Design Leaderboards
A' Design Award and Competition, publishes, manages and annually updates the Design Leaderboards, a unique platform that promotes and highlights recent award-winners and their good designs, this is different from our lifetime achievement based rating systems for design and also different from our lifetime achievement meritocratic ranking systems for design. Design Leaderboards, while is also meritocratic, gives more weights on recent award victories when ranking the designers. A' Design Awards actively promotes the Design Leaderboards to attract media, editors, journalists, buyers, companies and people to discover, feature and appreciate original design and leading designers from across the globe. When and if you win the A' Design Awards, you will be published and promoted in Design Leaderboards, obtain infographics for your success together with certificates to immortalize your victory. To learn more and discover, visit the designleaderboards.com and explore award-winning designers, design agencies and enterprises worldwide, by country basis or by category basis. Discover the best designers from a country this year, best designers in a category this year, and the overall best designers in the world today, as selected by the A' Design Awards.

Contemporary Design Rankings
Design Leaderboards ranking mechanism is affected by an exponential function of time, as well as exponential growth of award scores; Platinum award-winning status provides 36 points, Gold award-winning status 25 points, Silver award-winning status provides 16 points, Bronze award-winning status provides 9 points and Iron award-winning status provides 4 points. Runner-ups are unlisted. These base scores are then multiplied by a formula that gives more importance to recent success. Scores of the current year are multiplied by 100×, and scores of last year are multiplied by 81×, and scores of the three years ago are multiplied by 64×, followed by 49×, 36×, 25×, 16×, 9×, 4× and 1× as the years pass. For example; a platinum award this year would contribute 3600 points towards ranking (36 × 100), while a platinum design award last year would contribute 2916 points (36 × 81), and a platinum awards 10 years ago would contribute 36points (36 × 1). The graph below shows the time-based multiplier for L-Score calculation.

What is the difference of Design Leaderboards and other ranking and rating systems for design?
Design Leaderboards is significantly different from existing popular ranking and rating systems used in design field, the Design Leaderboards ranks and rates the designers on their most recent success, instead of lifetime achievements or impressions. Design Leaderboard rankings and ratings are calculated by giving a heavier weight on meritocratic achievements in the recent years, while giving less weight on meritocratic achievements in past years; the ratings mechanism gives more importance to recent success and less emphasis on past success to provide you with a list of current leaders of the design world, helping you find recently successful designers. Design Leaderboards helps journalists, media companies, large enterprises, and design-oriented businesses discover, feature, connect and hire trendsetting creators, rising designers, star architects and upcoming talents, that are recently on the rise. While other popular ranking and rating systems for design such as World Design Rankings, Designer Rankings, Design Classifications and World Design Ratings are prestigious and relevant for the lifetime achievements, and Popular Designers Index, a reference for marketability of the designers, the Design Leaderboards is pertinent whenever you are looking to learn who among the designers, architects, creatives and design agencies are at the top, right now, at this moment. This distinction allows press members who use Design Leaderboards to find and feature up-and-coming creatives with the freshest takes on design. Design Leaderboards help companies and enterprises find and work with latest most successful design, the design kings of today. Design Legends is all about who is the best of best in design, right now.

How does Design Leaderboards deviate further from other design ranking and rating systems?
All other ranking and rating systems have niche focuses. World Design Rankings is a ranking of countries and ranking of designers within countries, it answers the question; Which countries are best in design, and which designers are best in a country? Design Classifications is a ranking of different design, art, architecture and creativity fields and ranks designers within these fields, it answers the question; Which design categories are more competitive and which designers are best in which type of design? Designer Rankings ranks the designers on their lifetime achievements, and answers the question; Who are the designers with most lifetime achievements. World Design Ratings is a rating system, which assigns life-time honorary titles for designers based on their repeat achievements, and answers the question; Which designers have consistently delivered good design? Popular Designers Index is a ranking of award-winning designers based on their popularity, and answers the question; Which designers are most searched for, whose designs are most viewed by the public. Design Award Winner’s List provides you with a list of award-winning designers from the current year, and answers the question who are the most recent winners of the A’ Design Awards. Best Designers platform is a sub-set of R+ Designer Rankings, displaying designers who have uploaded a profile picture only, and helps you visually discover top ranking designers worldwide. Design Leaderboards are different; first of all it focuses on the time as the main rating and ranking element, and as such answers the question; Who are the best designers of today, based on their most recent design award achievements, and second of all, it is highly inclusive for countries and design fields; so you could discover best and most recently successful designers in a given country, best and most recently successful designers in a given design category and of course best and most recently successful designers overall, with a heavy emphasis on recency.

Design Legends Provide Equality and Equity by a Meritocratic Framework.
A' Design Awards manages a multitude of design rankings and design ratings systems, most of our ranking and rating systems focuses on lifetime achievements, and our primary purpose with these ratings and rankings is to show our respects by honoring the award-winning designers by promoting their achievements and contributing positively to their reputation; we have created and designed these systems as they provide value to award-winners, who are able to showcase themselves among the best of the best designers worldwide, however because our other ranking and rating systems are mostly for lifetime meritocratic achievements, this created a barrier for entry for newcomers to showcase their work and be proud of their success; we understand that it is hard to compete with multiple award-winning legacy winners; designers, design agencies and enterprises who join year after year with their original work, and as such we created the Design Leaderboards system as a reward for new participants; the Design Leaderboards system provides equality and equity for good designs for new comers meanwhile maintaining a meritocratic framework and provide a temporary boosting to their ranking for promoting their name and their latest works; the Design Leaderboards provide designers with more exposure, positive reputation, more outreach, additional visibility and help award-winners actively promote their name and brand to design oriented audiences by means of personalized infographics and marketing materials as well as simply by having their names listed.

Design Leaderboards also provide further valuable information such as if the ranked entity is a design agency, a design-oriented enterprise, a design professional or a young designer, the number of awards the designer has won in different awards categories, and the total number of impressions the designer has received as of the moment the rankings were updated, as well as quantity and quality of awards won, and the years the awards were won. Visit Design Leaderboards now to discover most recent design leaderboards ranking and ratings.

What are Ranking Tiers, Ranks, and Ranking Levels
Design Leaderboards have Tiers, Levels and Rankings, with all three being different concepts within the scope of the leaderboard system. Tiers are the global mathematical sets, these are large clusters of entrants, big groups, within which you are ranked. Ranking is your order within a given Tier. Level is a shorthand for your order within the Tier. Design Leaderboards feature a series of ranking symbols and marks to identify ranking within different Tiers and Levels.

There are 8 Main Tiers. These are Global Rankings (6★), Category Rankings (5★), Yearly Rankings (4★), Group Rankings (5★), Metal Rankings (2★ to 6★), In-Group Category Rankings (4★), In-Group Yearly Rankings (3★), In-Group Metal Rankings (1★ to 5★). Metal and In-Group Metal Rankings have 5 more tiers each for Platinum, Gold, Silver, Bronze and Iron. Likewise, Category Rankings will have subsets for each category, yearly rankings will have subsets for each year, and group rankings will have subsets for each type of entrants. The greater the number of entities represented within a tier, the more important and relevant that tier is.

Global Rankings, which is the most inclusive, largest set of entities, is therefore the most important tier; this tier covers all categories, all groups and all years. Category Rankings as well as Group Rankings are the second important ranking tier, with equal importance. Yearly ranking is the third important ranking tier, followed by In-Year ranking within Groups, followed by Metal Rankings and at the base of all tiers is the In-Group Metal Rankings. In general the bigger the group in which you are ranked, the more important that tier is, however the exception to this rule is the Platinum (6★), Gold (5★) and Silver (4★) metal ranking tiers, since the reason these tiers have lower number of entities is because it is harder to achieve higher award status, as such the group size is irrelevant for the metal rankings, and indeed getting listed high at Platinum or Gold Tiers is considered highly prestigious.

Within a given Tier, all eligible entrants are ranked and assigned a rank but only up to 10.000 are publicly listed. Within any Tier, there are seven (7) levels of achievement. The highest level of achievement within a Tier is Level 7, that is when you are the undisputed champion, first place. The second highest level of achievement within a Tier is Level 6, when you are in top 10. Level 5 is for entities in top 100, Level 34 is for entities in Top 1000 and Level 3 is for entities in top 5000, and Level 2 is for entities in top 10.000 and if you are unable to get listed for top 10.000 you are considered Level 1.

When you wish to understand the importance of your achievement, if you wish to assign a numeric score to it, you would multiply the Star Rating within your Tier with the Level of Achievement. Thus 6 × 7 = 42 is the highest importance rating for a given ranking such as in case for Global Ranking Champion for All Years, All Categories, All Entities, All Award-Levels or Platinum Rankings Champion for All Years, All Categories, All Entities which both provide a maximum of 42 Importance Rating for the Rank. The importance of your ranking and rating is noted in the Design Leaderboard certificates issued to participants. These certificates are issued free of charge once a year and feature different marks and symbols to represent their success. In general, the symbols become more intricate and feature more saturated colors whenever the ranking is more important or higher. Ranking symbol is also affected by the level of achievement within a tier; below you will see a list of Tiers, their importance, as well as ranks and levels within the tiers.

GLOBAL RANKINGS 6★ TIER
LEVEL 7	LEVEL 6	LEVEL 5	LEVEL 4	LEVEL 3	LEVEL 2	LEVEL 1
ℝ - RANK NUMBER 1	ℝ - RANK in TOP 10	ℝ - RANK in TOP 100	ℝ - RANK in TOP 1.000	ℝ - RANK in TOP 5K	ℝ - RANK in TOP 10K	ℝ - RANK 10.000 +
IMPORTANCE 42	IMPORTANCE 36	IMPORTANCE 30	IMPORTANCE 24	IMPORTANCE 18	IMPORTANCE 12	IMPORTANCE 6

 

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CATEGORY RANKINGS 5★ TIER
LEVEL 7	LEVEL 6	LEVEL 5	LEVEL 4	LEVEL 3	LEVEL 2	LEVEL 1
ℝ - RANK NUMBER 1	ℝ - RANK in TOP 10	ℝ - RANK in TOP 100	ℝ - RANK in TOP 1.000	ℝ - RANK in TOP 5K	ℝ - RANK in TOP 10K	ℝ - RANK 10.000 +
IMPORTANCE 35	IMPORTANCE 30	IMPORTANCE 25	IMPORTANCE 20	IMPORTANCE 15	IMPORTANCE 10	IMPORTANCE 5

 

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YEARLY RANKINGS 4★ TIER
LEVEL 7	LEVEL 6	LEVEL 5	LEVEL 4	LEVEL 3	LEVEL 2	LEVEL 1
ℝ - RANK NUMBER 1	ℝ - RANK in TOP 10	ℝ - RANK in TOP 100	ℝ - RANK in TOP 1.000	ℝ - RANK in TOP 5K	ℝ - RANK in TOP 10K	ℝ - RANK 10.000 +
IMPORTANCE 28	IMPORTANCE 24	IMPORTANCE 20	IMPORTANCE 16	IMPORTANCE 12	IMPORTANCE 8	IMPORTANCE 4

 

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METAL RANKINGS PLATINUM 6★ TIER - GOLD 5★ TIER - SILVER 4★ TIER - BRONZE 3★ TIER - IRON 2★ TIER
LEVEL 7	LEVEL 6	LEVEL 5	LEVEL 4	LEVEL 3	LEVEL 2	LEVEL 1
ℝ - RANK NUMBER 1	ℝ - RANK in TOP 10	ℝ - RANK in TOP 100	ℝ - RANK in TOP 1.000	ℝ - RANK in TOP 5K	ℝ - RANK in TOP 10K	ℝ - RANK 10.000 +
IMPORTANCE 42 - 14	IMPORTANCE 36 - 12	IMPORTANCE 30 - 12	IMPORTANCE 24 - 8	IMPORTANCE 18 - 6	IMPORTANCE 12 - 4	IMPORTANCE 6 - 2

 

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IN-GROUP RANKINGS 5★ TIER
LEVEL 7	LEVEL 6	LEVEL 5	LEVEL 4	LEVEL 3	LEVEL 2	LEVEL 1
ℝ - RANK NUMBER 1	ℝ - RANK in TOP 10	ℝ - RANK in TOP 100	ℝ - RANK in TOP 1.000	ℝ - RANK in TOP 5K	ℝ - RANK in TOP 10K	ℝ - RANK 10.000 +
IMPORTANCE 35	IMPORTANCE 30	IMPORTANCE 25	IMPORTANCE 20	IMPORTANCE 15	IMPORTANCE 10	IMPORTANCE 5

 

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IN-GROUP CATEGORY RANKINGS 4★ TIER
LEVEL 7	LEVEL 6	LEVEL 5	LEVEL 4	LEVEL 3	LEVEL 2	LEVEL 1
ℝ - RANK NUMBER 1	ℝ - RANK in TOP 10	ℝ - RANK in TOP 100	ℝ - RANK in TOP 1.000	ℝ - RANK in TOP 5K	ℝ - RANK in TOP 10K	ℝ - RANK 10.000 +
IMPORTANCE 28	IMPORTANCE 24	IMPORTANCE 20	IMPORTANCE 16	IMPORTANCE 12	IMPORTANCE 8	IMPORTANCE 4

 

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IN-GROUP YEARLY RANKINGS 3★ TIER
LEVEL 7	LEVEL 6	LEVEL 5	LEVEL 4	LEVEL 3	LEVEL 2	LEVEL 1
ℝ - RANK NUMBER 1	ℝ - RANK in TOP 10	ℝ - RANK in TOP 100	ℝ - RANK in TOP 1.000	ℝ - RANK in TOP 5K	ℝ - RANK in TOP 10K	ℝ - RANK 10.000 +
IMPORTANCE 21	IMPORTANCE 18	IMPORTANCE 15	IMPORTANCE 12	IMPORTANCE 9	IMPORTANCE 6	IMPORTANCE 3

 

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IN-GROUP METAL RANKINGS PLATINUM 5★ TIER - GOLD 4★ TIER - SILVER 3★ TIER - BRONZE 2★ TIER - IRON 1★ TIER
LEVEL 7	LEVEL 6	LEVEL 5	LEVEL 4	LEVEL 3	LEVEL 2	LEVEL 1
ℝ - RANK NUMBER 1	ℝ - RANK in TOP 10	ℝ - RANK in TOP 100	ℝ - RANK in TOP 1.000	ℝ - RANK in TOP 5K	ℝ - RANK in TOP 10K	ℝ - RANK 10.000 +
IMPORTANCE 35 - 7	IMPORTANCE 30 - 6	IMPORTANCE 25 - 5	IMPORTANCE 20 - 4	IMPORTANCE 15 - 3	IMPORTANCE 10 - 2	IMPORTANCE 5 - 1

When comparing achievements within the Design Leaderboards, you would want to consider the calculated Importance Scores above which we noted above for different Tiers; in general, the higher the Importance Score the more relevant and important that Tier, Rating and Level is. The Importance of the Tier and Level are noted in the Design Leaderboards Certificate. Participants can download their Design Leaderboards certificate from their control panels under Design Leaderboards functionality that is made available to logged-in award-winners.

Get Listed at Design Leaderboards
Getting Listed at Design Leaderboards is easy; winners of the A' Design Award and Competition are provided complimentary ranking and rating system inclusion. If you are a winner of the A' Design Award, you may visit Design Leaderboards section in your Control Panel to access infographics, rating symbols and certificate now.