Student wins a Creative Conscience Award

The Creative Conscience Awards push curiosity and encourage innovators  to create the change they want to see in the world. The awards recognise students and graduates from around the globe for their positive social impact designs

BA (Hons) Advertising and Brand Design graduate Lidia Santos has won the Creative Conscience award in the Conscious Consumption category with her piece titled ‘Through the Clutter’. Her video explores the idea of plain packaging taking over our supermarket shelves and creating a monotone version of life as we know it. The concept was born following the hysteria supermarkets saw during the Covid-19 pandemic which triggered a number of shoppers to take part in panic buying essential items. You can view the 'Through the clutter' video here. 

Founded in 2012, Creative Conscience is a charitable, global movement that looks to improve the communities we live and work in. Made up of industry professionals, social entrepreneurs, educators, students and graduates, Creative Conscience celebrates the next generation of out of the box thinkers who use their talents to campaign for a healthier and more sustainable world. Students and graduates that enter the awards can choose to create their own brief or work to an already established brief provided by the charity. In the awards, Creative Conscience are on the hunt for socially viable, human centred design pieces or tools that are able to inspire people to make a positive impact.

Speaking of her win, Lidia says “I’m thrilled to say that I’ve won the Creative Conscience award in the category of Conscious Consumption.” By exploring consumer consumption, Lidia hopes to shine a light on what could happen to creatives if we were faced with another panic buying episode. “Through the Clutter is a piece of design-fiction that holds up a mirror against the creative community and questions our role in a consumerism-led culture.” Her tongue-in-cheek approach to the project replicates a government announcement where they impose a universal packaging system on all products. “It reimagines a world where designers have to comply with rules issued by the Government of England” Lidia says. This is followed by a mock creative brief which shows that designers would have no freedom as creatives and would instead have to adhere to an obscene amount of limitations which would ultimately lead the design industry down a path of non-existence.

Creative Conscience receive an incredibly high standard of entries from around the world each year so it is an amazing achievement for Lidia to have won a Conscious Consumption award with her outstanding video.