The “thrilling and chilling” rise of new technology hasn’t made it any easier to get innovative, risky work off the ground. That’s where both diversity and awards like D&AD Pencils come in.

Here’s why, by Tea Uglow, creative director of Google’s Creative Lab APAC in Sydney and D&AD jury president for Digital Design.

Whenever I am describing my role at Google, or in life, I describe myself as an outsider. A counterpoint to the heavy themes and preoccupations of our industry and living in a space between technology, culture, and ‘creativity’ – whatever the last one may be. It has always been an interesting place to reside and for the last decade, working for the Creative Lab at Google has been like having front row seats at a contemporary fashion show of epic magnitude. We have seen every technology trend grace our catwalk, some to become indispensable everyday items, others to fade, the fads and throwaways of twenty-first century life.

The work my small team in Sydney does tend toward the avant-garde and more haute couture end of the market. We work in backward-compatible ways with artists, writers and museums and are protected somewhat from the grind of the cutting edge. We devise digital fairy dust from APIs and html.

I was asked what was working, what was not. Which is a fascinating question. Clearly so much is working. Digital media and technology infuse and augment every waking moment of an average existence for humans in the developed world. Perhaps that is not so good also? Politically, economically, socially we can make similar arguments. It is both liberating and threatening. The rise of virtual reality and machine learning is both thrilling and chilling, for everyone, from agency CEOs, to artworkers, to new parents, to anyone with a phone.

My personal interest is in increasing the business viability of diverse voices in every industry. Moving the whole notion of diversity out of a stream of conscious that considers it an HR issue and putting it where it more rightly belongs – as a structural component of any business. That means doing something rather than just talking about it.

Putting penguins in pig-pens is not diversity; it just leads to unhappy penguins, who then quit because they don’t “fit”. We need to make sure that digital creativity hears from a range of voices given equal weight and influence. It needs to represent the views of engineers, marketers, scientists, ethicists, and artists; from black, brown, yellow, pink peoples; from refugees, radicals, veterans, vegans, parents, carers, and everyone with disabilities – they are game-changers; from the under-educated to the over-represented and vice versa; from voices of all ages, all beliefs, all genders and none; from the neurologically typical to the neurodiverse. Because that’s how we progress. To progress as an industry we need to make progress here, on the ground, in pitches, on screens, at desks.

There are bigger long-term structural issues regarding the way the creative industries work, and the way we sell our work that may also keep those same CEOs up at night. However, in the next year I think there is a need to address who is making and who is testing and who is approving – to build in systems that make that less tokenistic and more business critical. It is unlikely to win awards, but it will build a fairer, more stable world. Most importantly it will need to show the opportunity for profit in progress that is rarely found in regress.

D&AD has always been the awards that prize craft and integrity over flashes of novelty, and sometimes that is hard to appraise within a world as fast moving as digital design. Clearly it remains as hard as ever to get innovative risky work off the shelf and the myriad complexity of digital marketing is not making that process any easier. However, every award season we can expect to be delighted and awed by work that defines our year, and by the possibilities of the form. That’s the great joy in being part of the D&AD Awards. Pencils are for the finest work in its field, judged on merit by critical unbiased peers. The Pencil will always stand for that, for the scrutiny that goes into the judgement, the calibre of the entry and nothing else. In a world as ephemeral as digital such status is a great honour to bestow.

If you think you have a campaign that deserves a Pencil, enter your work into the D&AD Awards and see if our judges agree.