D&AD New Blood creatives, Sam Pilkington-Miksa and Holly Killen, from the School of Communication Arts 2.0, look to have a bright future ahead of them. Their campaign, Clout, won a Black, White and Yellow Pencil for the brief set by Do The Green Thing and Pentagram. By teaching people to sew and repair their own garments, Clout hopes to influence people to keep their clothes for longer as part of the fight against fast fashion.

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. The briefs covered a wide range of disciplines including UX/UI, animation, advertising, typography and PR and 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 1 Black Pencil, 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.

Find information on all of the Pencil winning entries here.

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

The third White Pencil was awarded to Belong Here, created in response to the Google Fonts & 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 served as their inspiration. The result is a campaign showcasing how a technological achievement can translate to a humanitarian endeavour.

The final White Pencil was won by Matthew La Croix from School of Communication Arts in London for La Croix, 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 took place July 11 to 14. The festival was run 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. 

Rebecca Wright, president at D&AD, commented, “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 5000 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, stated, “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.”