Four Black Pencils in 2026: two for Coinbase's Your Way Out, one for The Ordinary's Periodic Fable and one for AXA's Three Words. Uncommon is Agency of the Year.
D&AD has awarded four Black Pencils for 2026, and two of them went to the same film. Coinbase’s Your Way Out, made by the independent agency Isle of Any, took Black Pencils for visual effects and for production design at the ceremony in London on Wednesday night. The Ordinary’s The Periodic Fable, by Uncommon Creative Studio, won one for art direction, and AXA’s Three Words, by Publicis Conseil in Paris, won one for impact.
Coinbase, Your Way Out (Isle of Any), two Black Pencils. The film ran during this year’s Academy Awards and is set inside what looks like a life simulation game, where the characters are not in control of their own lives until one of them steps out. It looks rendered, but it was made with traditional film craft, which is why the jury rewarded the craft categories. It had already won the Film Craft Grand Prix at Cannes Lions in June.
The Ordinary, The Periodic Fable (Uncommon Creative Studio), one Black Pencil. The skincare brand replaced the elements of the periodic table with 49 skincare marketing buzzwords, the kind of claims it has always argued against, and ran it across posters, social and a surreal classroom film directed by Olivia De Camps. It also won the Health and Wellness Grand Prix at Cannes this summer.
AXA, Three Words (Publicis Conseil), one Black Pencil. The insurer added three words, “and domestic violence”, to its home insurance contracts in France, so the emergency rehousing a policy already offered after a fire or flood also covers someone escaping an abusive home. The clause went into all 2.5 million AXA home contracts, and it is not an advert at all, which is the point. It won the Titanium Grand Prix at Cannes last year, the Creative Effectiveness Grand Prix this year, and one of only two White Pencils when the Yellow Pencils were announced in May, as Adweek reported.
Uncommon Creative Studio London was named Advertising Agency of the Year, Isle of Any Independent Agency of the Year and Ogilvy Agency Network of the Year. Apple was Brand of the Year and Unilever Client of the Year. The Dutch book designer Irma Boom received the President’s Award. This year’s scheme drew entries from 89 countries, a record, and gave out 52 Yellow Pencils in May.
The Black Pencil is meant to be rare, and four in a year is a typical number. What stands out is the spread. One winner is pure film craft, one is a brand arguing with its own category, and one changed an insurance contract. That is roughly the argument the whole industry is having about what creativity is for, settled by a jury in three different ways at once.
For UK readers it is also Uncommon’s year. The London shop behind this week’s Beats film with Kendall Jenner takes Agency of the Year on the back of work that sells skincare by telling people most beauty claims are nonsense. And the Yellow Pencil list included HeimatTBWA’s earlier Hornbach work, from the same team that has just built a film camera out of DIY parts. For the ads that have won the most over the years, see our ranking of the best advertising campaigns.
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