The D&AD Jury Room, Translated

As a D&AD juror, you have to love your Yellow Pencils. Like your favourite child or pet, or more relatably, like your own favourite ideas.

It’s the work you go all-in for, pitching with passion. So much so that a piece can (and did) go from not even being on the shortlist all the way to a Yellow Pencil. To quote Huey Lewis, and I often do, that’s the power of love.

Ultimately, we were aiming to celebrate the ideas positively shaping the future of our industry so what better way than with a Yellow Pencil. But it’s not only about the Yellow – each colour pencil (and shortlist) should be celebrated, as it’s not easy to get there, and it has a lot of meaning in the room.

Let me break it down, in hopefully a not-too-boring kinda way.

The D&AD shortlist description: Work that demonstrates merit, worthy of recognition and in the top echelon of entries. It’s awarded in all categories in the first instance.

Jury room translate: Really, really good work. If it’s making the archive of what makes the best work for 2025, it has to be that D&AD high quality. Sure, it’s not your favourite child, but loved regardless. More like a step child.

Wood Pencil: The best of the year in advertising, design, craft, culture and impact.

Jury room translate: Start to get deeper into the details here. Craft matters, how it reached the audience matters. One juror from a media background summed up a culled idea: “This is a brilliant media idea, but the creative really let it down.”

Words to live by (and die by apparently). And also words to haunt the creative judges in the room. Brilliant must touch all aspects of the work.

Graphite Pencil: For stand-out work that rises above the rest, worthy of consideration for a Yellow Pencil.

Jury room translate: The ideas jurors are extremely passionate about shows up here. The work gets analysed in even greater detail at this stage. It’s at this level if you have cultural context you need to explain it in your case and write ups. I can’t stress this enough.

The problem you solved in your region matters. Like how some toast cooks slower than other toast in NZ toasters, or like how a British piece of work had the local jury moved to tears, and the other half us asking “Why?”

Yellow Pencil: The iconic D&AD Yellow Pencil, awarded only to outstanding work that achieves true creative excellence.

Jury room translate: If the work makes it this far jury members have had to fight for the work, pitching like it’s their own work. Thankfully there is no “Sophie’s choice” (because there can be more than one Yellow Pencil).

This is the work that doesn’t just respond to culture, it adds to it, rewards its audience, in the most creative and emotionally connective ways.

The D&AD media jury was incredibly proud of “our 2025 Yellow pencils.” Well, not “our” but rather the Yellow Pencil work we selected.

PENNY's 'Price Packs' responded to unstable, price gouging supermarket prices, with a solution that creates beautifully designed stability.

'Sightwalks' saw a cement company create a more detailed tactical communication system for the sight impaired.

And Spotify 'Spreadbeats' spoke directly to media buyers, where they work every day, in the most entertaining way you could imagine.