Words win prizes at D&AD awards

The writing category has scooped the overall prize in the 25th annual British Design & Art Direction Student Awards, at a time when the organisation is concerned over the future of copywriting.

Writing entries increased markedly after a push to talk up the discipline in colleges, and Kingston University’s Christian Stacey won the student of the year prize on the strength of a campus price promotion for The Guardian.

The team behind the other writing joint winner – Central St Martins’ William Bingham and Victoria Daltrey – also won one of two WPP Group bursaries, worth £5000.

Dick Powell, Seymour Powell partner and D&AD education chairman, says standards were ‘as usual tremendously high’, but Stacey’s creative idea was the best executed.

‘Having creativity and putting words together to express it is a rare quantity,’ he adds.

Top prize in the inaugural D&AD/Nesta product design and innovation awards went to Nolan Chandler from the University of Hertfordshire. His EZ Feed baby food packaging, with a ‘squeeze ‘n’ feed’ device for parents on the go (pictured), receives £5000 worth of development support.

Direct mail was one of the most popular categories in a record year for entries – with 25 first prize winners, 27 second prize winners and 25 commendations from 2200 submissions from 24 countries.

The three Corus Steel packaging awards, including work placements, were shared by Accademia di Communicazione’s Pasquale Volpe, Bath Spa University College’s Charlotte Hayes and Sam Lachlan and Ecole Cantonale D’Art de Lausanne’s Guenaelle Stulz.

The 2003 D&AD Student Annual, designed by Browns London, is now available priced at £10.