Design and Art Direction (D&AD) New Blood: spec briefs to sink my teeth into (blog)

In mid-2023, I started thinking about diversifying from solely content writing. I like doing longform pieces, but often they are designed to be scan-read, as they're purpose-built and SEO-driven. This has made me look into more creative endeavours, where perhaps my words could carry more impact on a larger scale. But what about my portfolio as it stands? Enter: spec work. Here, I have also detailed the concepting process I undertook.

The D&AD New Blood competition is an award for students, graduates and aspiring creatives in the advertising and design industry.

The Duolingo brief

Many suffer from Mathematical anxiety, the fear that you have forgotten how to do the basics. Is there a way we can help get people more comfortable with learning Mathematics?

Create a response that draws in new audiences to download and stay motivated with Duolingo Maths.

The process

I followed Dan Nelken's advice to fill 'buckets' - these buckets could feature facts, benefits, attributes, insights and truths related to whatever it is you're selling.

Then I filled these buckets (at least 20) with at least 5 related truths and ideas. So, essentially, the benefits of the buckets. These are what will help me to craft headlines from. With 20 buckets x 5 related ideas in each, I should be able to come up with at least 100 headlines...

E.g.

The pink indicates it's a bucket, the stars are the ideas filling the bucket. I immediately knew I wanted to avoid the first bucket and hone in on the emotional dimension of learning, rather than the physical.

The results

And if Duo is judging, it's because Duo wishes they had fingers...

Without a design aide, I’m just sharing a list of possible headlines I would pitch for this idea, along with my imagined visuals

Final note:

• Cooking and painting are just two forms this can take - gardening, cocktail-making, origami or fitness activities are all other routes to fun with Maths, and fun with Maths alone. The users should say, "Hey, maybe I was always fine at Maths. I just needed to practice in more solitary surroundings to build my confidence."
  

• This is a first step before encouraging users to play the game daily. Nobody, of course, has time to cook with an app daily, or to paint daily, or to make origami daily. However, the goal of these activities was to take out the long-conditioned "sting" of Maths, and breed new associations and new confidence.