D&AD has announced its 14 Pencil winners for this year’s Future Impact category, which supports and accelerates ideas with the potential to create positive change. The category recognises newly released or prototypical designs and initiatives that prioritise people and planet alongside profit. This year, D&AD awarded 14 Future Impact Pencils – 9 to Design and 5 to Initiatives from individuals and companies tackling some of the world’s biggest problems.

The 2020 Future Impact Pencil winners include:

• Gabriel Corbett for Oikos, a social housing management system which reveals lost and ignored claims by residents regarding their own safety, pressuring government administrations to better protect the wellbeing of their communities.

• Lucy Hughes for developing MarinaTex, a home-compostable material made out of biological waste from the fishing industry and red algae, designed as an alternative to single-use plastics.

• Yoshihiro Kozuka from ADK advertising agency for his Avatar Robot Cafe, a space where people with disabilities could remotely control robot avatars to wait on tables via eye tracker, creating more employment opportunities for people with different abilities.

Find all shortlisted and Pencil winning entries here.

Donal Keenan, awards director at D&AD, commented, “Future Impact exists to uphold the power of creative thinking to enact positive social change. We are excited to continue providing a stimulating and nurturing learning environment through our Impact Programme, which offers a series of online mentoring and networking opportunities for this year’s winners. In collaboration with our outstanding Impact Council, the winning cohort will receive support and training to continue creating work which has a very tangible impact on our planet.”

The winners, or Future Impacters, will also be enrolled on the D&AD Impact programme, a 12-month support package of mentoring, training and visibility. The programme includes support from the D&AD Impact Council, a group of business and thought leaders spanning the creative, investment, technology, sustainability, social impact and NGO space.

In light of the coronavirus pandemic, this year’s programme will take place in a digital fashion. This change will allow D&AD to create a more accessible learning environment for its winners, which come from the UK, India, Russian Federation, Canada, Japan and Spain.

Jessica Lauretti, founder & principal, Laurels, and jury president of D&AD Future Impact, stated, “We are proud to announce this year’s Future Impact Shortlist & Pencil Awardees. This year’s work showcases a range of complex and diverse challenges that the world is grappling with, and how the power of design, creativity and innovation to make a lasting impact on people’s lives and society at large. From public health to education and environmentalism, to quality of life and inclusion issues, this year’s Pencil Awards go to some of the most promising products and initiatives that met our jury’s strong qualification as well as exemplify rigour around their subject matter. Congratulations to all of the Shortlist and Pencil Awardees.”

The 2020/2021 Future Impact Prize includes: 

• D&AD Future Impact Pencil
• A place on the virtual D&AD Impact Accelerator
• 10 hours of mentoring from the D&AD Impact Council
• A year’s membership of the D&AD Digital Campus
• A year’s awarded membership of D&AD
• Free entry into the Impact Category of the D&AD Awards, valid for 3 years
• Exposure to a global audience through D&AD and third-party press