There’s an award show everywhere you look and each one has mile-long lists of entries and winners. It can be overwhelming to absorb all that information, so our hard-working team scoured the Internet and sat through long-winded award ceremonies to identify truly outstanding entries – both Indian and International. Sit back, get out the popcorn and enjoy!
Design
Carbon Tile by Carbon Craft
D&AD Future Impact Winner 2020
Carbon Craft Design is a Mumbai-based design and material innovation company that creates products by upcycling air pollution. In fact, Carbon tile is the first tile to be made with air pollutants. This range of decorative tiles is handcrafted and can be used for floors and furniture. The company claims that one Carbon tile is equivalent to cleaning 30,000 litres of air. The D&AD jury said “The repeatable and scalable nature of these tiles makes them an innovative commercial carbon offsetting solution” and we agree.
3D Printed Nasal Swabs by Carbon & Resolution Medical
Fast Company Innovation by Design (Health) 2020
Carbon, a 3D printing company and Resolution Medical designed, manufactured, and launched a new nasal swab for Covid 19 testing, that features a lattice tip. They could do this less than three weeks, using 3D-printing techniques and are now scaling up to produce up to a million swabs a week. Reports say that the polymer lattice tip has considerably improved patient comfort.
The Tampon Book by The Female Company
Multiple Awards
Tampons in Germany are classified as luxury goods and taxed at 11%. When a petition signed by 175,000 people calling on the Government to reduce the levy didn’t prompt a change in policy, Ann Sophie Claus, founder of online organic sanitary products shop, The Female Company decided to do something about it. The company created and published The Tampon Book, which cleverly hid fifteen tampons within its covers. The book contained stories about menstruation, from biblical times to the current era, accompanied by graphic illustrations. The book sold for the same price as fifteen tampons (Euro 3.11) but it was taxed at 7% – the legal tax rate for books.
Notpla Identity by Superunion
Dieline Editor’s Choice 2020
Developed by the Skipping Rocks Lab start-up, Notpla is revolutionary packaging material made from seaweed and plants. It biodegrades in four to six weeks, naturally. It can be used for anything – from ketchup to scotch and disappears naturally when you are finished. Superunion created a new identity for this transformative material that visually demonstrates the idea of ‘disappearing packaging.’
Simple by Obvious for Resolve to Save Lives
Fast Company 2020 Innovation by Design (Honorable Mention)
Simple is an open-source app that allows healthcare workers to manage patients with high blood pressure. Designed by Bengaluru-based strategic design studio, Obvious, for Resolve to Save Lives (RTSL), Simple has several lessons for anyone attempting a technology intervention with low-income users in constrained conditions.
We wrote a detailed case study on Simple here
Machine Learning
Teachable Machine by Google Creative Lab
Webby Award for Technical Achievement 2020
Teachable machine is a fast, easy way to create machine learning models for your sites, apps, and more – no expertise or coding required.Along with image data, Teachable Machine 2.0 now works with audio and body pose input. Users can upload their images, sounds or poses. With the click of a button, Teachable Machine will train a model based on the examples you have provided. You can play your model, tweak the examples and export it to websites and apps. You can try playing with Teachable Machine for yourself here.
Communication & Marketing
The Punishing Signal by FCB India for Mumbai Police
Kyoorius Black Elephant, D&AD Awards: Use of Press & Outdoor
Indian motorists love to honk, despite the ensuing noise pollution. When a signal changes, the honking rises, as though it will move the traffic along faster. FCB India worked with Mumbai Police on a solution with an unexpected dash of humour by turning traffic signals into ‘Punishing Signals’ that would reset to red, if the honking rose above 85dB. The film focused attention on the topic successfully and caused nation-wide chatter. We don’t know if it actually brought down the honking though!
Bot Dost for Amazon Prime by Kundhiya Design
ET Brand Equity Shark Award 2020 (Social Media / Digital), Webbies: Honoree (Social Media/ Bots)
Comicstaan is an Amazon Prime Video original series, a comedy hunt reality show judged by some of India’s biggest stand-up names. To create hype around the launch of their sophomore season, the show created APAC’s first multi-functional Facebook messenger bot. Unlike traditional bots that serve a customer service function, this one sought to entertain, and was built with Facebook Creative Studio. The bot would entertain users via Facebook messenger, sending them customised and cheeky memes and jokes.
Where The Heart Is by Madison Media for Asian Paints
ET Brand Equity Shark Awards 2020 (Branded Content, Silver)
Now in its third season, this show from Asian Paints takes viewers into celebrity homes. It gets a thumbs up from us because it is on-brand, well shot and never seems forced.
Animal on AdWeek 100: Fastest Growing Agencies
Animal, an independent creative agency, led by Kunel Gaur, is at No 15 in Adweek’s global list of fastest growing agencies. This distinction is awarded to those organisations that have achieved exceptional growth over the past three years.
