake, foundations director at D&AD, commented: “​​Creative thinking has the potential to unlock a more sustainable future. D&AD is dedicated to nurturing and celebrating innovative ideas that make a positive impact on the planet, so we are delighted to have been able to award four White Pencils this year – two of which addressed the climate emergency.

“It was wonderful to celebrate these incredible works alongside our other winners at our digital ceremony this afternoon, and we hope those that joined were inspired by what they witnessed. I’d also like to thank everyone who joined our digital festival this week, including our amazing speakers. We hope the programme has invigorated those entering the industry, providing them with insights and the practical tools to forge ahead.”