D&AD honours 2024 New Blood Awards pencil winners

D&AD has announced the Pencil levels for the 2024 New Blood Awards, the annual programme that recognises up-and-coming creative talent and offers chances to tackle briefs set by top brands.

The New Blood Awards is among the world's largest student competitions, showcasing top emerging talent from around the globe. Winners, selected by leading experts in design and advertising, impressed the judges with their innovative thinking and practical skills, earning one of the industry’s most esteemed awards: a New Blood Pencil. The competition had over 6,000 entrants, from over 60 countries and more than 3,000 entries were judged anonymously by over 150 judges. The work was evaluated based on idea, insight, and suggested execution. Although all work is conceptual and the intellectual property belongs to the entrant, any of the brands setting the briefs can choose to move forward with a winning idea by employing the winning creatives and collaborating with them professionally to develop the concept further.

This year, emerging creatives were invited to respond to a series of briefs set by leading global brands including Google, Adobe, Airbnb, Bumble, Coca-Cola, Nandos, Universal Music, HSBC and more. Covering a wide range of disciplines including UX/UI, animation, advertising, typography and experiential, the briefs were designed to provide new talent with the experience of working on client briefs. These 18 briefs tackled varying commercial challenges and social issues, including asking entrants to create a festival event poster (Universal Music), create a banner icon for the fossil fuel free movement (Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty), a design brief to break down barriers to sexual freedom (Durex and Design Bridge), and a brief to create an inclusive future for the connected home (Sky).

Paul Drake, Foundations Director at D&AD, commented: "In a time when creativity is becoming increasingly vital to global economies, it has never been more important to celebrate the next generation of talent. For 44 years, D&AD's New Blood has showcased the best emerging creatives from various disciplines, who are getting ready to leave education and join the industry. Explore the winning work, meet the creators behind it, give them an opportunity."

In recognition of the exceptional creative responses to these briefs, 179 Pencils were awarded, including 3 Black Pencils (the highest D&AD New Blood accolade), 22 Yellow, 45 Graphite and 107 Wood Pencils. 3 White Pencils were also awarded for outstanding work that uses the power of creativity to do good.

For information on all of the Pencil-winning entries, please see the D&AD website. 

Work that was awarded a 2024 New Blood Awards Pencil includes:

ffamous ffones (White Pencil) – People buy refurbished phones because they need to, not because they want to. Despite being better for the planet and your wallet, they lack coolness. This winning entry for giffgaff proposes the launch of 'famous ffones,' the first celebrity line of refurbished phones, transforming a practical purchase into an aspirational one.

DurED (White Pencil) – 54% of kids encounter online porn before age 13, leading to misunderstandings about sex and relationships. Enter winning idea: DurEd, a sex education initiative for Durex. A browser plugin, which can be installed by parents, redirects sex-based searches to the DurEd website, offering age-appropriate resources and encouraging offline discussions between parents and kids.

Scan to Revolt (Black Pencil) — This idea aims to arm Gen Z's creative rebellion against sameness and design clichés using Adobe Express and Photoshop. It provides them with a platform to scan clichés and replace them with their own creations on platforms like TikTok.

Swift Cans (Yellow Pencil) — The Coca-Cola Company, in collaboration with design agency JKR, challenged New Blood to bring Gen Z into the world of the brand. The Yellow Pencil-winning entry turns Coca-Cola cans into collectibles for Taylor Swift fans, featuring trinkets for Gen Z to create friendship bracelets.

Bumble - AI Reply (Graphite Pencil) — Ai can be helpful in hundreds of different ways, but for people with autism it offers them the ability to be more understood in society, especially when it comes to dating and reading social cues. The Graphite Pencil winning idea, uses AI to break down the barriers of miscommunication for people with autism on the Bumble dating app.