Six Black Pencils awarded at D&AD Awards 2019

[vikas]

D&AD Awards highlights and celebrates creative excellence, annually inviting more than 250 of the world’s greatest creative practitioners to judge the year’s finest work. The D&AD Pencil is regarded as one of the creative industry’s highest accolades with juries only selecting work they believe is truly exceptional. This, plus the fact that there are no quotas for awards at D&AD, means the number of awarded entries fluctuates year to year. In some years, no Black Pencils - reserved for work that is groundbreaking within its field - are awarded; the record currently stands at just seven.

Winning work will also be displayed at exhibitions globally over the following year and featured in the D&AD Annual and online archive – the definitive guide for creatives all around the world.

720 Pencils awarded in total
Black Pencil - 6 Pencils
Yellow Pencil - 58 Pencils
Graphite Pencil - 196 Pencils
Wood Pencil - 460 Pencils
For the third consecutive year, the United States tops the country rankings
Droga5 awarded D&AD Advertising Agency of the Year 2019
Jones Knowles Ritchie awarded D&AD Design Agency of the Year 2019 for the second year running
Academy Films awarded D&AD Production Company of the Year 2019
An additional 17 “Next” Pencils awarded,
Artist and stage designer Es Devlin receives President’s Award
adam&eveDDB x John Lewis and Design Bridge x Fortnum & Mason awarded Collaborative Awards

The 57th D&AD Professional Awards Ceremony took place tonight (23 May) in London, where six Black Pencils – the highest accolade in the creative industry - were awarded.

Droga5 was awarded a Black Pencil in TV Commercial Campaigns and Furlined was also awarded a Black Pencil in Writing for Film for the New York Times campaign “The Truth is Worth It”. A campaign which looks to shed light on the rigor behind the journalism and unveils the lengths reporters go to find the truth.

BWM Dentsu also took home a Black Pencil in Digital Design for its Project Revoice campaign for The ALS Association. Project Revoice is a digital voice clone that integrates with text-to-speech devices, giving people with ALS (Motor Neurone Disease) the ability to speak in their own voice, even after they physically can’t.

Wieden + Kennedy claimed one Black Pencil in Integrated for its Dream Crazy campaign for Nike, led by the controversial NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick, which, on the 30th anniversary of “Just Do It”, celebrated athletes who dreamed crazy, featuring household names like Serena Williams to a girl on a high-school football team.

Other Black Pencil awarded work included:

Xbox Adaptive Controller by Microsoft won one Black Pencil in Product Design for a unified hub for devices that helps make gaming more accessible, that was designed primarily to meet the needs of gamers with limited mobility.

Viva La Vulva by Somesuch and AMVBBDO for Libresse won one Black Pencil for Direction with their campaign designed to foster an open, positive culture to enable women to feel proud and comfortable about talking and caring about their genitals.

In total, 720 Pencils were awarded during D&AD Judging 2019. The number of Pencils awarded by level are as follows:

Black Pencil - 6 Pencils (2 Advertising, 2 Design, 2 Craft)
Yellow Pencil - 58 Pencils
Graphite Pencil - 196 Pencils
Wood Pencil - 460 Pencils
Shortlisted - 889 entries
Although not awarded with a Pencil at the D&AD Awards Ceremony, an additional 889 entries made the Shortlist this year. Announced live throughout judging (18 - 20 May), the D&AD Awards Shortlist was introduced in order to acknowledge the volume of high calibre submissions that, even if they didn’t win a Pencil, were in close consideration.

D&AD CEO Tim Lindsay commented: “It has been another outstanding year for global creativity, with entries received from 73 countries. The theme for this year’s festival has been “Shaping the Future” and that’s very much been reflected in the campaigns we’ve had the privilege of seeing, many of which attests to the power of creativity to help build a better future. The work I have seen has been fantastic and everyone on the jury and everyone who has seen the final list of Pencil-winning work has been knocked out by the quality. It is a hugely encouraging sign for the buoyant and vibrant direction of our industry.”

Companies of the Year

Top 3 Advertising Agencies of the Year are:
Droga5 - D&AD Advertising Agency of the Year 2019
adam&eveDDB
McCann New York

Top 3 Design Agencies of the Year are:

Jones Knowles Ritchie - D&AD Design Agency of the Year 2019
SERVICEPLAN
Apple

Top 3 Production Companies of the Year are:
Academy Films - D&AD Production Company of the Year 2019
Furlined
Somesuch

Top 3 Clients of the Year are:
Apple - D&AD Client of the Year 2019
The New York Times
Mars

Results by country
United States topped the country rankings - with the United Kingdom coming in second and Germany third. Full country rankings in Notes to Editors below.

“Next” winners
This year also saw an additional 17 Pencils awarded to “Next” winners. Next is a new D&AD Award subcategory for 2019, introduced in order to recognise individual creatives, designers and crafts practitioners who have worked for no more than three years in the creative industries.

Collaborative award
The two winners of this year’s Collaborative Award were adam&eveDDB and John Lewis & Partners (Advertising) and Design Bridge and Fortnum & Mason (Design). The D&AD Collaborative Award, launched this year, is a special award for client collaborations to applaud brave and innovative collaborations between clients and agencies alike. The award is designed to celebrate collaborations which have produced a successive body of work achieving outstanding creative excellence and success over a number of years.

President’s Award
This year the President’s Award, the highest D&AD accolade reserved for a chosen few from the creative world, goes to artist and stage designer Es Devlin.

D&AD President Harriet Devoy commented:
“I am delighted to present this year’s D&AD President’s Award to the unique talent that is Es Devlin.
For over two decades she’s designed sets for the world’s leading theatre and opera companies. And her creations for the biggest artists in music mean her work has shaped the Instagram memories of millions. Her craft is incredible. Its scale, awe-inspiring. She turns spaces into spectacles and makes magic happen in front of our eyes. She doesn't just break the fourth wall, she shatters it in ways no designer has before.”

D&AD will announce Network of the Year and regional rankings in early June 2019.

About D&AD Pencil levels

Wood Pencils: Our equivalent to a bronze award. The best in advertising and design from the year, worthy of a place in the D&AD Annual.

Graphite Pencils: Our equivalent to a silver award. Standout work, beautifully executed with an original and inspiring idea at its core.

Yellow Pencils: Awarded to the work that is judged to be the best in the world, selected from projects that receive a Graphite Pencil during judging. The Yellow Pencils are one of the most-recognised and coveted awards for creativity anywhere in the world.

Black Pencils: The ultimate creative accolade, reserved for work that is ground-breaking in its field. Only a handful of Black Pencils are awarded each year, if any.

About the D&AD Shortlist: Work that is worthy of consideration for a D&AD Pencil.

About D&AD
For 57 years D&AD has stimulated, celebrated and enabled creative excellence in design and advertising, in the firm belief that great work always creates better outcomes.

But it's much more than just awards. Members join a vibrant global community, whilst creatives and clients are inspired by a world-renowned masterclass programme.

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