Adland NSW’s in crowd gathered at Bar 100 in Sydney tonight to applaud the 2017 NSW AWARD School graduates.

Tom Lawrence, who was tutored by Jerome Gaslain, Oskar Westerdal & Rene Schultz from BWM Dentsu; and Karen Ferry & Sarah Parris from Leo Burnett, was named Top Student.

“Creating engaging, effective ideas in a simple scamp is difficult for even the most experienced creative ‘as there is nowhere to hide in a scamp’. No fancy director, photography, animation or sound effects, just an idea. Kudos to this creative for stripping it all back to what I believe is the reason we are all here in this business; to make great ideas,” commented NSW AWARD School Judge and AWARD chair, Mike Spirkovski, chief creative officer of Saatchi & Saatchi Australia

Lawrence is now in the running for Top Student at the National AWARD School Competition and the chance to meet David Droga in NYC. The national winner will be announced on Monday August 7 in Sydney.

Pierce Thomson is #2. He was tutored by Hugh Gurney, Chelsea Parks & Alex Schieder from The Monkeys; and Matt Geersen, Dan Saunders, Sean Vrabel & John Gault from VML.

Matt Corcoran is #3. He also won the Best in Show award for his Odds for Equality idea, which was unanimously praised by judges for its creativity and simplicity. 

Top 10 Students:

• #1: Tom Lawrence
• #2: Pierce Thomson
• #3: Matt Corcoran

plus in no particular order:

• Cindy Erlina
• Madeline Hoskin
• Grace Lemech
• Jennifer Mackie
• Kate Ross
• Masato Sano
• Leanne Serra

NSW AWARD School Heads, Niccola Phillips, head of art at M&C Saatchi Sydney and Brendan Willenberg, creative director at Clemenger BBDO Sydney, congratulated the class of 100 graduates for completing the 12 week intensive course.

“Once again, we were impressed by the calibre of the final folios submitted this year. Many of the ideas were fresh, surprising, entertaining and occasionally induced bouts of intense envy. It was also wonderful to see that once again we had such a strong representation of female creatives in the top ten,” Phillips commented.

This year’s five state winners from Sydney, Melbourne, Perth, Adelaide and Brisbane will have their books reviewed in the National Competition by the AWARD School David Droga Super Jury.

Meet the AWARD School 2017 global David Droga Super Jury

AWARD School will fly the national winner to NYC to meet David Droga and compare their winning portfolios from 1987 and 2017.

Dates for all graduation ceremonies are as follows:

• QLD: Wednesday 19 July
  NSW: Tuesday 25 July
  VIC: Wednesday 26 July
  SA: Thursday 27 July
  WA: Friday 28 July
  National Announcement (in Sydney): Monday 7 August. Details here.

2017 AWARD School Top 10 & Tutors (Tutor bios here)