This year's New Blood entries showed an incredible breadth of creativity and capabilities. The responses demonstrated raw creative talent with real potential, smart thinking and some incredible craft. But also, in so many of the awarded entries, you can see the voice of the creative coming through, not just in their style of creativity but also in their opinions and beliefs.
BBC 'Habitat' (Yellow Pencil)
Winners: Jessie Zhang, Thomas Bugg, Jann Choy, Zhiqin Lu
College: Central Saint Martins, UK
A great idea which cleverly creates a real emotional connection between our environment and our behaviours that affect it. Choosing a real-world habitat as a screensaver, our behaviour data – for example, the amount of food deliveries, miles travelled etc – is visually represented in the effect, both positive and negative, on the habitat. It demonstrates a great idea with a really well-designed interface.
Burger King 'Burger pooling' (Yellow Pencil)
Winners: Sarah Alexander, Andrea Cornali, Francesco Fanizza, Deniz Eroglu, Lianne Van Lierop
College: Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti, Italy
A simple idea that promotes and enhances a Burger King delivery app by offering a pool option. The more people on the pool, the higher your CO2 emissions reduction. A leader board then rewards the highest contributors with free burgers and the ultimate influencer with a gold card for a lifetime of free Burger Kings. Simple idea, well-designed and thought through.
Connect4Climate 'Plastic expiry date' (Yellow Pencil)
Winners: Gagandeep Jhuti, Joseph Foale-Groves
College: Graduates
A brilliantly simple idea. The premise is that plastic takes up to 1,000 years to disintegrate. The answer: an old-school sticker to go on plastic packaging that gives its plastic expiry date.
Google and HMCT 'FACESHOP: a selfie dysmorphia campaign' (Yellow Pencil)
Winner: Low Junjie
College: Temasek Polytechnic, Singapore
A campaign to deal with selfie dysmorphia. It kicks off its journey with a fake plastic-surgery campaign, which starts the conversation. It was the craft that blew me away. The presentation film itself was outrageously good and the design insane.
HSBC 'Together we thrive' (Yellow Pencil)
Winner: Josie Staveley-Taylor
College: Falmouth University
Having worked on this airport jet bridge brief myself, I was intrigued to see this and particularly impressed with the winners. This response showed a brilliantly thought through design system that boasted some great illustration, culminating in stunning walkway designed panels.
Lego 'Wig' (Yellow Pencil)
Winners: Xumeng Zhang, Mingyang Jiang
College: Art Centre College of Design, US
I’ve included this as I love the tongue-in-cheek, humorous approach to the brief. It builds on the imagination platform Lego has always had, but appeals to an audience who might have grown out of Lego. It showcases famous drag artist wigs done in Lego, design kits and a chance to personalise. It is done with style and a smile.
A fun and famous campaign that shows the voice of the creator coming through. Humour is tough to pull off and we need more of it, so I am so pleased to see this approach to the Lego brief.
Nike 'Her SNKRS' (Black Pencil)
Winners: Clara Laorden Pastor, Pia Volpino, Daniel Vázquez Seoane, Karolina Contin Sosa
College: Miami Ad School Madrid, Spain
Born of the insight that girls don’t get signed up or sponsored by brands in the same way that boys do – in fact, it is woeful. So the idea here is to create a bespoke signed trainer range that carries individual girls' names, in effect creating a fund by which girls get kick-start sponsorship funding. Brilliant idea, beautifully executed. Love it.
Penguin 'Platform Classics' (Yellow Pencil)
Winners: Yasemin Botterill, Ewan Leslie
College: Kingston School of Art, UK
How do you get more people to read Penguin Classics? Answer: distribute a free paper-style publication. The design here is great, the idea is smart and the distribution unit impactful.
Penguin 'Inside stories' (White and Black Pencil)
Winners: Jay Parekh, Alex Morris
College: School of Communication Arts 2.0, UK
A masterclass in how to do a case study – industry, take note. This made me cry, it had real power in the way the story was told and it demonstrates incredible writing – something we don’t see enough of. The narrative explains the programme that provides books to inmates and a way for them to review the stories. Again, the best ideas answer a simple need, often very personal and targeted. Executed practically and beautifully.
Kate Stanners is chairwoman and global chief creative officer at Saatchi & Saatchi, and president of D&AD