Be inspired. The 2025 Student Awards winners

The 2025 Student Awards Gallery is Live!

We’re celebrating the next generation of creative talent with 167 winning entries from students representing 56 schools across seven countries and four continents. This truly global competition showcases excellence in advertising, design, illustration, animation, motion graphics, and photography—all created by students currently enrolled in or recently graduated from creative arts programs.

Multiple 2025 Applied Arts Student Awards winners.

The Judging Process
The 2025 Student Awards jury, a panel of fifteen industry professionals, was invited to judge this year's entries using the same rigorous criteria as our professional competitions. Each judge scored their assigned entries independently and online—no discussion—giving each submission a single score (1–5) based on creative merit, technical excellence, and suitability for its intended use.

I was specifically looking for work that made me think: "I'd hire them" or "A student did this? No way!"

Ash Phillips, Co-Founder/Creative Director, Six Cinquième, Montreal, QC

"Smart integration of brand mark and campaign concept."
2025 Student Awards judge, Zia Somjee, CO-Founder/Design & Strategy, ZAK DESIGN STUDIO, Vancouver, BC

Taco Bell Silent Bell- Advertising Digital, Kendra Roberts, Chantal Gauthier and Zacharie Cloutier, Mohawk College, Hamilton, ON.

In today's world, we know that standing out from the rest is challenging, as Judge Melissa Thorne, Associate Creative Director, WJ Agency, Calgary, AB, notes, "The intensifying pressure to constantly produce and share that work is the biggest challenge facing the creative industry today."  And yet this year's Student Awards showed our judges that students are taking the bull by the horns and smashing it! Olivier Ventura, Senior Art Director, FCB, Montreal, QC, says, "I love seeing that tomorrow's talents don't follow the industry's protocols to the letter. The "WHAT IF" is taken seriously and often pushed surprisingly far. And in a way that's both bold and relevant."

"I like it—people will be looking at it."
2025 Student Awards juror Shaikh Ziyad, Arrivals+Departures, Halifax, NS

Kaleidoscope Theatre Festival, multiple category winner (MCW) Sara Vargas Nessi, George Brown College, Toronto, ON. Won in 4 categories: Design, Promotional Design, Entire Design and Entire Promotional Design.

See More in Print
Winners will also be featured in the Winter 2025 issue of Applied Arts magazine, alongside the Advertising Awards winners. Subscribe for as little as $4 CAD/month (billed annually) or pre-order a single copy. Available at select newsstands in December.

 A big shout-out goes to our award sponsors VISTEK; association partners CAPIC, Design Professionals of Canada (DesCan) and our print and paper partner Mi5 Print & Digital Communications for their support!

* Billed monthly. $40 annually in Canada. US is $60 USD or $100 for International addresses. A subscription includes 2 Awards-based Annuals, access to the Digital edition archive and the AA Extra monthly e-newsletter.