About D&AD Awards

The D&AD Awards are globally recognised as the ultimate creative accolade, honouring excellence in design, creativity, and advertising. Founded in 1962 by a group of designers, including David Bailey and Colin Forbes, the D&AD Awards have been the benchmark of creative achievement for over 60 years. What began with just 25 judges has evolved into a member-run organisation with an elected Board of Trustees.

In 2024, more than 300 creative leaders, practitioners, and innovators from 47 countries gathered in person at the Southbank Centre, Queen Elizabeth Hall Building in London to identify the world's best design, advertising, production, and craft. The D&AD Awards showcase this work on a global stage, inspiring the international creative community to learn, grow, and set new standards for creative excellence.

Our categories cover a wide range of disciplines, including graphic design, product design, book design, magazine and newspaper design, art direction, writing, editing, illustration, photography, typography, animation, creative coding, UX, e-commerce, gaming, PR, media, social good, and more. Submitting work actively supports D&AD's mission as an education charity, funding learning programs that bridge the gap between education and the industry.

In the 2024 D&AD Annual, you can delve into the best creative work of the year. Explore what the judges had to say about their chosen work as they explain why it embodies creative excellence. Read interviews with the creators of the award-winning work, gaining insights into their process. Step back and explore the broader context of some of the year's major themes, with various voices sharing perspectives on current culture.

Winning work is also promoted around the world at D&AD’s international exhibitions. Past venues include the Ad Museum Tokyo, Louvre Museum, Paris, Shanghai Institute of Visual Art and Arts Centre Melbourne. This year, work was displayed at the Ad Museum Tokyo, the National Taiwan University of Science and Technology and in K11 in Shanghai.

D&AD Impact celebrates creative ideas that are making a real and positive difference in the world. It helps these ideas grow by providing mentoring, training, visibility, and funding to work that shows potential. The Future Impact programme is geared towards early-stage designs and initiatives that are still in the research and development phase and have the potential to benefit the world. This includes prototypes, MVPs, and new product or service lines that have proof of concept and are commercially viable.

The top award in this category is the Future Impact Pencil, which includes access to a £25,000 D&AD Impact Fund and 12 months of mentoring, training, and peer support.

In 2023, £15,000 from the Impact Fund was allocated to Resting Reef, an innovative memorial and eco-burial service that allows people to transform their remains into reef structures using a unique formula containing human ashes and crushed oyster shells—two elements that nourish and enhance marine growth. This funding will contribute to development and testing costs as well as obtaining a Marine Management Organisation (MMO) licence.

A further £10,000 was allocated to Lungy Health for their Breathing Platform for Asthma, COPD, and Long-COVID. Lungy Health is developing a wellness app aimed at alleviating stress and anxiety while providing support for patients with breathing problems such as asthma, COPD, and long-COVID. The funds will be used to hire a new Clinical Business Development Manager and for content creation to effectively market the product.

Shortlist
Work that demonstrates merit, worthy of recognition and in the top echelon of entries. It’s awarded in all categories in the first instance.

Wood Pencil
The best of the year in advertising, design, craft, culture and impact.

Graphite Pencil
For stand-out work that rises above the rest, worthy of consideration for a Yellow Pencil.

Yellow Pencil
The iconic D&AD Yellow Pencil, awarded only to outstanding work that achieves true creative excellence.

Black Pencil
​The ultimate creative accolade, reserved for groundbreaking work. Only a handful of Black Pencils are awarded every year, if any.

White Pencil
Exceptional projects that use the power of creativity to drive behavioural, policy, commercial or societal change. Replaces the Yellow Pencil in the Impact category.

Future Impact Pencil
​Early-stage projects that demonstrate the potential to drive behavioural, environmental, societal or policy change through creativity. Awarded to work in the Future Impact category.

Our rankings table tots up the allocated points for each win, in order to recognise: Advertising Agency of the Year, Design Agency of the Year, Production Company of the Year, Client of the Year, and Independent of the Year.

President’s Award
Every year, D&AD honours an industry hero; a legend whose contribution to the industry has been nothing but inspirational. The recipient is chosen by the D&AD President.

New Blood Awards
Now in its 44th year of kickstarting the careers of emerging creatives around the globe, the New Blood Awards showcases need-to-know new talent. There were over 6,000 entrants from 72 countries. Out of these, 168 Judges from across the world awarded 180 Pencils to 451 Pencil-winners. Explore the New Blood winning work in D&AD 2024 Annual here.

New Blood Festival
New Blood Festival 2024 took place on 2–4 July at Protein Studios. This year we hosted a graduate showcase of more than 40 exhibiting university courses, which was visited by over 3,000 people. There were exclusive exhibitions of winners from New Blood Awards, New Blood: The Portfolios, talks by industry leaders, portfolio reviews, and more.