This year’s winners all hail from Scotland with ideas brought to life by creative agencies
The first ever D&AD New Gen Award winners have been announced at a special ceremony at Edinburgh Napier’s Merchiston campus – with all this year’s winners hailing from Scottish schools.
Created in partnership by Daydream Believers, an organisation promoting creative bravery in young people and D&AD itself, The D&AD New Gen Awards focus on empowering young people aged 11-18 to think creatively about socially important topics.
Building on the work of the full D&AD Awards, which are often described as the Oscars of the global advertising, design and creative world, the new awards challenged participants to respond to a brief set by sports brand Adidas to design a physical experience, a game or sport to get more 11-18 year-olds moving, playing and thriving in physical activity.
The winners were announced this week (5 June), with four winners of the junior category – from The Mary Erskine School, Perth Grammar School, Castlehead High School and St Thomas of Aquinas RC and one senior winner – from Grangemouth High School – collecting their coveted pencil awards.
The ceremony, which was led by Daydream Believers’ director Helena Good and Marie Dryden, Senior Foundation Manager at D&AD was also attended by representatives from some of Scotland’s top creative agencies, who have worked with the school pupils to help develop their winning ideas even further.
Along with their pencil award, the winners also received a cash voucher from Adidas alongside the offer of mentorship and support should they pursue future education or a career within the creative industries.
Helena Good, Director of Daydream Believers, said: “Daydream Believers has been working with D&AD New Blood since 2019 as part of its school engagement programme. Our collective vision is to support our young people to push their ideas and develop brave solutions to modern-day challenges.
“The New Gen Award focuses on the process, not the final product: the finished submissions judged how a pupil moved through to answer the brief. Failure and iteration was rewarded as well as storytelling skills. This makes the experience not only more reflective of industry but also more accessible to teachers and learners. We are looking forward to launching New Gen 2024 soon.
“We are grateful to all the agencies who helped with the judging and developed these brave ideas. They shared our excitement of what’s possible when we all work together to support our inspiring young people.”
Marie Dryden, Senior Foundation Manager at D&AD, said: “Working with Daydream Believers to bring the New Gen Awards to life has been such a brilliant experience. Embedding creativity into the school curriculum is vital to maintain not only the commercial creative industries, but all industries. Discovering the level of talent already out there has proven that programmes like this are integral to enable creative minds to flourish, and we can't wait to see where the winners go next!”
Dr Matt Sinclair, Head of Design, Photography and Creative Advertising at Edinburgh Napier University, said: “The empathy with users and the uninhibited creativity displayed by these projects is exactly the kind of thing we want to see from young designers. We feel privileged at Edinburgh Napier to be part of the ambition to nurture a new approach to creativity within schools.”
The Winners
The competition was open to all schools in the UK.
In the Junior category there were four winners.
Brailing
Maria & Caitlin, pupils from The Mary Erskine School, were recognised for their idea, Brailling. Their initial idea examined how to make more sports and games accessible. They decided to focus on blind children and have come up with a range of ways to incorporate braille into games, from climbing to braille games controllers.
Maria & Caitlin linked up with Bond & Coyne to further develop their project. The agency team developed the Brailing logo and showed how it could be incorporated into various advertising including posters, out of home and online. The team also showed how the brand could be adapted for clothing as well as how it could be used to illustrate a Spotify playlist. Emotive copywriting and animation were combined to help bring Maria and Caitlin’s vision for Brailing together.
Glowie
Another winning idea, Glowie, came from Perth Grammar School. Pupil Lily thought of targeting girls specifically, and her initial ideas included lots of fun twists on existing sports, like rubber duck curling. For her entry she settled on glow in the dark ping pong, including a net around the table that players can travel around on seats with wheels.
Leith Agency has collaborated with Lily to help bring Glowie to life. The team illustrated Lily’s plans for the game itself with a graphic that showed the table and benches that would be used to play it. They also took inspiration from her sketches to design glow in the dark bespoke kit to wear while playing. They also showed how various out of home advertising and link-ups with brands such as Lane 7 could look.
Sprun
Sprun is a relay-race style game, where young people can compete and have fun passing a spoon to one
another around a pole to win. Gemma, Jane and Melissa from Castlehead High School were motivated to keep their idea simple, to ensure the sport was accessible to all and required no specialist equipment.
Gemma, Jane and Melissa have worked with MadeBrave to help visualise Sprun and develop it even further. After a discovery session in the agency’s Glasgow office, the team set about creating a new logo for Sprun along with a range of animated illustrations that could be carried in print and digital. They developed poster examples of how the game could be explained in parks and greenspaces and they also created TikTok filters that help bring the brand to life online.
Swimpossible
From St Thomas of Aquinas RC, Nina, Victoria and Kianna came up with Swimpossible. The three-pool complex goes up in difficulty levels to help young people learn to swim with confidence.
The route that Swimpossible could take in terms of its brand and association with Adidas has been explored further thanks to the work of StudioLR. After creating various mood and inspiration boards, that looked at previous Adidas campaigns and patterns, textures and similar projects, the agency has helped create a logo, typography and photography to bring the ideas together. A social media campaign with GB swimmer Duncan Scott, motivational swimwear and accessories, and a set of three pools designed in the shape of the Adidas three stripe logo and more has helped make the Swimpossible team’s vision almost a reality.
Outburst
In the senior category there was only one winner – Caitlin from Grangemouth High School, with Outburst. Caitlin wanted to make her game accessible for teens and young people with social anxiety. The result is a game which combines rounders and a pinata. When the batter hits the ball, it explodes, and fielders run to collect what’s inside.
Caitlin has worked with representatives from Emperor to help bring her project to life. Building on her original pitch, the team developed a 3D-graffiti typestyle to give importance within the messaging to the sport’s barrier-breaking aims. The agency also designed a range of ‘tactile’ hand-drawn patterns which link to the idea of players drawing their own pitch boundaries in chalk and were in turn, inspired by Caitlin’s moodboards.
See more from the prize-winning projects here.
Photos of pupils courtesy of Diego Martina.