D&AD Pencils Awarded to Two Brandcenter Teams
Two Brandcenter student teams from the Class of 2021 were named winners in the D&AD 2021 New Blood Awards, a program open to advertising, design, digital and marketing students, recent graduates, and young creatives worldwide. The Brandcenter teams responded to separate briefs for two different clients: the BBC and Spotify. The BBC brief asked students to “Help people discover everything the BBC has to offer.” The Spotify brief asked students to “Get listeners to soundtrack and share their life through Spotify.”
The Brandcenter’s BBC team, which consisted of Chris Cole (AD, 2021), David Ligon (AD, 2021), and Emily Riggan (XD, 2021), developed the BBCu+ app. The app addresses concerns about the “digital bubble” so many people live in today thanks to algorithms. It helps break the bubble by merching all BBC content, meeting the user where they are and helping them tailor the content they see on any device. BBCu+ was awarded a graphite pencil.
The Brandcenter’s Spotify team, made up of Madeline Guzzo (AD, 2021), Kate Power (CW, 2021), Amanda Thao (XD, 2021), and Sheila Villalobos (ST, 2021), created Spotify Snippets: a feed of audio stories that empowers users to discover new audio content. Music recommendations will take the form of stories on the Snippets feed, posted by friends or artists. Spotify Snippets was awarded a wood pencil.
“Spotify Snippets was one of our very last projects we all finished at Brandcenter, in Berwyn's class,” says Kate Power (CW, 2021). “Life was moving so quickly during this time between graduation and job searching and then all starting jobs. When we got the email about Snippets winning a pencil, I think it made us all take a pause to reflect on all of the work we did at Brandcenter, the surreal accomplishment of everything, not even just this project. Winning an award was just the icing on top of a really good cake that baked for sixty weeks."
Congratulations to our Brandcenter award winners!