The D&AD Awards for advertising and design are prestigious like Bentley cars. The highest D&AD Pencil is Black. Winning one of these is less likely than owning a Bentley. If no work is good enough in a category, no Pencils of any colour are awarded. There have been several years in which no Black Pencils were awarded at all.
Twenty-eight packs have won a Pencil of some colour this year. Whether any have won a Yellow or a Black (or even a White, the colour for work that does good) will be known on May 21.
Meanwhile, all the contenders for Packaging Design may be viewed here.
And we’ve picked some of our own favourites, beginning with Australia’s Pencil winner, the SP Lager Mozzie Box. (SP is a Papua New Guinea subsidiary of Heineken.)
Advertising agency, GPY&R Brisbane turned the SP Lager carton into an insect repellant by having the cartons printed with a eucalyptus coating. Eucalyptus is a natural mosquito repellent, especially when it burns. That matters because there are up to 1.8 million suspected malaria cases in PNG each year. It’s quite normal for beer cartons to be torn up and thrown onto a fire or barbecue in PNG, so this idea grew from a simple observation. The Mozzie Boz won its Pencil in Innovative Packaging Design.
Fragilitea won its Pencil in Sustainable Packaging. The idea by German brand agency, Kolle Rebbe is for chinaware brand, Rosenthal. The packing material used to protect the delicate teacups is made of tea – real black, fruit or green tea. Remove the cup, place a handful of the tea-packing in it and pour boiling water over.
Gin Rawal bottles are striking first and foremost, and fun second. The clear labels by design agency, Estudio Dorian, for Pesca Salada cocktail bar, allow the divers on the bottle to ‘interact’ with the surface of the gin. As the level of gin decreases, the men go from underwater swimmers to high divers. Gin Rawal won its Pencil in Packaging Design.
Little labels of big consquences is an idea by advertising agency, Young & Rubicam Dubai, for American Garden habanero sauce that won a Pencil in Packaging Design.
To launch its habanero sauce successfully into supermarkets in UAE, American Garden had to compete for attention with the world famous Tabasco. Y&R’s job was to come up with an impactful idea that also had shelf shout.
This was the agency’s thinking: "Habanero chili peppers are known to be one of the hottest, and only a tiny drop of Habanero sauce can spice up any dish. In short, 'a little thing can cause a huge impact'. So, we launched a series of limited edition packaging. The packaging was bottle labels that unrolled into a long strip and told stories of minor events, blunders and mistakes that ended up having huge consequences on the world. There were 10 stories illustrated by different artists, making each bottle label distinctive and striking, and enabling the entire collection to stand out on a busy supermarket shelf."
The Rag Bag won two Pencils. One in Innovative Packaging Design and the other in Sustainable Packaging Design for advertising agency, DDB Stockholm and fashion retailer, Uniforms For The Dedicated. The biodegradable shopping bags promote both recycling and social responsibility.
The bags are twin-sided. When you buy something and bring it home, you remove your purchase from the bag, flip the bag inside out, insert a used garment, seal it and put it in the postbox. It will then be sent to a charity where another cycle will be added to its life. Postage and address have already been taken care of.
There is also a Rag Bag site, where you a business can sign up for bags. During the test phase, the site received interest for 600,000 bags from various companies.
