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Winner of D&AD New Blood Awards with NETFLIX Nights – BA Graphic Design Communication graduate Tara McDonald

Three large posters with the word NETFLIX and images of actors underneath are on a poster wall in Pimlico tube station. Underneath each word ‘NETFLIX’ the first poster has ‘NOCHES’, the second ‘NIGHT’ and the third ‘NUITS’. At the bottom of the posters the text ‘Join our international community for weekly premieres every Friday’ is written.
  • Written byGeorgina Lampen
  • Published date 22 August 2022
Three large posters with the word NETFLIX and images of actors underneath are on a poster wall in Pimlico tube station. Underneath each word ‘NETFLIX’ the first poster has ‘NOCHES’, the second ‘NIGHT’ and the third ‘NUITS’. At the bottom of the posters the text ‘Join our international community for weekly premieres every Friday’ is written.
Tara McDonald, NETFLIX Nights by Tara McDonald BA Graphic Design Communication 2022
BA (Hons) Graphic Design Communication

Each year students from BA Graphic Design Communication at Chelsea College of Arts respond to real life design briefs from D&AD, an organisation that celebrates and nurtures outstanding work in the design and advertising industry with its creative awards.

The D&AD New Blood Awards is one of the largest competitions for emerging creatives to exercise and showcase their talents on briefs set in partnership with some of the world’s leading brands including Audible, BBC, Google and Netflix.

Designed to help emerging creatives prepare for the world of work with real-world brief experience, the D&AD New Blood Awards aims to help bridge the skills gap between what education teaches and what industry requires.

Selected as one of the winners under the Wood Pencil category, we spoke to Tara McDonald who responded to the NETFLIX Brief and submitted her project entitled NETFLIX Nights.

Five digitally designed small fattish pencils pointing upwards. They each have a distinct colour; black, yellow, white, grey and light brown. They all have the D&AD local on the top of the pencil.
D&AD, D&AD Pencils 
BA (Hons) Graphic Design Communication, Chelsea College of Arts, UAL

Congratulations Tara! How did it feel to be one of the selected winners of the D&AD New Blood Awards?

I was just extremely shocked, as I really did not expect to win anything at all. I was awarded a wood pencil –  I was over the moon to be given any New Blood Award regardless of the colour pencil!

A portrait photograph. A headshot of Tally with long brown hair and sunglasses on her head, behind her is Jack wearing a white t-shirt and smiling, behind Jack is Tara with brown hair tied back, she is holding a thumbs up in front of her face and smiling wearing a white t-shirt.
Tara McDonald, Tara McDonald with BA Graphic Design Communication students Tally Francis and Jack Price also winners of the Wood Pencil category 2022.
BA (Hons) Graphic Design Communication, Chelsea College of Arts, UAL

Tell us about the NETFLIX Brief?

The Netflix Brief was to develop a campaign that encourages more UK audiences aged 18-34 to explore, watch and talk about non-English language films and series on Netflix.

One of the aspects of foreign films that instantly stood out to me were the cultures and traditions behind different nationalities. The unique ways of doing things in certain cultures are as significant as speaking different languages, and should be talked about by the Netflix communities. The other main consideration for me was Netflix’s lack of connectivity between users on the platform compared to competitor platforms, an example being the ability of users to chat in real time while watching livestream videos on YouTube.

A digital mock-up of Tara’s NETFLIX Nights, two paragraphs of text are at the top of the page with the subheadings ‘The Problem’ and ‘Insights’. There is an image of a woman within a phone screen, a chat is overlaying her with emoji’s of hearts and love faces. On the left there is a bar chat labelled ‘Barriers’ and ‘Incentives’.
Tara McDonald, NETFLIX Nights by Tara McDonald BA Graphic Design Communication 2022
BA (Hons) Graphic Design Communication, Chelsea College of Arts, UAL

How did you respond to the brief?

My answer to these issues was Netflix Nights – weekly international film premieres, shown live every Friday on Netflix. By watching together, online viewers could be offered an opportunity to be a part of a new global community on the Netflix platform. Users could also react to the film content by leaving notes on the subtitles and deepen their understanding by talking to other viewers via live chat. The idea was that by starting conversations around authentic cultures within international film, stereotypes could be replaced with truer representations.

A digital mock-up of Tara’s NETFLIX Nights. A TV screen with a black background has the words ‘NETFLIX’ in red and ‘NIGHTS’ in white. ‘NETFLIX’ is written in different languages is streaming through entire image.
NETFLIX Nights by Tara McDonald BA Graphic Design Communication 2022
BA (Hons) Graphic Design Communication, Chelsea College of Arts, UAL | Photograph: Tara McDonald

Although I worked alone on this brief, getting feedback from my tutors and the other groups was key. At one stage I was struggling to find a strong identity for the weekly premieres, but being honest with the group and them suggesting some great visual concepts, such as the rotating ‘Hello’ in different languages when setting up an iPhone, led me to the final name of Netflix Nights.

A digital mock-up of Tara’s NETFLIX Nights. At the top a subheading says ‘The Solution’ and there is a large paragraph of small text that follows. A black background is positioned below with a live chat box on the right and a text bubble on the left that says ‘Aleksy Nowak: This is a Polish phrase that means you don’t have a very good taste in music. It could also be used for someone with a terrible singing voice.’ Underneath the text bubble in large text it says ‘Did an elephant stomp on your ear?’
Tara McDonald, NETFLIX Nights by Tara McDonald BA Graphic Design Communication 2022
BA (Hons) Graphic Design Communication, Chelsea College of Arts, UAL
A digital mock-up of Tara’s NETFLIX Nights. At the top, two subheadings which say ‘A new landing page’ and ‘Live chat function’ are each followed by a large paragraph of text. Underneath an image of a line of people are lined up and wearing green jackets, the man at the front of the link, looks over his shoulder to the man behind. Overlayed is the text which says, ‘Squid Game Live in 2 days, 21 mins’ There is another image with a man in flat cap, wearing a large gold chain around his neck and a body warmer. There is a large chat function running down the side of the image.
Tara McDonald, NETFLIX Nights by Tara McDonald BA Graphic Design Communication 2022
BA (Hons) Graphic Design Communication, Chelsea College of Arts, UAL

As we only had around 5 weeks to turn around the whole project, it was fast paced and required improvisation at times.  At one point it was getting late and I needed to quickly create a giant pencil mock-up to illustrate my billboard idea, so I grabbed a tube of paper and the only other student left in college from my course, Jack Price, for an impromptu photoshoot at the graffiti wall. It was a bit makeshift, but it worked!

Two images side by side. The image to right has a person in a black coat, jeans and trainers holding a giant pencil above their head and pretending to write on a graffiti wall in front of them. The same image of the person has then been overlayed onto the image on the left, whereby the person is now standing in a tube station and writing on a NETFLIX poster.
Tara McDonald, Big pencil mock-up for NETFLIX Nights by Tara McDonald BA Graphic Design Communication 2022
BA (Hons) Graphic Design Communication, Chelsea College of Arts, UAL

How did you find the overall experience?

Working on a more commercial facing brief in an area I am less familiar with was refreshing, and a good experience for working in the industry after leaving Chelsea, but it also taught me a wider lesson. Never count yourself out; just try things, enter things and do things because there’s almost always more to gain than to lose. You never know what opportunities might come of something.

An Image of a person with a black coat on, jeans and trainers is holding a giant pencil above their head and writing on a poster positioned on the wall in an underground station. Signs for the Piccadilly Line and Victoria Line can be seen in the background.
Tara McDonald, Big pencil mock- up for NETFLIX Nights by Tara McDonald BA Graphic Design Communication 2022
BA (Hons) Graphic Design Communication, Chelsea College of Arts, UAL

Now you have graduated, what is next for you?

I would love to combine my passion for fitness with design by working creatively with companies in the health and fitness space.

  • Congratulations to all winners from BA Graphic Design Communication who were selected as part of D&AD New Blood Awards 2022. View more winning submissions

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