How Two Teams Succeeded At The Pearson Sponsored D&AD New Blood Awards
Every year, the D&AD design, advertising, and digital awards attempt to find brilliant creative minds who can solve real-world problems. Their New Blood Awards category, in which companies like Pearson set briefs that teams around the world respond to, is aimed at students and recent graduates. At the Pearson Conference on “The Future Of Learning” in Da Nang, Vietnam in February, two winning teams from India and Malaysia explained the skills they needed to come out on top.
Responding To The Briefs
In Hindi, jugnoo means “firefly”. Across the 19,000 Indian villages that have never had power, children hunt the insects and then store them in jars. The bioluminescent light the fireflies emit helps them to study through the night. So Pearson, one of the sponsors of the D&AD New Blood Awards—a competition that asks students and recent graduates to respond to real-world creative briefs—asked: How can we really put the light of knowledge into every child’s life?
The most obvious solution is to install power lines, but progress on the promise to bring electricity to all the country’s citizens still has a long way to go to be fulfilled. The Indian team, who are five students from Mumbai University, took a different approach inspired by the glowing fireflies of rural India. “Our solution had to be more cost-effective than installing power grids,” Karan Lakhe says. Karan, along with the team’s other members—Bhuvan Bali, Yash Ambre, Gaurav Bumb, and Mihir Padia—hit upon their award-winning idea to print textbooks with the kind of luminous material already used in novelty glow-in-the-dark items like T-shirts.
The team from Malaysia were attracted by a different Pearson brief: Design a product, service or campaign that will allow learning at scale. For the team’s two members, brothers Yap Yoong Ruey and Yap Yoong Jian, their solution was simple—to enable consumers to learn while they eat. “What if knowledge is made edible? Sounds unusual, but it’s refreshing, isn’t it? Imagine a learning company that helps people access knowledge with a universally accessible solution—food,” Ruey smiles. Their plan proposed to redefine global learning by embedding academic explainers into the packages of food and beverages. On a chocolate wrapper could be a bite-sized description of the civil rights movement; on a noodle cup an explanation of the causes and consequences of child labour.
Success Came With Challenges
For both teams, success in the competition was far from straightforward. “We are all from a similar background in media studies, and we all live in close proximity—which is how the team first formed. Once we had all settled upon the idea to print textbooks with special ink, it quickly became obvious that none of us had the scientific background to help us understand if that was even possible,” The Indian team’s Karan Lakhe says. “That was the toughest part of our journey. Many people around us were telling us that the idea wouldn’t work,” he adds. “To have a chance of success we needed advice from engineers, print experts, ink manufacturers, educators....”
“The thought of abandoning the idea never crossed our minds,” Mihir Padia joins in. “We didn’t give up, but we knew it would only work if we could ensure the production costs were low.”
For the Malaysian team there were different challenges. “This was actually my fourth attempt joining the competition and the first time my proposal was chosen,” Ruey says. “Coming up with creative ideas is easy, but finding the right one is hard. I tend to over-complicate things meaning there are too many steps involved in the consumer’s journey towards understanding my idea—thinking simply is very important as simplicity helps to convey the message clearly...but that’s easier said than done,” he shrugs.
Entry into the D&AD New Blood Awards this time meant there was a steep learning curve for the team. “We learnt not to connect personally to solutions. It’s always better to maintain a distance that allows objective critical assessments of the ideas. If it doesn’t work, you just have to discard the idea and move on to another until you get the right one,” Ruey explains.
Realising Award-Winning Ideas
The Indian team’s textbooks charge up under sunlight. Then, at night, the phosphorescent ink emits five nits of light. To put that in perspective, one nit is roughly equivalent to the light provided by a single candle. Added to that, the ink only needs brief exposure to sunlight to charge up. “The idea has universal appeal. Many countries face the problem of restricted access to education in underdeveloped regions,” Karan Lakhe continues.
“I would tell future entrants to the D&AD New Blood Awards that an idea doesn’t guarantee success, homework does. That’s how you discover whether your idea really can be done—talk to people, figure out the costs, then refine the idea until it perfectly satisfies the requirements of the brief,” he advises.
In the Malaysian team’s solution, consumers access information printed on product packaging and a QR code accessible by mobile device reveals a deeper dive into the topic. “To succeed we had to step back from the problem. We looked closely at our everyday routines. What did we do when we woke up? Where were we going?” Ruey explains. “Creative ideas come from daily life. Observe your surroundings, and always be empathetic,” he recommends.
With such refined responses to their creative briefs, how well did the teams’ education prepare them for this competition? “I felt well prepared—I am a graphic design major—but after university I’ve also had to learn things the hard way. Failure has helped shape who I am today,” Ruey says. “Personally, I would like to see creative thinking placed at the core of the curriculum,” he adds. “We were lucky too,” Karan says. “We had access to quality education. But, a more practical curriculum would help a lot of other youngsters who aspire to be innovators and change-makers in society. My school of the future? It wouldn’t have classrooms. I would want my students out in the real world, responding to real challenges,” he nods finally.