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Two in APAC selected as Young Guns 21 winners
Mumbai: The One Club for Creativity announced a pair of talented creatives in Japan and Singapore are among the diverse group of 29 individuals and teams in eight countries selected as winners in the prestigious Young Guns 21 competition, celebrating creative professionals around the world age 30 or younger.
The two winners from APAC are Zin Nagao, a designer based in Fukuoka, and Darius Ou Dahao, a graphic designer at Studio Darius Ou in Singapore.
Young Guns is the industry’s only global, cross-disciplinary, portfolio-based awards competition that identifies and celebrates today’s vanguard of young creatives. The complete list of YG21 winners can be viewed here:
This year’s entries were judged by a diverse jury of 100 top creatives from 47 countries, many of whom are past YG winners. Bios and work from each.
The complete list of Young Guns 21 finalists can be viewed here: Young Guns 21 Finalists
This year’s winners will be celebrated at a special ceremony and party hosted by famed designer, author, educator, and “Design Matters” podcaster Debbie Millman on 15 November 2023 at Sony Hall in New York.
At the event, The One Club will also announce the Young Guns 21 Creative Choice Award winner, as voted by the global creative community. Anyone can explore the work of this year’s winners and vote on which one they believe stands above all others. Voting is open now through 10 November 2023, 11:59 pm PT.
Levine/Leavitt Artist In Residence Award
For the 10th consecutive year, international artists management agency and Young Guns sponsor Levine/Leavitt will also bestow one talented YG21 winner with the Artist In Residence Award.
The honor is presented annually to a newly crowned Young Gun whose body of work truly stands out, as judged by an advisory board of industry professionals across a range of disciplines. The winner receives a full year of professional development, guidance and mentorship from Levine/Leavitt to help advance their career.
All Young Guns winners receive a unique version of the iconic Young Guns Cube, designed exclusively for this year’s incoming class, and have their permanent profile page added to the Young Guns website. Winners also get a complimentary one-year One Club for Creativity membership, permanent membership in the Young Guns network, and a chance to be featured in Young Guns events.
Program branding and design of the YG Cube award itself is reimagined each year by a past Young Gun winner. This year’s YG21 branding was created by Zuzanna Rogatty (YG18), senior designer at COLLINS New York.
The One Club for Creativity – home of The One Show, ADC Annual Awards, Art Directors Club of Europe (ADCE), ONE Asia Awards, Type Directors Club and competition, TDC Ascenders, Young Guns, Young Ones Student Awards, Next Creative Leaders, ONE Screen Short Film Festival, and more – is the world’s foremost non-profit organization whose mission is to support and celebrate the global creative community. Revenue generated from entries to its global awards shows goes back into the industry to fund programming under the organization’s four pillars: education, inclusion & diversity, gender equality, and creative development.
NATIONAL: Amazon Ads has laid out a sharply tech-led vision for the advertising industry in 2026, arguing that artificial intelligence, streaming TV and creator partnerships will combine to turn brand building into a more precise, performance-driven business.
At the heart of the shift, the company says, is the fusion of AI with Amazon’s vast trove of shopping, browsing and streaming signals, allowing advertisers to move beyond blunt reach metrics to campaigns designed around real customer behaviour.
“The future of advertising is not about reaching more people, but the right people with messages that resonate,” said Amazon Ads India head and vice president Girish Prabhu. “By combining AI with deep customer insights, we help brands move from broadcasting campaigns to having meaningful conversations wherever audiences spend their time.”
One of the biggest changes, according to Amazon Ads, will be the collapse of the wall between media planning and creative development. Retail media, powered by first-party data, is increasingly shaping everything from brand discovery to final purchase, pushing marketers to design campaigns around audience insight rather than internal instinct.
AI is also moving from a support tool to a creative engine. Agentic AI, which automates and accelerates production, is expected to make high-quality creative accessible even to small businesses, compressing weeks of work into hours and giving challengers the ability to compete with larger brands on speed and scale.
Behind the scenes, AI-driven analytics will take on a bigger role in campaign optimisation, identifying patterns, spotting opportunities and recommending actions that would previously have required teams of analysts.
Streaming TV is another big battleground. With India’s video streaming audience now above 600 million and connected TV users at 129.2 million in 2025, advertisers are set to treat streaming not just as a branding channel but as a performance engine, measured increasingly by sales, sign-ups and bookings rather than just reach.
Finally, Amazon Ads sees creators and contextual advertising reshaping how brands tell stories. Creators will act less like influencers and more like long-term partners, while scene-aware ads on streaming platforms will allow brands to insert hyper-relevant offers into the flow of what viewers are watching.
Taken together, Amazon Ads argues, these shifts mark a move towards advertising that is both more human and more measurable, where AI handles the complexity, and creativity does the persuading.
