Design that makes the world better – the D&AD White Pencil winners

Date
22 May 2015

D&AD has awarded White Pencils in a category of their own since 2013, and these recognise design and advertising projects that “demonstrate that marketing and marketing communications can be a force for good,” in the words of D&AD CEO Tim Lindsay. Four projects have been awarded the philanthropic pencils this year, two for brand and two for not-for-profit advertising and marketing communications. Here are the projects recognised this year…

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Lowe China: Human Traffic Sign

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Lowe China: Human Traffic Sign

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Lowe China: Human Traffic Sign

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Lowe China: Human Traffic Sign

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Lowe China: Human Traffic Sign

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Lowe China: Human Traffic Sign

Lowe China used very powerful images of road traffic accident victims holding signs in the Human Traffic Sign campaign, which takes a straightforward idea and executes it brilliantly. Created as part of car client Buick’s wider road safety campaign, Human Traffic addresses the fact that one person dies every ten minutes in China – a terrifying statistic indeed.
www.lowechina.com

Harnessing the infuriatingly catchy LEGO Movie song Everything is Awesome for good, Don’t Panic London’s video (which went viral almost instantly) showed a beautiful LEGO Arctic scene being destroyed by oil. The campaign was a protest against LEGO’s alignment with Shell, the upshot was that in July last year the toy manufacturer announced it wouldn’t be renewing its contract with the oil giant – a true success story.

“It plugged into a number of things people love on the internet,” Don’t Panic London said to us of the campaign’s viral success. “There’s references to Harry Potter, Game of Thrones… and Greenpeace is such a global movement that a lot of people got behind it.”
www.dontpaniclondon.com

Created for client ZDK Gesellschaft Demokratische Kultur, this campaign helps the EXIT-Germany organisation in its aim to help individuals “who want to leave the extreme right-wing movement and start a new life.” EXIT-Germany was founded by criminologist and former police detective Bernd Wagner and former neo-Nazi leader Ingo Hasselbach. Nazis Against Nazis – Germany’s Most Involuntary Charity Walk turned a neo-Nazi march into a fundraising opportunity, giving ten Euros for each metre walked by the right-wingers to EXIT-Germany.
www.gghlowe.de
www.grabarzundpartner.de

The campaign for American snack brand Honey Maid tugged on the heartstrings through a series of snapshots of families that look slightly different to the norm, from one with a heavily tattooed daddy to a family with two daddies, and a mixed race couple. It pitches the brand as being a wholesome snack for wholesome families, however they’re made up. It had its detractors though, mostly in the form of homophobic right wing groups, but in a very clever stunt the brand “turned love into hate” by printing off negative comments, rolling up the paper and forming the word “love” from them, as explained in the case study video above.
www.droga5.com

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Emily Gosling

Emily joined It’s Nice That as Online Editor in the summer of 2014 after four years at Design Week. She is particularly interested in graphic design, branding and music. After working It's Nice That as both Online Editor and Deputy Editor, Emily left the company in 2016.

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