Marketing and Consultancy

Marketing and Consultancy
The A' Design Award's extensive suite of services, from marketing consultancy to mediation support, represents our visionary strategy rooted in long-term value creation. Far from being just a design award, A' Design Award positions itself as a holistic platform for empowering its laureates to maximize their success, both creatively and commercially.

A' Design Award & Competition provides marketing and consultancy services to winner designers through DesignMediators and DesignPRWire. First of all, all winners are granted consultancy services for making design contracts and agreements (please note that these are preliminary contracts and agreeements and we recommend you always consult a lawyer before finalizing your agreements and contacts), and DesignMediators also provide help if a mediation or settlement would be required. DesignPRWire on the other hand provides free consultancy for marketing the award winning designers. First of all, A' Design Award & Competition gets in touch with the leading publishers through DesignPRWire for editorial placement of winners. In this case, editors usually choose the best designs that fit their reader profiles. Secondly, DesignPRWire submits winners' works to design listings for further placement. Thirdly, DesignPRWire publishes a press release for the winners and provides a custom interview that is also shown on DesignInterviews. In addition several exhibitions are held, and a gala-night is organized in order to create further networking opportunities. Least but not last, Designers are provided a service called "Proof of Creation". Finally, we also provide a design fee calculator and design cost calculator to help you provide a better design quote for your design services.

By aligning marketing consultancy with the A' Design Awards, we wish to nurture design excellence, not only celebrate it; our marketing and consultancy initiatives makes the A' Design Award both aspirational and practical, attracting ambitious designers who seek not just recognition but a launchpad for success. The key uniqueness of our approach lies in transforming a typically one-time recognition event into an ongoing value-adding relationship that helps laureates capitalize on their achievement. Helping our laureates with marketing and consultcy is all about bridging the gap between creative excellence and market success, which is often a major challenge for not just design professionals but even for large brands. By creating a comprehensive suite of marketing services, the A' Design Award evolves into an incubator for sustained success, appealing not only to designers but also to sponsors, media outlets, and industry leaders. Our investment in promoting our laureates ensures that the A' Design Award becomes a lifelong asset.

Proof of Creation
Proof of Creation is a service provided to all A' Design Award participants. Firstly, it consists of a paper document that explains a particular design. The Proof of Creation contains information such as title, description and images of a design, and is duly signed by the designer and two witnesses. This signed document is later deposited at A' Design Award and Competition, and could be used to prove that you are the creator of a design since it serves as evidence that you created a design at a particular date. Legally speaking, it at least proves that you had the particular design at your disposal at a given date. Please note that "Proof of Creation" documents is not a Patent or Design registration certificate and does not grant any exclusive rights on your design. The Proof of Creation document is provided free of charge, and explained in detail at the designcreation.org

Design Mediators
A' Design Award and Competition uses Design Mediators to provide several services to winners. These services usually regards to the Consultancy for Agreements: Contacts, Intellectual Property Sales, Sales Terms and Conditions. Furthermore, designers are provided Mediation services if there would be any issues arising from such agreements. In this case DesignMediators acts as a neutral third party to assist communications and to find a mutual ground for a settlement. DesignMediators also provide template contracts to award winners; these contracts are especially relevant for new and upcoming designers who are selling or leasing their intellectual properties for the first time. Within this context we shall note that these services are preliminary consultancy and you should always consult a local lawyer before finalizing your agreements and contacts. More information could be obtained from: designmediators.com

DesignMedia
A' Design Award & Competition keeps an updated list of design blogs and publications. The media listing is called the DesignMedia includes the most prestigious design related media. DesignPRWire contacts editors registered to the DesignMedia to get further coverage opportunities for winners. The DesignMedia page is regularly updated for new publications. Read more at design-media.org

Design Interviews
DesignPRWire and A' Design Award provides two sets of questions to the award winning designers in the form of an interview with the designer, and an interview regarding the winning works. These interviews are bundled together to the media kits and press packages of winners and are sent to the media editors for placement possibilities. The interviews are especially handy because they include the most common questions that the editors would be asking regarding the award winning designs, thus the design interviews increase the placement speed and opportunities to a great extent. Many editors simply use the already answered questions in the interview in their articles, and they use the images from the provided press packages. The DesignInterviews are also available as a stand-alone website where other editors could reach and read the interviews. To learn more, you could visit: design-interviews.com

How much is design worth?
Based on economic theory, the answer should depend on the utility created by design, thus good design creating higher utility should be desired more and therefore cost more, however the utility of design will be different in diverse settings and for varied users and clients thus same design could have a different sales price in different regions and for different clients. Furthermore the willingness to pay for design varies on budget of clients, as well as their estimate of the return on investment or expected utility. When you make a design for a company instead of an end-user, the price depends heavily on ROI (Return on Investment) thus it is essential that your design is not only beautiful and attractive to sell more, but it should also preferably cost less to produce or realize. We can help you calculate how much your design is worth.

How to ask more for Design?
By communicating its values: It is also important to note that the client may not always be aware of why design is relevant, thus the designer has to communicate and explain the worth of their project as detailed as possible. Designers must explain the value of their project to ensure higher price for their design, the value of a design should be explained to client by highlighting at least three key factors:  aesthetic appeal which increases demand to make product sell more, engineering which decrease production and logistics costs to make product cheaper to produce, technology that give product longevity or durability that increases customer satisfaction and therefore creates return customers or referrals, and other factors that contribute to value of the product should be mentioned when possible. To charge more for your design, you need to communicate it well. Winning a design award for example could help you communicate to the Client that the design is considered good, but you still need to highlight the individual points that make your design good to ensure you could help client understand its value for customers, and therefore the client who would sell your design to customers.

How to Sell Design?
You can sell your design by approaching your clients directly, showing them your portfolio, when doing so, ensure the clients are already selling products similar to yours, in sense, the target audience must be same so they could use their distribution channels, and in most cases, the production technology, and therefore the materials used must also be the same so that they could use their existing machinery and production facilities to realize your work. You find clients by visiting tradeshows or alternatively clients find you. It is of course not possible to visit all fairs one by one so you might want to ensure that clients find you, and to make clients find you, you will need more advertisement and publicity than ever, this is also where design awards are useful, they help your work get featured and potentially reach new clients. Then of course there are platforms like Buy Sell Design which is aimed at the sole purpose of selling and buying design. But regardless of what you do, you will need a good presentation of your design and how it relates to the client. Furthermore, laureates are given the opportunity to become part of World Design Consortium which is a global collective of best award winning design, architecture and consultancy businesses worldwide.

How to Sell Design More Expensive or Fair?
Did you notice ever that some designers sell their designs with an extra zero at their price tags, and still sell more than you? What do they do to make the clients pay much more to them instead of paying a smaller fee to others? How is it possible that some designers make great profits while others are just able to pay the bills? Well answer is again simple, it is about pricing as well as presentation. A good presentation, establishes quality and trust that is needed but most importantly, it communicates the value of your design services to help the client measure the benefits and understand the returns of investment of your design. Second, it is about pricing, sometimes instead of asking a flat fee, you could use alternative pricing or revenue methods such as licensing or royalties. To help your design pricing efforts, we have created a design pricing calculator that you could use.

How can we make Agreements for Design Services?
A' Design Award and Competition provides several design contract generators for preparing design service agreement and design service contract samples for laureates such as the Standard Contract for Design Services and Creative Consultancy, via an Intermediator and Design Mediator between a Client and Designers and others like Non-Disclosure Agreement, Work-for-Hire Agreement, Independent Design Contractor Agreement, Transfer of Design Rights and Intellectual Properties Agreeement, and similar. These design agreement generators can be accessed by award winners free of charge, and a license to use some of the design agreement generators can be obtained with premium, while some agreement templates or generators are not sold but provided for information purposes only.

Advertising Campaigns
A' Design Award and Competitions engages in public communications and advertising campaigns annually in order to feature the design award winners as well as to educate the society about the competition which ultimately aims to create a global awareness for good design worldwide. While the direct and media advertising campaigns and design advertisements increase the value of winning the accolade; thus making the existing awards more precious, other campaigns such as the Design Heroes advertising campaign among others has been designed to create value for the laureates by re-highlighting, re-promoting and re-advertising them to new audiences.