The archive · Content & Film · Marketing decision · 2024–2025
A$AP Rocky's 'Tailor Swif' video wins D&AD 2025's Music Video Black Pencil
A meme-paced, surreal music video built for scrolling feeds takes D&AD's rarest prize — judged on art direction, VFX and cinematography.
A$AP Rocky
What it had to solve
A$AP Rocky released the single 'Tailor Swif' in August 2024 and needed a video that would stop thumbs in a feed where conventional clips get scrolled past; directors Vania Heymann and Gal Muggia were asked to make a short that felt native to internet culture.
How it works
In August 2024, A$AP Rocky released the single 'Tailor Swif' with a music video directed by Vania Heymann and Gal Muggia and produced by Iconoclast. The challenge was to make a clip that could survive a fast-scrolling feed: instead of a conventional narrative, the directors built a film that behaves like internet culture itself.
Shot in Kyiv, the three-minute video fuses surreal imagery with urban culture — meme-inspired scenes, heavy art direction, practical effects and VFX, and fashion-forward styling — designed to challenge the traditional music-video aesthetic. D&AD's own archive describes it as 'avant-garde and meme-inspired scenes designed to challenge traditional music video aesthetics and engage a digitally savvy audience.'
The craft carried it. At the 2025 D&AD Awards, 'Tailor Swif' won the Black Pencil in Music Videos — the rare top prize given to only three projects across the entire show that year. The D&AD president highlighted its 'incredible art direction, visual effects, and cinematography,' calling it proof that the human hand still shapes the best creative work.
Why it lands
- It matched the format to the audience: the video was built like a meme feed, with each surreal scene able to stand alone as a clip.
- Craft, not story, won the prize — the art direction, VFX and cinematography were strong enough to take the category's only Black Pencil.
- It treated internet culture as a creative language rather than an afterthought, using memes and cultural references as the material of the film.
- It raised the bar for artist content: a mainstream release pursued festival-grade craft, proving music videos can be judged as design and film.
What it did
Won the D&AD 2025 Black Pencil in Music Videos — one of only three Black Pencils awarded that year — with the D&AD president citing its 'incredible art direction, visual effects, and cinematography' and its 'irreverent world filled with symbolism and cultural references.'
What you can take
When audiences scroll fast, build the video as a series of rewatchable moments rather than one story — every scene should earn a screenshot or a repost on its own.
Since then
The video went on to anchor the album's visual identity and took the D&AD 2025 Black Pencil in Music Videos, one of only three Black Pencils that year; D&AD's president singled it out as evidence that obsessive craft remains alive in commercial creativity.
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