Oscar season: Looking back at D&AD Award-winning work made by Academy Award winners

Is it notoriously hard to win? The pinnacle for many creatives? The award that can launch a career? We could continue drawing comparisons between the Oscars and D&AD Awards, and many of the industry’s leading creatives have been nominated for or won both a golden statue and a Pencil. To celebrate the Oscars taking place this week, we’re looking back at standout work made by D&AD Award–winning creatives who have also been recognised by the Academy. Here are some of our favourites below:

Michel Gondry

Best known for winning the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which he co-wrote with novelist Charlie Kaufman, French director Michel Gondry’s career – like that of many feature-film directors – began with music videos. D&AD has awarded a lot of Gondry’s early work, including the Black Pencil-winning Star Guitar for The Chemical Brothers, Graphite Pencil-winning Fell In Love With A Girl for The White Stripes, and Wood Pencil-winning Isobel for Björk.

Jonathan Glazer

Before British filmmaker Jonathan Glazer made war drama The Zone of Interest (2023), for which he was nominated for two Oscars (Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay) and won one (Best International Feature Film representing the UK), he directed Surfer, a Black Pencil-winning film for Diageo’s Guinness.

Daisy Jacobs

British animation director Daisy Jacobs made waves with her stop-motion graduation film, The Bigger Picture – which got her the attention of both the Academy and D&AD.

Alejandro González Iñárritu

Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárritu is a four time Academy Award winner, with back-to-back Best Director wins for Birdman (2015) and The Revenant (2016). He’s also won several D&AD Yellow Pencils for Write the Future, a film launched via Nike Football’s Facebook page, which made Nike the most shared brand online in 2010.

Sir Alan Parker

Sir Alan Parker’s story is a fairytale you don’t hear often anymore – a post-room office boy in an ad agency who spent his time off dreaming of writing adverts and eventually became a D&AD President, a D&AD Trustee, and a six-time Oscar winner. Parker won arguably the most prestigious of all D&AD accolades – a D&AD President’s Award – awarded each year by D&AD’s President to someone who has made an exceptional contribution to the industry. He earned the award for his copywriting at Collett Dickenson Pearce before leaving advertising to become a big-time movie director.

Kharmel Cochrane

In honour of the Oscars adding their first new category in over a decade – Casting – a special mention has to go to casting director Kharmel Cochrane. Beloved and very respected in the industry, Cochrane has judged the Casting category at D&AD Awards several times, and has worked on Oscar winning films like Saltburn (2023), as well as D&AD-Award winning projects including Channel 4 Idents, in which 17 independent creatives, artists and filmmakers came together to create the emotionally colourful tapestry of 25 looping scenes depicting life in modern Britain and Super Human - Paralympics, Channel 4’s campaign film portrayed the ruthless, grinding standards to which Paralympians hold themselves.

D&AD Awards is now open for entries. Enter here and make history.