D&AD has chosen Lisa Smith, global chief design officer at Uncommon as its president for 2025/6. She takes over from Kwame Taylor-Hayford, co-founder and creative executive, Kin, New York.
Based in New York, Smith represents the organisation’s growing reach in the US and its commitment to celebrating world-class creative work and nurturing future talent globally. Named one of Fast Company’s Most Creative People in 2021, she is aalso a long-time D&AD award winner, advisory board member and trustee, already deeply connected to the organisation and its Shift programme.
At Uncommon Creative Studio, she continues to lead the studio’s vision to embed design at the core of everything it creates – from the biggest rebrand in entertainment history for EA Sports, to the most influential campaign in Instagram’s 15 year history with ANYWAY and evolving The Ordinary’s in-store retail experience worldwide. Before joining Uncommon, she was global executive creative director at Jones Knowles Ritchie, where she drove global rebrands for Walmart, Burger King, Mozilla, Paramount, Uber, Impossible Foods, Nordstrom Rack, Fanta, and Manischewitz.
Lisa’s new role coincides with the launch of the 63rd D&AD Annual and its complementary Trend Report.
The 2025 Annual was designed in partnership with Jones Knowles Ritchie, that also created D&AD’s Awards and Festival campaigns. It is divided into four sections: D&AD in 2025, Voices Behind the Work and Judges Curations.
The Annual 2025 is free to access and is available here.
The Trend Report 2025, co-produced with The Thought Partnership, captures insights and trends across 30,000 pieces of work, submitted to the D&AD Awards from 86 countries around the world. The report contains work profiles and wisdom from D&AD judges, divided across six emerging themes representing the year’s most consequential trends:
- Sea-Change Design: Design delivering business growth, transformation and behavioural change
- The Emotive Screen: Gaming’s growth as an effective platform for changing perceptions, challenging biases, and increasing inclusion
- Full-Service Creator: The rise of creators as architects of entire brand campaigns
- Unmistakably Human: Ideas that embrace irrational, absurd, weird, wacky, and handmade qualities
- Brand DNA: Connecting brand heritage and modernity to create distinctive branding that resonates
- Radical Candour: Turning honesty into a brand strategy for earning trust
The report also addresses the growing impact of AI on the creativity industry, with insights on how AI can be used better and where creative leaders think it’s headed next.
