The exception is the Make Your Mark category, which is open to any creative under 26 and challenged entrants to come up with innovative ways to promote themselves.

Winners here were Joy Ayles (above) from the University of Salford, who set up a site offering herself as an online-based intern to agencies, and Kyle Jacobson and Chad Goddard (below l-r), who sent 50 individually engraved pencils to TBWA in a box marked Constructive Procrastination.

Kyle Jacobson and Chad Goddard

The 29 Yellow Pencil winners included three students from Sweden's Beckmans School of Design – Elin Mejergren, Josefin Janson, and Nicole Kärnell – in the graphic design category, who created a series of print supplement accompanying talks by designers including Anthony Burrill and Stefan Sagmeister at The Typographic Circle. The brief was set by Pentagram.

Elin Mejergren

Josefin Janson

Nicole Kärnell

The illustration brief was to create a cover for film magazine Little White Lies, and two students picked up awards here: Francesca Hotchin and Rupert Smissen.

Francesca Hotchin

Rupert Smisson

Five Pencils were given in the Digital Design category to Justin Lim, Kenneth Au-Yeung, Sarah Fung, Stanley Lai and Yu-Chuan (Felix) Lai of Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, where Microsoft asked entrants to create a multi-screen experience.

Other categories with Pencil winners included Advertising, Photography and Moving Image. There were no winners in Typography.