D&AD has announced the winners of its highest honour, the Black Pencil, with just four projects receiving the award this year.
Two of them went to Isle of Any for Your Way Out, its campaign for Coinbase. The film was designed to resemble a video game, but much of what appears on screen was achieved through live-action production, costume and choreography rather than digital simulation. That combination of concept and craft earned Black Pencils in both Visual Effects and Production Design.
Uncommon Creative Studio also took home a Black Pencil for The Periodic Fable, created for skincare brand The Ordinary. The campaign challenged the scientific language and complexity often used in beauty marketing, winning in the Art Direction category.
The fourth Black Pencil went to Publicis Conseil for AXA’s Three Words, awarded for Impact. The project centered on a change to the insurer’s home policies, which added the words “and domestic violence” to recognize abuse as a covered risk. The change allows victims and their children to access emergency relocation and support through their insurance.
Beyond the Black Pencil winners, the ceremony also recognized some of the industry’s biggest names and companies. Graphic designer Irma Boom received the President’s Award from outgoing D&AD President Lisa Smith, while Apple was named both Brand of the Year and Brand-Side Agency of the Year. Unilever received Client of the Year.
Uncommon Creative Studio London was named Advertising Agency of the Year, while Isle of Any took Independent Agency of the Year. Dentsu Inc was awarded Design Agency of the Year, and SMLXL and Mallandrich shared the Small Independent Design Agency of the Year title. Ogilvy was named Agency Network of the Year.
For Uncommon, the recognition came as the studio approaches its ninth anniversary. Co-founder Nils Leonard described the Black Pencil as the hardest award in the industry to win and one of the defining objects in a creative career.
That scarcity is what gives the Black Pencil its weight. D&AD’s Yellow Pencil remains one of the industry’s most respected awards, but the Black Pencil sits above it, reserved for only a handful of projects each year.
The 2026 winners are notably different in form, from a meticulously crafted commercial to a beauty campaign built around demystifying language and an insurance initiative tied to real policy change. What connects them is the sense that execution alone is not enough.
At D&AD’s highest level, the work still has to do something difficult: make the idea itself feel impossible to ignore.
