D&AD’s Black Pencil. Not easy to get one. But here’s a teaser for a forthcoming behind the scenes film which will apparently shed light on what happens in the judging room…

Design and Art Direction (D&AD) is a British educational charity which exists to promote excellence in design and advertising. The annual D&AD Awards are highly respected, and regarded as a major event in the world of design and advertising. Two main kinds of awards are given out, a Yellow Pencil (formerly known as a silver award) and a Black Pencil (formerly known as a gold award), in various categories ranging from environmental design to billboard adverts and animation shorts. The Black Pencil is particularly coveted as they are given for ‘outstanding’ work and usually only one or two are given out each year.

Produced for D&AD by Ridley Scott Associates and directed by Trevor Melvin, the film will reveal the discussion processes, the arguments, the yays and nays (and by the looks of this the swears), which go into deciding the design and advertising work that will scoop D&AD’s top prize.

The judging process in no doubt is an element of the awards ceremony that is routinely conducted behind closed doors.

Whether any of the remarks featured in the above clip will actually be attributed to particular pieces of work remains to be seen.

Tom Kelly-Lord