The annual D&AD Awards have finally announced their winners and we are proud to say that our Malaysian advertising students have bagged one of their prestigious awards. Each year, the Design and Art Direction Awards gather the world’s best creative work from across the commercial design, advertising and craft disciplines to be judged by a cohort of nearly 400 of the world’s leading creative minds. The Awards recognise work that has made a moving impact and will inspire seasoned talent as well as the next generation.
This year, the Advertising & Graphic Design students from The One Academy Penang won a Wood Pencil Award. Entering the New Blood category as a team project for the Google and HMCT brief, students Kelly Ooi, Shashweeney Devi, Ong Ji Wei and Goh Yong Sin took home a Wood Pencil for their outstanding and impactful project, “Oversight”. This award represents the best of the year in advertising, design, craft, culture and impact.
“We were absolutely floored. It was an immense rush of joy and disbelief while trying to wrap our minds around the fact that our work was acknowledged and deemed exceptional by industry professionals. Getting shortlisted in the D&AD New Blood Awards seemed like a dream that we didn’t even dare to imagine,” said Kelly Ooi.
As part of the brief, the students had to utilise typography and words to create awareness on a human rights issue of their choosing. The “Oversight” project was based on fighting for the rights of people with disabilities. They believed that there was a great deal of social movements in recent years fighting for human rights. However, these students wanted to focus on a category that is rather overlooked and forgotten – people with disabilities. It was brought to their attention through research and by just observing the public places in their own country, how hard it is for the disabled to be independent and move around freely without having to ask for assistance.
While working on this project, the students’ biggest challenge was coming up with an entire campaign surrounding a sensitive issue without making it seem offensive or belittling. They wanted to put the spotlight on creating an inclusive society and prove that inaccessibility can be solved when given the attention.
The part of the project that drove it through the finish line was when they created posters that will be installed at places pointing out the flaws of public structures that cause inaccessibility. This provokes people to take-action and make donations. Once the donation is made, the posters were replaced by cool multifunctional posters that serve as tools of accessibility. Instead of a boring stagnant poster ad across the street, these students went the extra mile in not only raising awareness but actually making a difference.
The execution, thought and creative process was never-ending. The team explained that they had to scratch several ideas and designs before getting it right. “With the guidance of our lecturers, we’ve learnt to always think out of the box, have courage to try something that hasn’t been attempted by anyone else, the significance of having faith and believing in your own ideas, and knowing when to kill a fruitless idea. Having excellent software proficiency is also a vital key in having the ability to create the visuals exactly as we envisioned it to be”. The perseverance of these students did not go to waste as they were awarded such high recognition out of thousands of entries from all around the world.
When asked if they had any advice for aspiring creative students, all four agreed with the saying, “You’ll never know if you never try”. They believe the biggest reward you can ever receive in any field can only be achieved if you keep trying. It does not matter how far fetched or crazy your end goal or dreams are, it is all about persistence and finding a million ways to achieve it.
The impactful project “Oversight” won The One Academy Penang students a Wood Pencil Award in the D&AD Awards 2022.
The One Academy is committed to providing the best art education programmes and continues to nurture its students passionately through its “Masters Train Masters” coaching philosophy, which has been practised for over 30 years, by providing diploma and degree courses in Advertising & Graphic Design, Digital Animation, Digital Media Design, Film Visual Effects, Interior Architecture & Design, Illustration, Fine Arts, Paris Fashion Design & Pattern Making, Computer Science, Game Design and Computer Science in Real-Time Interactive Simulation. For more information on The One Academy, visitwww.toa.edu.my or call +603-7875 5510 or e-mail your enquiries to [email protected].
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