A student entry titled Menstruation Project has taken both a Black Pencil and a White Pencil at the D&AD New Blood Awards, the design body's student-track competition. SHOOTonline carried the result.

The pairing is unusual. D&AD awards work along a tiered hierarchy: lower-tier Pencils acknowledge solid craft, mid-tier Pencils mark work the jury considers exceptional, and the Black Pencil sits at the apex, awarded rarely for work that resets the standard for a category. The White Pencil occupies the rung directly below the Black and recognizes entries the jury views as advancing the discipline. Winning both at the same ceremony places one project across two top tiers at once.

How rare is a dual Black and White Pencil in New Blood?

• Black Pencil: highest tier in the D&AD ranking system.
• White Pencil: the rung directly below it.
• D&AD New Blood: the design body's separate student competition, judged against the same pencil hierarchy as the professional awards.
• Joint verdict: the same effect requires the jury to see merit on more than one axis.

The Menstruation Project takes its name from its subject matter, addressing menstruation through a creative brief in a category the jury appears to have treated as boundary-pushing. The entry stands alone in the SHOOTonline write-up; the creators, college affiliation, and brief reference do not appear in that report.

What does the dual win change in the race?

• New Blood Pencils feed directly into agency recruitment.
• D&AD publishes the Annual, a printed catalogue of the year's strongest work that recruiters scan during hiring cycles.
• Future New Blood juries will likely treat the Menstruation Project as the reference point when assessing student work on taboo or under-represented subjects.
• The entry moves from shortlist contender to category benchmark within the student field for the cycle.

What does each Pencil tier reward?

The D&AD jury scores against defined criteria: creative idea, execution, and brief relevance. A Black Pencil requires the jury to agree the work redefines what the category can be. A White Pencil signals the jury sees the entry as advancing the discipline without reaching the top tier. Both awards for one project indicate the jury found decisive merit on more than one axis at the same sitting.

The D&AD Annual functions as the central reference document in the design and advertising industries, with entries selected by jury vote and republished in book form each year. Inclusion in the Annual marks the work as one the D&AD jury considers to have moved the discipline. New Blood entries gain the same inclusion rights as professional winners, which lifts a student brief into the same shelf space as paid work from established agencies.

Bottom line

The Menstruation Project enters the D&AD Annual as one of the few New Blood entries to take home two top-tier Pencils in the same cycle, and sets the reference standard for the next round of student juries.