Shining a light on menopause, one brilliant idea at a time.

Menopause is a highly stigmatized topic because it is not discussed openly and definitely not early enough. This is a natural biological process, experienced by half of the population, that is shrouded in fear and misunderstanding, and something needs to change.

Everyone should know about menopause, and we mean everyone. For our third D&AD New Blood Awards, we tasked this year’s class of emerging creative talent to bring menopause out of the shadows and reposition it as something that can affect anyone of any age. We have been fortunate to partner with some incredible brands on our two previous briefs (McKinsey Design in 2019 and Teen Vogue in 2020), and this time around was no exception. We teamed up with Refinery29, one of the world’s most innovative and respected media brands, to help formulate the brief and spread the word.

Meet the winners!

The Let’s Talk Menopause brief was downloaded 6,917 times across 104 countries, and D&AD received a total of 240 entries from around the world. Here are the 15 incredible submissions that were awarded Pencils at this year’s New Blood Awards Ceremony.

Yellow Pencils

• Let’s Talk about Eggs (UK: Fiona Fraser)
• Raise Your Fan (Spain: Belén Ulargui Escalona and Aitana Vallejo)
• The Pleasure Prescription (UK: Georgina Moore-Martin)

Graphite Pencils

• #BringBackSamantha (Brazil: Joanna Monteiro, Deborah Ferreira, and Maria Madalena Goncalves)
• Hot & Unbothered (UK: Leila George and Obinna Udekwereze)
• Mainstream Menopause (Denmark: Emilie Haugelund)
• Menopause Journeys (UK: India Penny and Tad Buxton)
• The Lost Pages of Harrison’s (Spain: Leandro de Torres, Sergio Sánchez Macías, and Jara Dichas)

Wood Pencils

• Give Menopause a Voice (Netherlands: Tailo Neri, Malin Jansson, and Valentina Badri)
• Happy Meno-Day! (Netherlands: Erwan Elmayan, Cajetan Srebot, Mirela Spasova, Twan Wiertz, and Justine Senee)
• Make Room for Menopause (UK: Luna Khan)
• O-VARIES (Australia: Jesse Divola, Julia Favaloro, Anna Forsyth)
• The Afterflow (Australia: Zeke Cuthbert-Masia, Hannah Lowndes, Sophie Luka, Christopher Lowndes, and Arthit Samingkaew)
• The Menopause Canvas (Spain: Andrea Proenza, Lua Delgado López, and Carol Benito)
• The Raw Truth (UK: Megan Lent and Téa Hewitt)

You can watch all of these incredible submission videos in the playlist below.

The White Pencil

At D&AD, White Pencils are reserved only for projects that have the potential to do good through the power of creativity. It is one of the highest accolades a New Blood submission can receive, and this year we are thrilled to say that one of the teams from Let’s Talk Menopause has won a coveted White Pencil. 

The incredible team being honored with a White Pencil is Happy Meno-Day! for their idea to turn menopause into a celebration rather than something to be dreaded. According to this Netherlands-based team:

“By bringing positivity, we deconstruct people’s beliefs, educate relatives and allow menopausal women of all ages to finally feel comfortable with this transition. Because the best way to end a taboo is to celebrate it.”

Give Happy Meno-Day! a watch, but be warned, the catchy tune they wrote for this celebration is quite the earworm.

This year’s New Blood class blew us away, and we hope the entries will inspire you to be more open about menopause.