D&AD Awards 2018: the design winners

D&AD has revealed the winners of its 2018 awards, which took place in London last night (26 April).

Now in its 56th year, the awards ceremony saw 721 pencils given out in total, and three projects take home the top prize of a Black Pencil.

Australian consultancy Host/Havas scooped the only Black Pencil given to a design project for its Palau Pledge campaign, created for the Palau Legacy Project.

The brand campaign required visitors to Palau – a country comprised of over 500 islands in the western Pacific Ocean – to sign a passport pledge declaring that they promise to act in an ecologically responsible way when on the islands.

Meanwhile, two Black Pencils were awarded for advertising projects – It’s a Tide by Saatchi & Saatchi NY for Procter & Gamble and Fearless Girl by McCann New York for State Street Global Advisors.

There was a total of 74 Yellow Pencils given out at the awards, 156 Graphite Pencils and 488 Wood Pencils. Highlights include The New York Times Magazine’s cover series for 2018 led by design director Gail Bichler (Yellow), and the branding for The Plastic Oceans Foundation and LadBible’s campaign to officially recognise a country-sized pile of trash as the Trash Isles (Yellow). Scroll down to see all the Yellow Pencil design winners at the bottom of this piece.

In the scoring and awards system, a Black Pencil is considered ground-breaking and Yellow is the best in the world, while Graphite is equivalent to silver and Wood to bronze.

The most awarded designers this year were consultancy Jones Knowles Ritchie (JKR) – who won one Yellow, one Graphite and four Wood Pencils – followed by the in-house teams at The New York Times and the Guardian.

Overall, US consultancies came out on top with 194 pencils, topping UK consultancies’ 165 awards for the second year running. Entries came in from 50 countries in total.
D&AD CEO Tim Lindsay says this year’s winners show “a marked focus on humour and playfulness.” While he highlights how important it is to “sell stuff” in the current social and economic climate, he adds that “design and advertising can be used to encourage debate and engender social discourse, but it can and should also entertain.”

For the full list of winners, head here.