I am founder and chair of judges for the Brand Impact Awards, a well-respected annual awards scheme that celebrates the world’s best branding.
View the 2025 winners on Creative Bloq
The awards are judged according to market sector, which gives bold, innovative work in traditionally conservative sectors the chance to shine.
I launched the BIAs in 2014 following a major repositioning of the Computer Arts brand, and over the next decade I helped grow the event into an unmissable fixture in the design industry calendar.
In 2024, in partnership with Taxi Studio, we gave the scheme a major brand overhaul – introducing an iconic new trophy format: the BIA Mallet.
The new identity emphasises the impact of the winning work, making the ‘I’ in ‘BIA’ the star by echoing the side profile of the Mallet. I worked with the BIA team to craft impactful campaign language to tie these elements together, while mindful of not labouring the point with relentless hammer puns.
Certain words – such as ‘striking’ and ‘impression’ – carry subtle double meanings in body copy, while homepage crossheads can enjoy more creative license: potential entrants are invited to ‘Hammer it home’ and ‘Hit us up’ for more information, while big winners from the past decade are celebrated as having ‘Smashed it’.
A cross-section of global design talent
The BIAs’ rich heritage of past winners spans boutique studios such as Johnson Banks, NB Studio and Studio Sutherl&, right up to large networked agencies such as Design Bridge & Partners, Turner Duckworth, R/GA, and Wolff Olins.
“Had a delightful day judging the Brand Impact Awards. Nick is a charming, smart guy with a huge knowledge and respect of the industry. He loves what he does and sees. The debates were serious and good fun in equal measure.”
Greg Quinton – chief creative officer, Design Bridge & Partners
I have assembled and chaired the judging panel every year, and for the first six years co-chaired the panel with Lynda Relph-Knight (2014), Mark Bonner (2015), Bruce Duckworth (2016), Jim Sutherland (2017), Simon Elliott (2018) and Chris Moody (2019).
Mid-pandemic, judging in 2020 took place remotely. Over the course of a week, I chaired a total of eight video debates – over 20 hours of insightful discussion in total. I built on this approach for 2021, chairing over 30 hours of debate with a diverse global panel that spanned San Francisco to Sydney, taking in New York, London, Paris and Cape Town.
“Nick has given our industry so much positive support and creative leadership over the years.”
Simon Dixon – co-founder, DixonBaxi
To mark 10 years of the BIAs in 2023, I assembled our biggest-ever panel, packed with world-class expertise from the agencies and clients behind Best of Show-winning projects over the past decade, a constellation of previous Gold and Silver winners, plus other hand-picked global branding specialists.
To evolve the judging process further, every judge had three weeks to review and rate the entries independently – and then small specialist panels came together to debate the final results. This ensured that every entry received the scrutiny it deserved, and judges could form informed opinions before discussing with their peers.
Nick Carson 