Methodology

Primary Principles
A’ Design Award & Competition is one of the world’s first design award and competitions that has been actively and synthetically developed in order to create value for designers, artists, architects and companies who take part in the event.

A’ Design Award and Competition promises prestige, fame and recognition to the winners of the A’ Design Accolade and to achieve its goals engages in a variety of public relations, marketing, advertising, dissemination and promotion services for awarded works. The ultimate aim of A’ Design Award is to create a global appreciation and understanding of good design.

A' Design Award does not have financial incentives to award more winners, there is no price vs prize confusion; design recognition programs who charge tens of thousands of euros of Winner’s Fees have a financial incentive to select as many entities as possible as each selection brings a lot of money, and we do not do that. A’ Design Award winners are fair and square winners, who obtained their achievement purely with talent.

Entries to the competition are judged by blind peer-review process by a very large expert jury panel to ensure fair, merit based and apolitical voting. We do not understand how other awards fairly judge entries if they do not vote on them following anonymous judging process, where the jurors know whose entries being voted on. In A' Design Award, voting is anonymous, jurors vote not for your name but your design; this ensures a fair voting process where good designs truly pravails.

Prestige : Studies and surveys on the subject of “what makes a design award prestigious”, results in a common answer; if a design competition is judged fairly, if an award is independent, and if the accolades are famous, then receiving the design award trophy is considered prestigious.

Therefore, a good design award shall be fair, and to ensure that the competition is fair, financial independence is of importance together with award jury and methodology. 

A’ Design Award and Competition does not permit its’ sponsors to take part in the competition, furthermore the accolades does not receive any funding from government in form of subsidies; A’ Design Award is financially self-sufficient and self-sustaining and is financed by the participants through the nomination fees.

Respect : A’ Design Award & Competition, is very meritocratic. You may be surprised to know that there are many design recognition programs that charge contractually obliged winner fees from their laureates; when you are selected for these other design recognition programs, you have to pay; such programs have financial incentives to announce as many selected entries as they could. Different from such design recognition programs, A’ Design Award does not have contractually obliged winner fees, and thus A’ Design Award does not have such financial incentives to award as many entries as they could, this is yet another reason why A’ Design Award is highly prestigious and respected within the design world, because A’ Design Award winners are truly winners.There are "no further fees": A’ Design Award laureates and winners are not under contractual obligations to pay further fees to obtain the A’ Design Prize and/or to make use of their award-winning status. Every year, A’ Design Award foregoes up to tens of millions of euro’s of potential extra profits that would otherwise be taken from designers by having a “no further fees policy” that respects and supports designers.

A’ Design Award features a grand jury panel composed of academics, press members, fellow designers and industry experts from worldwide who have mastered their own design disciplines and who have all agreed to follow the A’ Design Award & Competitions’ Jury Code of Conduct. The Award Jury is renewed with new names each year to add fresh perspectives and to ensure that conflict of interest does not arise.

More importantly, A’ Design Award and Competition features a design award methodology, which has been developed (and continuously under development) after analysis of over thousands of design awards and competitions. For example, unlike other design awards or competitions, for the first time, “Preliminary Scores” and feedbacks are provided to help designers or companies who are considering to take part in the competition, free of charge.

The A’ Design Award & Competitions’ judging process takes several weeks since each and every entry is carefully considered. But more importantly, before entries are allowed to the competition, their presentations are checked dozens of times, and the jury casts their vote in an independent manner without having the chance to influence each other.

Fame and Recognition : A’ Design Award and Competition understands the need of participants to reach design oriented audiences of press and buyers, and for this single purpose significant portion of the A’ Design Award & Competitions’ budget is devoted to advertising and promoting award winners, through PR Campaigns, press releases, logo licensing, and sponsored articles, editorial placements and media pitching.

Value : A’ Design Award winners are provided Prestige, Fame and Recognition, but also the award winners’ package which includes the award trophy, the printed yearbook, the exhibition service, and many more others also including the translation of award winning works to multiple languages to reach global design media and journalists.

We invite all prospective, past and future participants to discover the A' Design Award Methodogy, each link is clickable and you can learn more:

Voting System
What is the voting / scoring weights for individual categories. How do we score the designs?

Evaluation Criteria
How the designs are evaluated; some of our insights about how we pick the best design.

Presentation Bias Reduction
How do we remove or reduce the "Positive Presentation Bias"? Learn about the tools and systems incorporated.

Scoring Interface
How does the jury members score individual designs, the interface for voting.

Competition Brief
Learn about the A' Design Award & Competitions' creative brief.

Standard Score
How do we standardise the scores, how do we normalize votes by different jury members?

Jury Selection
How do we pick the jury members for the competitions? Who is eligable for becoming a jury member?

Jury List
The list of jury members, their titles and affiliations are listed in this page.

Voting Fraud Prevention
Learn methods, strategies and processes used by the A' Design Awards to fight voting fraud.

Announcing Results
How do we announce the results? When do we announce the results? Where do we announce the results?

Award Levels
What are the different levels of success in the A' Design Awards and Competitions, how are they chosen?

Effects on Design Rankings
Learn how winning the A' Design Award & Competition effects "Designer Rankings" and "World Design Rankings"

Score Sheet
Learn more about the score sheet that is given to all participants, see an example score sheet.

Preliminary Checking
What is a preliminary checking, how is it performed, what are the possible results and states?

Professional Preliminary Judging and Evaluation
What is a preliminary evaluation, how is it performed, what are the possible results, insights and states?

Pre-Selection Committee
Learn about the role and functions of the A' Design Award & Competitions' Pre-Selection Committee.

Submission Optimization
What is submission optimization and analysis? Improve the presentation quality of your submission.

Deadline Extension
Learn about potential deadline expensions or postponing of the date of entries to the awards.

Last and Omega Entry
Learn about the Last and Omega Entry periods available after the deadline extension.

Competition Timeline
What is the general detailed time line of the A' Design Award & Competition?

Publishing and Privacy Settings
What are the possible privacy and publishing settings for nominated designs?

Advisory Panel
Learn about the role and functions of the A' Design Award & Competitions' Advisory Board.

Judging and Dissemination Settings
What are the possible options for public announcement, judging date and dissemeniation for nominated entries?

Call for Jury Members
A' Design Award is actively seeking jury members for academic, professional, enterprise and focus-group panels.

Design Award Jury Agreement
A' Design Award & Competition requires jury members to ethically and fairly judge entries.

Transparency Policy
Learn about any potential issues that you would consider to be important for disclosure.

Policy on Further Fees
Please read more about what we think about the "Further Fee or Winners' Fee" issues.

Risks of Joining Design Contests
Learn about any potential risks that you are subject to when taking part in design contests.

Ongoing Research
Learn more about open research topics and questions on evaluation of entries and competitions.

Award & Logo Usage Guidelines
Learn how to use the A' Design Award Logo and how to announce the award status.

Hints & Tips
Here are a few hints and tips to help you succeed at A' Design Awards.

Eligibility
Learn more about the design award eligibility conditions and its exception.

Theory
Learn more about design competitions, what are they, history, organizational requirements etc.

Model Release Agreement
This is a simple model release agreement provided by A' Design Award without any warranties.

Dispute Resolution
Learn more about dispute resolution, how to report a design, a situation or make a claim against a design entry.

Copyright Infringement
Learn more about what to do when someone uses your award winning design without permission.

Shipment Policy
Learn more about our shipment policy, terms and the shipment claim possibilities.

Profile Score
Learn more about profile scoring and ranking mechanism.

Badge System
Learn more about our badge system and see a list of all badges that could be earned.

Bug Bounty Program
Learn more about our bug bounty program and security policy.

Account Types
Learn more about account types designed for different design award participant profiles.

Entry Types
Learn more about different entry nomination types that could be used when joining the A' Design Awards.

Universal Design Principle
Learn why A' Design Award and Competition is one of the World's most international design accolades.

Politeness Policy
Learn about our values when communicating with participants or each other.

Audience Engagement Policy
Learn about our values when communicating and engaging with audience requests and issues.

Advancement Policy
Learn about our values and goals for advancing the A' Design Awards.

Media Relations Policy
Learn about our press efforts, media databases and communication channels for A' Design Awards.

Public Relations Policy
Learn about how we approach to public relations and publicity at A' Design Awards.

Second-Chance Policy
Learn about how we approach to issues regarding Preliminary Score inconsistencies at A' Design Awards.

Gifts Policy
Ensuring that the awards' meritocratic nature remains unblemished, we do not accept gifts or favors.

Ombudsman
Get in touch with the A' Design Award ombudsman to have your concerns investigated.

Leadership Principles
What are the properties we seek in our leaders and our staff?

Designful Company Designation
Learn about the Designful Company Designation initiative and its role for good design.

Networking Effects
Learn Why A' Design Award has a wide range of categories, importance of concepts and exploration.

Intellectual Property Guidelines
Learn A' Design Award's intellectual property rights and guideline suggestions for participants.

License and Declaration Process
Learn how we maintain a high level of integrity, fairness and meritocracy with License and Declaration process.

Juror's Declaration and Judging Ethics
Learn more on A' Design Award's jury declaration and judging ethics.