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Case Study

D&AD – Festival Portal Development

D&AD is a non-profit advertising and design association established in 1962 by a group of designers and art directors, including David Bailey and Terence Donovan. D&AD exists today to stimulate, enable and award creative excellence in design and advertising with membership representing creative communities worldwide.

 

The D&AD Professional Awards are recognised globally as the ultimate creative accolade, entered and attended by the best from around the world.

Content Management Lead Management WordPress Development
A vibrant installation featuring large, colorful playing cards and a prominent banner that reads "PLAY YOUR CARDS RIGHT" at a festival venue, surrounded by an industrial-style setting.

Introduction

Professional Awards Festival Content Portal

D&AD needed a content portal to make high-value Professional Awards Festival content readily available while gaining insights about their global creative community.

 

Filter built a WordPress platform with social authentication and comprehensive content organisation, delivering within a tight one-month timeline.

 

The result is a successful portal that became integral to D&AD strategy, supporting multiple award programs and deepening member engagement beyond the original festival scope.

Relationship Length

Project delivered in 2020

Focus

Driving deeper engagement through high-value content and member insights

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Problem Problem

  • Valuable event content lacked accessibility
  • Needed audience insight and better content delivery
  • One-month deadline with a strict design brief

Solution Solution

  • Built WordPress platform with WooMemberships and Beaver Builder
  • Added social login and Single Sign-On
  • Structured content with clear tagging and categorisation

Result Result

  • Delivered on time, on budget, and brief
  • Portal extended to boost ongoing member engagement
  • Now key to New Blood and Impact Awards strategy

A laptop screen displays the D&AD President's Award webpage, showcasing industry honorees and their contributions to creativity and design. The layout features an overview and links to notable winners.

The Challenge

The Award and Festival cycle generates high-value content with real relevance to design and advertising communities, but D&AD wanted to make this content readily available while using it to gain further understanding of who was following the event.

The project faced significant challenges with less than a month to complete the work and a tight design brief, requiring a platform that could integrate naturally with D&AD existing digital estate while delivering comprehensive content management capabilities.

Our Approach

The team at Filter built the platform on WordPress, utilising mature and feature-rich community plugins such as WooMemberships, Beaver Builder and FlowFlow, plus Filter’s own themes and plugins.

We developed a clear content structure with tagging and categorisation to make content easy to find and encourage engagement with related content.

Multiple authentication methods were implemented including social login via Facebook, Twitter and Google, plus Single Sign On integration with D&AD membership authentication service for seamless access.

A laptop displaying the D&AD Awards Winners 2025 page, featuring colorful awards on a black background, emphasizing creativity and design excellence. The layout includes categories and a call-to-action for exploring the winning entries.
A laptop and smartphone display the D&AD Rankings 2025 website, showcasing various creative projects and award categories. The interface features colorful designs and clear navigation options for users to explore the rankings.

Results

The project was delivered on time, on budget and on brief despite the tight timeline challenges. Due to the project’s success, the decision was made to retain the content portal post-festival as a way of maintaining and deepening engagement with the organisation’s membership and wider following.

The portal provided valuable insights through web analytics and demographic information from social profiles, helping D&AD better understand their professional communities. The content portal became integral to D&AD strategy, supporting the New Blood Awards and new D&AD Impact Awards.

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Why This Story Matters

This project demonstrates how strategic content platforms can transform event-based organisations into year-round engagement hubs while providing valuable audience insights. For D&AD, that meant a portal that extended beyond a single festival to become integral to their ongoing strategy across multiple award programs.

If your organisation generates high-value event content that could drive deeper engagement, or needs a new platform that provides member insights while maintaining accessibility, we can help.

Three mobile screens displaying the DMAD Awards 2025 website. The first screen features "new blood awards" text, the second presents an overview of the awards, and the third highlights the DMAD Impact award with a lush green background.

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