AUT & Headway's 'Diary of a Head Injury' makes TBI visible

AUT Traumatic Brain Injury Network and Headway – The Brain Injury Association wanted to reach people who find it hard to admit the effects of a brain injury — an injury that is invisible to everyone else. In New Zealand more than 35,000 people a year experience a TBI, and about half go on to long-lasting symptoms.

Make an invisible injury visible: animate Worthington's personal diary of life after a head injury so others recognise their own experience and ask for help.

Nick Worthington, a veteran New Zealand creative who had lived through his own brain injury, wrote the script from his experience. Director Jonny Kofoed and the animation team at Assembly turned it into a mixed-media short — animation, miniature work, original music and dense sound design — released as 'Diary of a Head Injury' (DOAHI) around Brain Awareness Month for the two charities.

DOAHI won a D&AD 2025 Yellow Pencil for Animation/Mixed Media plus a Wood Pencil for Casting: Voice — New Zealand's only Yellow Pencil at that ceremony — and was featured by motion-design publisher Stash. Its intended result was behavioural: give an audience reluctant to admit the effects of concussion a real story that encourages reaching out for help.

AUT Traumatic Brain Injury Network and Headway – The Brain Injury Association wanted to reach people who find it hard to admit the difficulties a brain injury brings — an injury that is often invisible to everyone else. In New Zealand more than 35,000 people a year experience a traumatic brain injury, and about half of them go on to debilitating, long-lasting symptoms.

Nick Worthington, a veteran New Zealand creative who had lived through his own brain injury, wrote the film from his experience. Director Jonny Kofoed and the animation team at Assembly turned that diary into 'Diary of a Head Injury' (DOAHI), a mixed-media short blending animation, miniature work, original music and detailed sound design to put viewers inside the confusion and heartbreak of recovery.

The film was released around Brain Awareness Month as a conversation-starter for the two charities. In May 2025 it won the D&AD Yellow Pencil for Animation/Mixed Media — New Zealand's only Yellow Pencil that year — plus a Wood Pencil for Casting: Voice, and was featured by Stash. For the charities the measure was different: by sharing a real journey, DOAHI encouraged others to reach out for help and begin their own recovery.

The idea inverted awareness campaigns: instead of experts explaining brain injury, the person who lived it narrates his own diary.

Mixed-media animation gave an invisible, internal condition a visible form that audiences could feel.

Releasing through two real support organisations gave the film a functional job — prompting people to reach out — not just views.

Judges rewarded the craft-plus-testimony combination: New Zealand's only D&AD 2025 Yellow Pencil plus a Wood Pencil for voice casting.

When a condition is invisible, testimony from someone who lived it plus obsessive craft is the strategy: DOAHI made a private diary into a public invitation to seek help.

After the D&AD win the film kept working as the flagship awareness piece for AUT's TBI Network and Headway, which use it to prompt people affected by brain injury to reach out; Assembly later added a Purple Pin at New Zealand's Best Design Awards and a Webby win for short-form documentary to its record.