Today’s new creative talent isn’t afraid of a challenge for good.
Each year, the D&AD New Blood programme shines a light on the best new creative talent coming up through the ranks. Despite a natural disaster and global pandemic, 2020 has proved no different. And somehow I’ve never been more optimistic.
Take a moment to look at this year’s entries. You’ll not only get a sense of the talent on show, but notice that the next crop are those who are being drawn overwhelmingly to challenges where design can be used as a force for good.
And if this year is anything to go by, thank god for that.
2020 marked my fourth year as a mentor for students at UTS, working alongside tutor Nicky Hardcastle and mentors James Gilmore, George Adams and Kinal Ladha. It’s worth mentioning that in any normal year, New Blood is a program that is as energising as it is challenging for the mentors, tutors and students alike. And looking back, it’s interesting to see how variations of the same struggles in the process so often rear their head, regardless it seems of the backdrop.
As mentors, it’s our role not only to guide creative output, but reduce and remove barriers so students can do their best work. So the question: what are the struggles that commonly appear, and how might we help students work through them?
To answer that, here are some of the challenges teams we’ve worked with have had difficulty with, and how we worked through each one.
1. The trouble with insights, ideas, and execution.
A website is not an idea. Neither is a pop-up. But because insights, ideas and execution are so inextricably linked, sometimes it was difficult to help students tease out the difference.
Our work-through: We encouraged teams to think about insights as the human truths they find in their research, and that generally, they’re a new way at looking at the problem you’re trying to solve. The idea is then what you do with that insight — It might be weird. It should be wonderful. It’s the foundation and north star for how and where you decide to bring it to life. That last part is the execution. It’s all a bit of a mouthful and strangely hard to articulate, even when you instinctively know the difference so we always backed up the theory by pointing to great examples and found it did just the trick.
2. People come first.
Students have limited time to capture the judges attention, and the same is true of their audience. We found that sometimes there was a tendency for teams to lean into esoteric concepts, over-intellectualised explanations, and forget who they were trying to engage in the first place.
Our work-through: No matter how good the execution, if people can’t understand it, it’s unlikely they’ll engage with it. Aside from the obvious ‘get to know your audience like the back of your hand’ research up front, we found the simplest of tasks helped here — Always be asking why your audience should care. When you find you insight, ask it again. When you come up with you concept, again. When you choose how you execute, again. When you write your entry copy, again. When students were certain, we asked them to explain it to someone who knew nothing about the project. If they didn’t get it chances are we figured, their audience — and the judges —wouldn’t either.
3. Play to each others strengths.
It’s easy to tell when teams aren’t working together well. Sometimes this shows up as sharing of huge amounts of research but without analysis, or, underusing each others strengths when it matters most.
Our work-through: Early on, encourage teams to get to know each other and spend time working together (whether it’s in person or over zoom). Even if they were divvying up tasks from day one, we asked that they come together to talk about what they discovered before sessions with the mentors to help synthesise their thoughts, rather than just present…everything. Later on when it got to crunch time, that time spent together helped them work better and faster because they understood each others strengths. Regardless if as individuals they find themselves in the role of designer, writer, photographer, whatever — making the most out of each others strengths to divide and conquer lead to a better result, and an entry submitted on-time.
4. Aim for meaningful change.
Before teams even hit the ground running, they need to choose which brief to take on. This can be tricky to agree on with so many exciting options (and also a few dissenting voices in the group).
Our work-through: Now, my opinion is that the answer to this one is pretty simple. If there’s a brief with an opportunity to consider social and positive change in the solution, that’s a decent starting point. We tended to guide teams to these briefs as a great opportunity to teach them to start investing in the possibility for good in any brief — and thinking back, it’s also been consistently easier to keep students engaged and passionate over the course of the program when they’ve worked on social good outcomes.
5. Invest in the work.
The work isn’t over until you hit submit, and there will be a lot of ideas shed along the way there. This isn’t exactly a comfortable ride for most students.
Our work-through: Resilience is key. We found it best to be upfront about this kind of stuff, and importantly, be available. Slack, weekly working sessions and impromptu studio visits were all on the table if teams wanted it (and they usually do). New Blood is undoubtedly hard, but when students felt supported, they not only invested, but importantly learned to recognise when they were onto a winning idea.
Ultimately the truth of it all is that nothing ever goes perfectly. Old challenges solved often make room for new ones. But, if we can fine tune them as they crop up and learn from our past hiccups, perhaps with each year we’ll be better placed to guide students to better results. That’s the aim. And as a group we’ve certainly learned a lot over the past four years.
In a proud-mentor-alert-moment, this year we celebrated 2 Yellow Pencil wins for our UTS teams. It’s been quite the ride since we started, with each year being awarded a combination of 1 x White, 5x Yellow, and 1 x Graphite Pencils since 2017. Safe to say, there’s something in the water at UTS.
Being part of the New Blood experience as a mentor continues to be every bit worth the investment. Not only that, but it’s a chance to build partnerships between studios and universities where the commitment of great tutors on the ground during programmes like this one are worth their weight in gold (and then some).
With all said and done, to every team that took that long, deep, and well-deserved breath once they hit the submit button, regardless of pencils (and timing for that matter), you’ve shown that you have more than what it takes to make it. We need new blood in this industry of ours, so keep at it. Stay ambitious. And please, keep choosing to answer any brief that lands on your desk in a way that does good. It won’t always be easy, but I’m pretty sure we both know now, that won’t stop you.
Until next year ✌️
Thanks to all the teams and the wonderful Nicky Hardcastle, James Gilmore, Kinal Ladha and George Adams. And Jason Little, for introducing me to the program back in 2017.
2020 Teams:
Madison Chan & Rachel Holt
Jisu Im, Aaron Davis, Mulanne Phan & Mike Spiteri
Aiden Barry, Chloe Dimopoulos, Dante Bernard, Kiran Best & Victoria Wills
