MDS students score three D&AD New Blood Portfolio Picks and two D&AD Wood Pencils

The D&AD New Blood Awards, which was held in London last week, delivered lots of good news for Media Design School’s creative advertising programme.

Anja Pienaar and David Gillard-Allen were awarded a D&AD Wood Pencil for ‘Take a Bloody Break’ idea for Heinz with another Wood Pencil awarded to Kevin Ng and art director Gurnoor Bedi for ‘Live.Rinse.Repeat.’ (with invaluable input at the idea stage from art director Jack Beacroft and at the execution stage from art director Letitia McKenzie).

Says Kate Humphries, programme leader at MDS: “From over 900 entries, 50 industry-leading judges last week also selected D&AD’s Top Portfolio Picks, three of which came from MDS. So standing ovations from all at MDS for Robert Laking and Herman Ulberg for their portfolio; as well as Bella Griffiths for her portfolio pick (which was picked in the advertising & photography category) and congratulations again to Anja Pienaar and David Gillard-Allen for their portfolio pick.

“We’re also super proud that David and Anja’s Pencil win and Portfolio Pick, has resulted in them being selected as the Best of the Best, one of only 15 teams worldwide being flown out to Singapore next week, where for two weeks they will take part in the creative assault boot camp that is The New Blood Academy.

Hosted by D&AD and WPP (with all flights and accommodation paid for) the academy uses a network of contacts, collaborators, and mentors to put teams through immersive training that will push them to their creative limits through a non-stop programme of talks, workshops, briefs, hacks, and live challenges that is designed to help the  New Blood teams meet the evolving zeitgeist of the industry.

“Grateful thanks for all the helpful feedback within MDS on the ideas from Andy Blood, David Bell, and Jordan Browne. Raucous cheers also for all the industry people for their invaluable feedback and guidance on the pencil winners and the portfolios including Wihan Meerholz (DDB);  James Tarik Frank and Alex Collares (Ogilvy Sydney); Sarsha Drakefield and Lizzie Baird (DDB); David Shirley and Tom Johnson (Special). And a couple of really big shout-outs also to Brett Colliver and Mike Felix (Dentsu) for their ongoing nurturing of Take a Bloody Break and Matt Williams and Freddie Coltart for their ongoing feedback on Herman & Robert’s portfolio.”