Fair, Meritocratic and Ethical

Fair, Meritocratic and Ethical Award for Good Design
When you join A' Design Award, you unlock exceptionally fair, immensely meritocratic, and extremely ethical judging. You achieve profoundly fair, extraordinarily meritocratic, and unquestionably ethical recognition. You receive genuinely fair, intensely meritocratic, and authentically ethical promotion. At A' Design Award, meritocracy guides every step, empowering your design to stand firmly on its intrinsic quality alone. At A' Design Award, your good design is valued for its intrinsic excellence, your creativity is honored authentically, and your achievements are celebrated solely on the originality and strength of your work. To achieve this we have implemented 28+ ethical judging and meritocratic recognition procedures, A' Design Award’s fairness procedures include but not limited to: Fair, Meritocratic and Ethical Award for Good Design, Jury Compartmentalization and Isolation for Fairness, Authenticity and True Excellence, Highly Experienced, Intelligent, Culturally Diverse and Balanced Jury Panel, Transparent Pre-Established Research-Based Judging Criteria for Integrity, Fairness and Objectivity, Jury Statistical Checks, Pattern Monitoring and Background Controls for Integrity, Anonymous Judging for Fair, Meritocratic and Ethical Evaluation, Documented Process for Fair, Ethical, Just and Merit-Based Evaluation of Good Design, License and Declarations for Meritocratic Recognition and Better Promotion, Meritocracy Starts and Exists at Each Step at A' Design Award, Democratic, Global and Meritocratic Promotion after Meritocratic and Ethical Recognition, A.C.E. Settings Respects Your Resources, Brand Narratives and Creative Wisdom, Jury Agreement and Jury Identification for Fairness, Ethical and Meritocratic Evaluation, Independent and Ethical Governance, Equal Opportunity and Community Support Initiatives for Absolutely Meritocratic Recognition, Free Preliminary Review, Assessment, and Feedback to Ensure Meritocratic Participation, Tiered Entry Fees and Subsidies to Ensure Financially Equitable Access, Second Chance Policy to Protect Entrants and Encourage Fair Participation, No Contractually Obliged Winner Fees to Maintain Integrity and Accessibility, Structured and Merit-Based Media Promotion Without Bias or Financial Influence, and Exceptionally Detailed Methodology and Ethical Documentation to Uphold Transparency and Accountability among many others as we explain in this page. We aim fairness, transparency, accountability, and impartiality at every stage, from initial evaluation and jury voting, to promotion and recognition, supported by innovations such as Concealed Category Entries, Right to Be Forgiven Policy, Ombudsman Service for Fair Issue Resolution, Psychologically Safe Environment for Jurors, Mathematical Anomaly Detection Systems, Blind Peer-Review for Academic Rigor in addition to our grand and coveted A' Design Prize that allows international promotion of winning works, also in a highly meritocratic, fair and ethical way. We built over 28+ procedures to ensure fairness, ethical and meritocratic evaluation because your good design matters. A' Design Award & Competition has a noble goal; to make the world a better place with good design, to achieve our goal, we have a strategy; we want to recognize best designs worldwide, we want to advertise and promote superior products and projects that benefit and advance society to audiences far and beyond, creating a global appreciation, desire and demand for award-winning good design, putting the world in a positive spiral of growth around good design, where good designs create demand for more good designs as people more and more appreciate and understand the value of good design better. To achieve our noble goal, we need to think A' Design Award like a grand modular sculpture, if each and every sub element is proper, the final result would be proper, as such we have to ensure that each element in our organization is properly made, this requires to begin with the proper identification of good design, and proper identification of good design requires a strong evaluation methodology, ethical judging process, meritocratic recognition and fair promotion. In this page, we detailed some of the components and elements that A' Design Award has built for achieving our goals of meritocratic evaluation, meritocratic recognition, and meritocratic promotion. We hope you will find our efforts meaningful, as this represents our core identity, it defines who we are.

Jury Compartmentalization and Isolation for Fairness, Authenticity and True Excellence
At A' Design Award, we provide jurors with psychological safety, allowing shy, insightful experts to express their authentic opinions freely, without fear of judgment or rejection. This facilitates recognition of unconventional, innovative and forward-thinking designs, enhancing diversity in the outcomes. We don’t allow jurors to talk to each other during the evaluation process, this aims to ensure that some sharp and charismatic people don’t rise to occasion and control the group; we compartmentalize and isolate the jurors, so that no juror’s voting affects that of other. Our compartmentalization significantly helps maintain fairness and objectivity by first of all stopping and preventing group think (when jurors are not allowed to talk to each other they cannot effect each other, isolation stops jurors from aligning their judgments to match dominant or influential group members. Without group communication, evaluations remain truly independent and authentic.). Then, when A' Design Award isolates and compartmentalizes the jurors, this stops charismatic influence. (You will recall and agree that charismatic and assertive individuals naturally influence group dynamics. By compartmentalizing jurors, we neutralize the risk of one strong personality steering the jury’s collective decisions toward their personal preferences.) Indeed this is a major, a huge problem in design awards and competitions where there would be some super strong jurors, the doyens of the field, whose authority and reputation can overshadow others and when you let these doyens around, they have such a strong aura, they create so much pressure against others that you can completely forgot fair evaluation; it will be what the doyens say, and that is generally not a bad thing you would think because doyens, the veterans are important but at A' Design Award, we already have so many doyens in our jury, and to make the judging fair, we need these doyens to behave independently, so that other very important but shy jury members can equally apply pressure; and when we don’t let doyens, the charismatic veterans to talk with the highly experienced, immensely knowledgeable shy jurors, we achieve this. When A' Design Award isolates and compartmentalize the jury, this preserves genuine diversity (Thanks to our efforts, jurors' distinct cultural, professional, industry and personal viewpoints remain uncompromised. A' Design Award’s isolation of jury members ensures that each juror’s unique and unbiased assessment contributes directly to the final result, rather than becoming diluted or distorted by the opinions of others, especially the doyens, the veterans. A' Design Award’s isolation of the jury further reduces social pressure and conformity, remember we talked about how the heavy-weight doyens apply pressure to shy intellectuals who may sometimes be equally or more experienced in their fields. A' Design Award’s isolation of the jury members eliminates social pressure and conformity effects, allowing our jurors to vote honestly, without fear of criticism, judgment, looking stupid or weird, and without peer pressure to conform to the consensus. Here, consider looking stupid or weird; because at A' Design Award other jury members don’t see what each juror vote, our jurors can simply vote whatever they want, they are worry free, this gives our jury a chance to reward unconventional designs, designs that are slightly out of the aesthetical window (remember how the Overton window is the range of subjects and arguments politically acceptable to the mainstream population, here think aesthetical window as range of designs and creations that are aesthetically acceptable by the mainstream population), here you may make argument that this may result in some unconventional designs to be pushed, and that is counterbalanced by the conservative creators anyway however it also helps future-looking works to be not overly punished, and have a chance of recognition; i.e. our isolation of jurors help them vote sincerely, without being worried that someone will judge them for their preferences. Here, we shall also note that we judge them anonymously in the background i.e. we have algorithms in place that is checking if jurors are in cohorts; we check if some jurors have too much alignment in their scores; i.e. mathematically think their scores, if their lines align, and in some cases maybe lines don’t align but specific points align to the contrary of the public; i.e. weirdly similar votes, using mathematics, pattern recognition, we try to do our best to identify these and if we do, we eliminate their votes and the jurors, we note this in jury agreement and terms as well. So proper and real jury isolation and compartmentalization, by allowing jurors to vote true and real, unbiased, by themselves, naturally enhance meritocracy and authenticity. A' Design Award’s jury evaluations therefore genuinely reflect each juror’s independent, expert judgment. Our intelligent system enhances meritocracy, ensuring the results truly represent the collective yet independent wisdom of the jury panel, rather than a compromise reached through negotiation or social dynamics. A' Design Award’s intelligent, fair and meritocratic evaluation process thus increases accuracy and credibility as independent evaluations are usually more precise, honest, and reflective of actual merit. Our compartmentalization and isolation of jury leads to results that are trusted and respected by designers, brands, and the wider community, especially also when you factor in the jury size and its cultural richness. By isolating jurors from one another during evaluation, A' Design Award ensures an extremely fair, objective, unbiased, and genuinely meritocratic evaluation process, one that reflects true excellence rather than social dynamics or personality-driven influence. We hope you see our jury compartmentalization and isolation strategy as a courageous, wise and deeply ethical solution that truly prioritizes quality, merit and fairness in design evaluation. We take all these precautions and we think about all these details because we care about your good design, we want to ensure that no matter who you are, your work is judged purely on its merit, with complete commitment to fairness, authenticity and true meritocracy. We hope you will understand and see that “jury member isolation” is one of the ways where A' Design Award is raising the bar, redefining fairness, authenticity, and excellence and setting important global standards for ethical rigor, transparency and psychological sophistication in evaluation and recognition of good design. With juror isolation and compartmentalization, we focus on independent evaluation translates for more precise, meritocratic results, ensuring that your good designs are recognized purely based on quality, not social dynamics or influential personalities.

Highly Experienced, Intelligent, Culturally Diverse and Balanced Jury Panel
When we established the A' Design Award in 2008, we conducted research to better understand the state of art, and what we learned, shocked us. Every year, there were hundreds of thousands of awards, competitions and contests organized worldwide, in each city, each town, each university, each big brand had an award of some sorts, but who were evaluating them? In general, most awards had five or fever jurors, with good ones having ten. Today, the A' Design Award brings together hundreds of jurors in its Grand Jury Panel. A' Design Award’s jury members comes from almost all major countries, and this is very important for you. Many awards, regardless of their number of jurors, has a homogenic group; they have jurors from same race, country, same religion, same political affiliation, same special interest group and sometimes even same sex. These homogenic jury panels of many other competitions obviously are not able to fully evaluate the full width creativity involving perspectives from different cultures, races, political affiliations, sexual preferences and different interests; there is an inherent bias comes from having homogenous jurors; for example if none of the jury members are Asian, how can they interpret Asian packaging, Asian calligraphy or graphic design? If all jury members are male, how can they interpret a product designed for woman’s health? If all jury members are pink, how do they evaluate the needs of little green man? Jokes aside, homogenic groups are dangerous as they are, with intention or without intention, are inherently biased, biased towards in-group preferences; these in-group and country preferences reflect deeply in their evaluations which we see as a competition from a certain company having mostly winners from that country, a competition organized by religious people from a certain religion having winners mostly from that religion, and a competition organized by a certain sex having winners mostly from that certain sex, even though good design is supposed to be universal. There are two reasons; first, jurors have an active role in dissemination and call for entries for competitions, and a varied, culturally rich, diverse jury naturally reaches out to a diverse audience, due to the design of the system, inherently. Then, a culturally diverse jury is able to approach a design from multiple perspectives, so you can really test whether your design is universal or if it just appeals to locals, if it is going to have international acclaim or is it just attractive to your in-group, is it widely coveted or not; a culturally diverse and large jury panel can give you these answers while a homogenous jury panel cannot do that effectively; note how we highly effectively because there exists, god-like people, blessed with ability to know, understand and reflect different cultures, world-class designers who have travelled far and beyond for example, and we have many of them as our jurors at A' Design Award, however, we must all agree that even among world-class designers, these are gems among gems, and only reflect a very miniscule population, and even if they travel a lot and have consumed and internalized diverse cultures, they may have still inherent in-group, in-religion, in-sex, in-culture, in-race, in-country preferences, so regardless of how many design gods you may have as jurors, you still need a diverse range of gods of design, innovation and architecture to ensure your entries are judged fairly without cultural bias. So the jury must be culturally rich; with representatives from as many countries as possible, and that’s why A' Design Award is very culturally rich and diverse, as this gives a more educated perspective that allows your work to be truly evaluated by a global perspective. Jury must be rich religion wise as well, reflecting different belief systems, this does not include “religion” as its superficial meaning, but also “religion” in sense of “dogmatic belief” be it for science or life. A good award jury must be religiously diverse, and should perhaps also include a number of people that are more religious and some that are less religious, so not only diverse in its religiousness but also varied in the amount of religiousness, and indeed a culturally diverse jury, if big enough helps achieves this as well. A' Design Award has a very diverse jury in this sense. Jury must also be rich with industry groups, and should contain representatives of diverse industries, and that’s what we do in A' Design Award. Jury must also be rich in the type of people there are. A' Design Award’s jury is composed of four distinct groups of people. These are 1) Academics, university professors, deans, department heads of prominent institutions and scholars, who have spent years on theory and fundamentals on design, architecture, innovation and creative research, who can judge the works as an educator, to establish the ingenuity of research capacity of the nominated works. (Our aim is to have academics to form about 25% of the jury each year, but this is open to fluctuation as we also give equal importance to country representation) 2) Established design professionals, world-class designers, star-architects, top-creators, original thinkers and innovators who have proven their excellence and wisdom with their achievements and good designs, who can judge the works from the perspective of creator, and who can identify the originality of the works and their practical ingenuity. (Our aim is to have professionals to form about 25% of the jury when possible) 3) Journalists, media representatives, editors, publishers, press members who approach the works from yet an independent approach to identify their potential appeal and newsworthiness. (We aim to have journalist to form about 25% of the jury) 4) Focus group (remaining percent of the jury, for example if we allocated 25% to academics, 25% to professionals and 25% to journalists, we would have 25% however this would not exceed 25% because we may have other groups higher percent since we give equal weight and priority to academics, professionals and journalists as well as academics, professionals and journalists from diverse countries, meaning first we aim to have equal distribution of journalists, academics and professionals as well as same from different countries, so we maximize for this, then remaining would be focus group, sometimes, focus group can be as low as 1%, but it does not exceed 25% of total jury), with a strong percentage of (about 80% of the focus group, up to a max of 20% of total jury) business people, managers of leading brands, chairman of product manufacturing companies, branding agents and creative agents who can truly assess the market value of the nominated works, as well as a small number of (about 20% of the focus group, about 5% of total jury) start-up creative agency representatives as well as up-and-coming design talent who can bring to table a fresh and new perspective of whether the works appeal to current generations. So, think of A' Design Award like an alloy, a powerful, industrial alloy, specially engineered to establish a single goal; to have your works evaluated from diverse perspectives, diverse experiences and backgrounds, diverse cultures, in a fair, meritocratic and just manner. Now, when you have such a rich jury panel of established academics, prominent design professionals and influential journalists from almost all major countries voting on the entries, you have a true international jury panel that can make a fair assessment of your design, especially when the jury votes entries following a blind peer-review process without knowing whose work they vote on. The A' Design Award Grand Jury Panel consists of jurors from almost all countries, almost all cultures and almost all industries, experienced and insightful people, and they also vote the entries anonymously, this way, we are able to reduce cultural biases, in-group biases even more, as we even out any inherent subconscious biases through rich and diverse meritocratically selected representation. The A' Design ward uses an international jury of diverse professionals and experts from different disciplines, cultures, groups and sectors. A' Design Award’s meritocratic diversity (we are not forcing this diversity based on sexual, racial or religious factors, but our priority is always first to have most experienced people from as many different countries possible, and this is important) further mitigates potential biases, making judgments more balanced, equitable, impartial, meritocratic and reflective of global standards rather than personal or regional preferences. We have invested a lot in creating one of the world’s largest and most influential jury panels, with a great number of world-class people, at A' Design Award, we want to ensure your good design gets evaluated properly by great people. At A' Design Award, we make a powerful case that truly universal design can only be recognized and appreciated through a jury that represents a wide array of cultures, backgrounds, and experiences. We understand that whether cultural, religious, national, political, or otherwise jury will always have biases, so we make the evaluation via blind peer-review judging, anonymous voting, and having a balanced mix of representatives from different cultures, religious, nationalities, people with diverse backgrounds to balance each other better. A' Design Award jury is thoughtfully composed of academics, established professionals, journalists, and the broader focus group, each with a distinct perspective, strategically designed to create comprehensive, multifaceted evaluations. Rather than merely filling quotas, we carefully curate a jury whose diversity genuinely enriches evaluations, we equally prioritize different cultures, countries and experience, and then the sub-groups. The strength of the A' Design Award jury comes precisely from the genuine diversity and carefully balanced composition we bring together. Rather than relying solely on quotas or superficial representation, A' Design Award’s Grand Jury Panel thoughtfully integrates multiple dimensions of diversity, combining expertise, cultural perspectives, religious and ideological beliefs, industry backgrounds, and professional experiences. Thanks to our Jury Compartmentalization and Isolation mechanism, each juror independently evaluates the entries without any external influence or discussions with other jury members, thus preventing group bias or peer influence, and ensuring each judgment remains purely merit-based and objective. A' Design Award’s intentional and rigorous approach ensures your work is fairly and expertly assessed from multiple, unbiased viewpoints, upholding true meritocracy, fairness, and global credibility. You know that when you join, your work gets evaluated meritocratic and fair.

Transparent Pre-Established Research-Based Judging Criteria for Integrity, Fairness and Objectivity
For a competition to be fair, it is important to have transparent judging criteria. At A' Design Award, judging criteria are clearly outlined and published publicly, A' Design Award’s judging criteria is objective and based on scientific research and studies. Every year, we ask jurors how to better vote the entries and conduct surveys gathering data, and we refer to these surveys and data collection to enhance criteria for our competitions. At A' Design Award evaluation criteria is consistently applied, objective, clear, ensuring fair, balanced and repeatable evaluations. In many of our competition categories, our awarding criteria focus on sustainability, efficiency, ergonomics, economics, functionality, durability, affordability, safety, accessibility, aesthetics, innovation and societal benefit, which is important for ESG measures, and that said, each A' Design Award & Competition category has distinct criteria and distinct weights for each criteria to ensure a better, more meritocratic evaluation of your good design. Jurors are presented with the evaluation criteria when they are voting your entries, this helps establish a frame of reference for consistent evaluation. Clearly defined evaluation criteria, as published by A' Design Award, ensure every participant knows precisely how their work will be evaluated, eliminating ambiguity or subjective interpretation, creating equitable treatment for all entrants, and also providing opportunity for entrants to optimize their entries before nomination. When criteria are openly communicated, as is done by A' Design Award, this creates credibility that attracts high-quality submissions and boosts the prestige and legitimacy of the accolades. Explicit, pre-established criteria helps jurors and reduces the likelihood that jurors unconsciously introduces biases into their decisions, making judgments more merit-based and objectively justified, pre-established evaluation criteria helps jurors focus and remember what to vote on. Clearly outlined criteria enable consistent judgment across different jurors for a given competition category by guiding all jurors the same way and aligning their evaluation goals. Transparent criteria helps A' Design Award uphold its integrity, fairness, objectivity, and reputation as a highly meritocratic competition, ensuring that excellence, and excellence alone, is recognized. Here, we shall remind that jurors are not robots and through years, they develop their own aesthetic preferences, so we allow jurors to reflect their preferences to a level when they are voting the entries, and this is important when you work with world-class designers, star-architects, top professionals who truly had developed an intuitive understanding what good design means, to help bring forward their innate subconscious expertise and wisdom. Remember that extremely strict and overly rigid criteria can undermine the value of having a jury composed of world-class designers and seasoned professionals as we do at A' Design Award, therefore a certain level of subjectivity, informed by deep experience, refined taste, years of experience and intuitive wisdom, is valuable precisely because these jurors have spent years developing nuanced, sophisticated understandings of what genuinely constitutes "good design." Transparent criteria provide the essential foundation of fairness and accountability, and a controlled space for subjective interpretation allows jurors to leverage their seasoned intuition and professional judgment. A' Design Award thus uses the evaluation criteria for anchoring; we tell the jurors the criteria and ask them to follow them, now some competitions will outright lie to you that jurors vote on the exact criteria that they have published but it is never the case; proof; it is not possible to mind control the jurors (and even if it would be the case, remember mind controlling jurors would defeat the purpose of jurors even when possible) and even if it is possible to mind control the jurors to force them to vote on the specific criteria, that would defeat the purpose of having jurors at the first place, this is absolutely lie that jurors vote the criteria, criteria only provides guidance, we don’t mind control jurors, we guide them with criteria, this is extremely important because flexibility ensures evaluations are not only technically correct but also culturally relevant, emotionally resonant, and truly insightful, qualities that are difficult to fully capture in rigid scoring frameworks. The balance A' Design Award brings forward is critical: clear, transparent criteria form the backbone of fairness and objectivity of our awards, while allowing room for jurors' professional instincts, i.e. the ability to deviate from the evaluation criteria ever so slightly through independent evaluation further ensures richness, authenticity and genuine appreciation for creative excellence. There will be other awards that tell you their criteria is absolute, but remember no matter how clear or precise the criteria, people, will always interpret criteria slightly differently based on their unique perspectives, expertise and experience. Remember that Subjectivity has value, especially when coming from experienced, reputable and culturally sensitive jurors whose intuitive sense of "good design" is an essential, invaluable part of their judgment. Remember that balance matters, while objective criteria anchor evaluations, allowing room for informed subjectivity ensures richer, more nuanced, and ultimately more meaningful awards. So we think, many other competitions have unrealistic claims that the strictly enforced criteria demonstrates integrity, courage, and authenticity, while we know the human condition better, we recognize the both sides of the judging equation (objective criteria plus human intuition) is what allows the A' Design Award to genuinely celebrate creativity, innovation, and excellence, qualities that can’t always be neatly quantified. This is how we do it; before jury start voting, we start by asking how they should be voting the specific criteria, then we collect insights, research data. We use this data to enhance our guidance each year. Then when they start voting, after they complete their awarding criteria weights and award criteria survey, we give them the actual criteria that was identified by research and refined throughout the years. A' Design Award jurors are presented the award criteria as guidance and are asked to vote on the specific evaluation criteria guidance, they can vote distinctly on each criteria, or they can vote a final, intuitive assessment score. Moreover, in addition to voting positive, jurors can vote negative; such as to mark entries for elimination or disqualification, which is equally important. In the end, A' Design Award recognizes that objective evaluation criteria provide fairness, consistency and accountability, and we therefore invest heavily in determining the proper criteria, every year during the evaluation process we conduct surveys, collect data and complete research to have our evaluation criteria proper and just, and we further embrace the intuitive wisdom and professional expertise that truly exceptional creatives, seasoned jurors, experienced professionals, world-class designers bring forward to hear their honest, sophisticated, and genuinely insightful assessments that rely on experience, intuition, wisdom and insight. We bring and harmonize these together to ensure the jury voting reflects depth, innovation, cultural relevance, intelligence and emotional resonance inherent in your exceptional design. At A' Design Award, we believe that transparent, research-based and scientifically developed evaluation criteria are very important to anchor fairness and accountability, protecting integrity and ensuring entrants clearly understand evaluation expectations; by publishing evaluation criteria, distinct for each A' Design Award & Competition award category, we guide entrants to better align their designs with juror expectations, this helps them succeed better and evens the playing field, making the competition more equitable as it allows small and large brands to both understand what constitutes good design, it also educates the public; remember that A' Design Award’s evaluation criteria are developed thanks to years of continuous research, by surveying thousands of jurors, so our evaluation criteria is important first as an education tool, by asking thousands of jurors their insights we crystalize their wisdom, using their answers to our surveys, we determine criteria following scientific process, then sharing these criteria to public, we are informing designers and brands what makes a good design good, we are educating the public, and of course, this also serves as a tool to nudge the society towards creating meaningful products and projects that make a difference, and these all in addition to allowing entrants to make better works that match our criteria, improving their success. With continual refinement of the evaluation criteria through surveys, research, and juror feedback, A' Design Award is genuinely dedicated to ethical principles and real-world practicality and fairness, for creating and maintain a platform that celebrates genuine excellence, creativity and innovation. We almost forget to mention that in addition to all these we also have the votes of all jurors standardized and normalized before they are factored into calculation. We calculate also for each juror standard deviations of score for each entry to understand and better visualize results, we employ statistical methods for bias removal while sorting the entries, of course this adds yet another layer of fairness and ethics to the A' Design Award. The full list of jurors is always public before the judging process and are the jury list is announced online. A' Design Award awards only top percentage of entries, as noted in great detail in our award tiers page, and to remind you again the number of awards are based on number of entries (due to percentage), however we may also set a quality level, and regardless of the number, we may not award below a certain level, and likewise we can increase the number of awarded works to ensure your good design is not eliminated due to statistical cut points.

Jury Statistical Checks, Pattern Monitoring and Background Controls for Integrity
When the A' Design Award jurors vote and judge your works, we too judge them anonymously in the background i.e. we have algorithms in place that is checking if any of the jurors are in cohorts, if they act in a statistically significant way that is similar and this is not always easy as you would want them to be in alignment; i.e. if it is good design, all jurors should be voting positively, so there must of course naturally exists a general alignment, but with such a diverse jury panel, we also expect slight deviations, as such we check if some jurors have too much alignment in their scores; especially from a mathematically perspectives, you would think of the jury scores as lines and if their lines align perfectly one to one, that’s a big problem, and in some cases, the lines don’t align but specific points align to the contrary of the public for example they may be giving, same work, a lot of statistical deviation score from their other work, and if say a few jurors share the deviation, this is something we could inspect in detail; so we are able to detect to a degree weirdly similar votes that deviate from the public; i.e. imagine the lines are spiking at specific points of the chart by two jurors whose spikes align for specific designs, this can give us an idea, and using mathematics, pattern recognition, and sometimes simply by charting the votes on a graph, we try to do our best to identify whether some jurors were trying to influence or game the system to call it bluntly, and if we do find such misconduct, we eliminate the votes of these jurors, then we also eliminate their jury membership, then we also take other measures that we can. We note all these this in our jury agreement and juror terms as well. We believe our analysis of jury votes is an additional measure that is exceptional and highly beneficial because it adds another robust layer of integrity, fairness, and credibility to prevent jury member collusion and bias. Even when our mathematical algorithms cannot effectively detect and prevent all collusion, at least they are useful in highlighting potential strategic voting among jurors and this eliminates the possibility that jurors secretly collaborate or coordinate their scores because we tell to the jurors also that we would be checking their scores and run algorithms, we also note this in our jury terms, so jurors knowing we checking and our algorithms also helping identify potential collusion helps maintaining the integrity and independence of evaluations at A' Design Award. Moreover, our background verifications increases transparency and trust, again by openly communicating our verification practice (in jury agreements), we demonstrate transparency to both entrants and jurors. Both the entrants and jurors know that A' Design Award actively guards against manipulation. Our advanced statistical monitoring helps make sure that each juror's evaluation remains authentically individual and unbiased, further reinforcing a genuinely merit-based process. We know that sometimes there will be super manipulators, and not everything can be stopped, but for this remember our jury is diverse from entrants from many countries, many industries, this diversity also helps reduce the conspiracy among jurors, it reduces collusion and strategic voting, because when there are hundreds of jurors, two colliding jurors don’t make such a difference, even if somehow they figure out how to trick the system, but yet still, even though this is the case, know that we actively take action, also by means of Juror Identification, Jury Agreement and the background processes, the Jury Statistical Checks and Controls to stop conspiracy, collision and strategic voting to ensure true independence of judgements since with advanced algorithms, we are able to detect subtle anomalies and suspicious patterns that might escape human oversight, and with human oversight, we are able to occasionally identify patterns that are statistically sound but super suspicious, we do these checks every year, luckily we do not have a big problem because by telling jurors that we do the checks and having disqualified jurors in the past, our approach strengthens the fairness and accuracy of results by deterrence as well as enforcement coming together to uphold ethical standards. A' Design Award’s proactive stance reinforces and reiterates our commitment to ethics. Even though we generally trust our jurors, we still perform pattern-based, visual, mathematical and statistical background checks and validations as part of our voting process to ensure compliance with our ethical guidelines for fair and just voting, we do these because we care your good design, again to remind you that because our jury is large even if this happens would not be so important, but we still check because we want to make the competition as fair as possible, as just as possible, to do so we want to ensure each detail is fair, ethical. We hope you find our rather proactive use of mathematical and statistical checks, pattern recognition and balanced overview, post voting, for analysis of jury votes, as a powerful safeguard for integrity, ethical vigilance, practical wisdom that brings fairness and objectivity to the A' Design Award.

Anonymous Judging for Fair, Meritocratic, Ethical Evaluation
When we started the A' Design Award in 2008, we started with a grand mission to make the world a better place with good design, our idea is simple and powerful; we recognize great designs, promote greatest works, and create demand for superior products and projects that benefit society, thus increasing supply of good design through increased demand by creating a global appreciation and understanding of sustainable, efficient, ergonomic, economic, functional, durable, affordable, safe, accessible, aesthetically appealing works that make a positive difference. Powerful, yet simple mission; promote good design so that more good design would be demanded, thus more good design is created. We were shocked to see the state of art, the industry best practices. Initially, we become member of prominent design and creative organizations of the time which were endorsing awards and competitions, and we asked for endorsement, what did we learn? We were unendorsable; the reason was simple: we were too much “ethical” – basically because at 2008, endorsement rules of these creative and design organizations were such that the jury would have to know whose works they were voting for; repeating the industry practice, back in 2008 was “jury needs to know whose work they are voting for” ; i.e. in 2008, the industry practice, as pushed forward by these organizations, for us, was absolutely unacceptable, unethical, unjust, biased, immoral, corrupt, dishonorable, deceitful, discriminatory, inequitable, amoral. A' Design Award was created to make just, impartial, equitable, unbiased, natural, objective, honest, balanced, reasonable decisions by organizing a competition that is talent-based, ability-driven, competence-based, performance-based, excellence-driven, moral, principled, righteous, virtuous, honest, upright, conscientious, descent, respectable, ethical, meritocratic and noble, and for any competition that needs to be meritocratic, ethical and moral, the works needed to be voted “anonymously” i.e. “jurors must not see whose works they are voting on”, this is essential but why is it essential? It is absolutely essential for jurors to vote anonymously, without knowing whose works they are evaluating, because only anonymous judging ensures that decisions are based purely on the intrinsic quality, merit, creativity, innovation, ingenuity and effectiveness of the design itself. Because when jurors know whose works they are evaluating, their decisions can very easily get influenced, intentionally or unintentionally, by biases, personal connections, reputations, prior achievements, or the popularity of designers, along with internal politics, favoritism, nepotism, preferences based on social standing or professional hierarchy, friendships, allegiances, and in-group biases, whereby jurors tend to favor submissions from designers within their own professional, academic, cultural, or social circles, which compromises impartiality, creating conditions that diminish the integrity of genuine evaluations of creativity and innovation. Additionally, brand bias represents a particularly problematic form of discrimination, as jurors might unconsciously favor established names, big brands, famous designers, or star architects due to their existing prominence, visibility, or reputation. While this might initially seem beneficial to designers or brands already enjoying widespread recognition, it actually undermines their success and diminishes the genuine credibility of their accomplishments, as observers may perceive their awards as being driven solely by reputation rather than merit, creativity, innovation, or originality. For lesser-known designers or emerging brands, this creates significant risks, as it reduces their fair opportunity for recognition based purely on their talent and performance. Anonymous judging safeguards the integrity and value of awards for both prominent and emerging designers, ensuring genuine recognition based solely upon design quality. Even worse, allowing jurors to know the identity of the designers creates a harmful environment that actively enables and perpetuates numerous forms of unacceptable discrimination, bias, and injustice that fundamentally contradict fairness, including racial or ethnic discrimination, whereby designers unjustly face biased evaluation stemming from prejudices or assumptions related directly to their racial, ethnic, or cultural backgrounds; political discrimination, whereby designers unfairly experience judgments influenced by jurors’ ideological affiliations, political preferences, or perceptions regarding the designer’s political beliefs inferred solely from their name or background; nationality-based discrimination, in which designers unjustly receive preferential or unfavorable treatment based purely upon their country of origin or perceived nationality rather than the intrinsic merit of their work; religious discrimination, in which jurors' personal religious beliefs, biases, or assumptions unjustly affect their evaluation; gender-based discrimination, where designers unjustly face biased judgments or limited opportunities solely based upon gender identity, gender expression, or stereotypes related to gender roles; socioeconomic discrimination, in which designers unjustly experience advantages or disadvantages solely based on assumptions about their economic status, perceived social class, or educational background; nepotism and favoritism, whereby jurors unfairly advantage individuals based purely upon family relationships, personal friendships, or professional connections; age-based discrimination, whereby designers unjustly face biases rooted in assumptions about their abilities or experience based exclusively on their age; language-based discrimination, through unjust biases arising from cultural associations or national origins inferred solely from a designer’s name or linguistic background; academic or institutional discrimination, in which judgments are unfairly influenced by jurors' preferences or biases favoring particular universities, academies, or educational institutions; discrimination based upon perceived personal or professional reputation, where evaluations unjustly rely on the designer's previously known successes or failures rather than objectively assessing the submitted work itself; and finally, discrimination purely because of a designer’s name, whereby unconscious stereotypes, prejudices, or assumptions relating specifically to certain identities unfairly impact objective, unbiased assessments. When jury knows whose works they vote on even brands themselves become targets of unjust discrimination. Brands associated with particular cultures, races, countries, political affiliations, or ideologies may unjustly face prejudiced evaluations rooted in geopolitical conflicts, cultural stereotypes, nationalistic sentiments, or implicit biases held by jurors. A brand might be unfairly disadvantaged simply because of its perceived association with certain nationalities, ethnicities, or political positions inferred from its name, identity, or origin. Similarly, brands connected with particular religious groups, movements, or cultural traditions may experience biased judgment based on preconceived notions, stereotypes, or ideological biases rather than the genuine quality, creativity, and effectiveness of their submitted designs. Anonymous judging ensures that brand evaluation remains ethical, objective, and fair, protecting all brands equally and guaranteeing recognition based purely upon design excellence, independent of political, cultural, national, racial, or ideological contexts. Non-anonymous judging, the issue of jurors voting with knowledge of the entrants identities in competitions is a big issue that A' Design Award solved and got punished for it by several prominent organizations refusing to endorse us because some even had written their bylaws to only endorse non-anonymous competitions (i.e. they would only endorse awards that did not follow anonymous judging as such they were endorsing very old, very known, pay to win competitions which judged entries in a way the juror would know whose works were being judged), and to all these, at A' Design Award we were sincerely appalled, disgusted and sad for the pathetic conditions and treatment of designers and brands by the so called creative and design organizations, it was unacceptable for us and that’s why we severed our ties with several organizations, and some of which were endorsing non-anonymous competitions while not endorsing us, and some had even noted in their bylaws to endorse only non-anonymous competitions, it was just crazy in 2008, unimaginable yet true. In 2008, the whole global system of design recognition was corrupt, we don’t know how to say it better. Imagine if organizations, whose publicly promoted aim is to promote good design, got captured by, got controlled by, “pay after win award organizers”, who took board positions, who changed the bylaws of these organizations, in a way that they would only endorse, “non-anonymous awards”, don’t you think it is crazy? It was. That’s where we come into play. The A' Design Award eliminates bias, favoritism, corruption, and unethical practices common in traditional design awards competitions, especially the issue of jurors knowing designers’ identities, by implementing anonymous judging. Jurors evaluate submissions solely on merit, without knowledge of the creator’s reputation, relationships, brand, nationality, gender, or market position, ensuring a fair, impartial, and purely merit-based evaluation. Fairness and meritocracy should be so foundational that we never need to justify them, yet A' Design Award fought hard, to make a difference. At A' Design Award, our mission is to advance the world with good design, we had to act because if organizations dedicated to celebrating creativity and good design become corrupted, biased, or captured by self-interest, the damage extends far beyond competitions. It undermines innovation itself, discouraging talented but lesser-known designers, diminishing authenticity, and ultimately holding society back from better, more beneficial, and more beautiful solutions. That’s why at A’ Design Award we took action. At A' Design Award, we are completely dedicated to ethical judging and we stand firm despite the pressure, we are strong like steel and we are not pathetic to bend under pressure from interest groups. We don’t care whose works are being voted, we judge them fairly. Anonymous judging, the way A' Design Award’s jury votes entries, ensures every design receives fair consideration based solely on its creative strength. When jurors do not know who created the work, as in how A' Design Award’s jury evaluation works, each submission can genuinely stand on its own merits. Anonymity in evaluation, as seen by A' Design Award’s meritocratic evaluation process, emphasizes quality and ingenuity, placing all focus on the work itself rather than personal connections or backgrounds. Anonymous voting, as how the A' Design Award evaluates entries, makes sure that the jury is enabled to recognize excellence purely through objective criteria. Anonymous judging, the way in which the A' Design Award’s jury scores entries, highlights true innovation, talent, and originality by preventing external factors from affecting the assessment. When jurors evaluate anonymously, as how they vote entries in A' Design Award’s blind peer-review process, designs are appreciated honestly and fairly, fully on their individual strengths and creativity. A' Design Award jurors, evaluating entries without knowing the name of the designer or brand allows works to shine exclusively due to their intrinsic quality and effectiveness. Anonymity in judging, as observed in A' Design Award, supports fairness, transparency, and a merit-based appreciation of creative efforts. At A' Design Award, jurors evaluate designs without knowing who created them via “anonymous voting” which prevents biases linked to reputation, personal relationships, brand recognition, nationality, gender, or market position. A' Design Award’s anonymous voting via “blind peer-review” ensures a purely merit-based evaluation. At A' Design Award, designers, brands and architects submit their works, products and projects anonymously – i.e. your names are not shown to jury. The A' Design Award jury only sees your design and its description but the name of creator brand, designer, architect or manufacturing company is hidden, the identity or background of the creators are not disclosed to jury, jury only see the work, and thus jury only works for the work ensuring an unbiased assessment that judges solely on the design’s intrinsic quality and merits. This is called “anonymous judging”, and we do this via culturally diverse and balanced jury panel, who votes entries on transparent pre-established evaluation criteria, with independent and ethical governance that creates meritocratic recognition and promotion which we discuss distinctly, because these are all pillars of fair evaluation. To reiterate, because this is so important, when we established the A' Design Award in 2008, our mission was clear and powerful: we wanted to improve the world through great design. Our approach was simple: recognize exceptional designs, create demand for superior products, and thereby encourage more innovation and creativity. We envisioned a world in which sustainable, ergonomic, affordable, aesthetically pleasing, and socially beneficial designs became more valued and widely adopted. But when we began, we were deeply troubled by industry practices in design competitions. Prominent design and creative organizations in 2008 endorsed competitions where jurors knew exactly whose works they were voting for. This practice struck us as deeply unethical, unjust, biased, and corrupt, fundamentally opposed to fairness and meritocracy that A' Design Award wishes to have. At A' Design Award, we refused to conform to this unacceptable status quo. At A' Design Award, we firmly believe in anonymous judging as essential for fairness. Why is anonymous judging so crucial? Because when jurors know the identity behind a submission, even unintentionally, biases can influence their evaluation. Jurors may become influenced by a designer’s popularity, reputation, nationality, gender, political affiliation, social or academic connections, or market prominence. Established designers or well-known brands might receive unfair advantages, while emerging designers or smaller brands are unfairly disadvantaged. Additionally, biases based on ethnicity, religion, age, or socioeconomic status may creep into evaluations, undermining the credibility of the awards and harming the design industry as a whole. We encountered significant resistance from leading creative organizations. Some explicitly refused to endorse us because we insisted on anonymous judging. Shockingly, certain groups even altered their bylaws to explicitly endorse only competitions that revealed designers' identities to jurors, a move that perpetuated corruption, nepotism, favoritism, and bias. This environment deeply saddened and disappointed us, and in response, we severed ties with those organizations to uphold our ethical standards. A' Design Award proudly solves these problems and biases arising from non-anonymous judging through strict adherence to anonymous judging. Jurors evaluate submissions based solely on their intrinsic merits, creativity, innovation, quality, aesthetics, sustainability and effectiveness, without any knowledge of the entrants identity or background. Designers, architects, product manufacturers and brands have their work judged anonymously, ensuring fairness and genuine meritocracy. Our culturally diverse jury panel uses transparent, predefined criteria and operates independently under strict ethical governance, making our award a genuine celebration of excellence. Through anonymous judging, the A' Design Award saves designers and brands from discrimination, bias, and favoritism, ensuring that every design stands purely on its quality, innovation, and positive impact.

Documented Process for Fair, Ethical, Just and Merit-Based Evaluation of Good Design
You will notice that we discuss a lot of things in this page, we have documented everything as clearly as we can and we do have more detailed documentation at our methodology pages and research pages, here we simply listed the aspects that primarily concern about ethical voting where your work is independently and impartially evaluated by a large, experienced and international jury panel from diverse countries, cultures and industries, in a way that respects your design. The very existence of this page, is part of our documentation on design evaluation, helping you understand how serious the A' Design Award is about meritocratic, fair, just, ethical, apolitical, unbiased, purely merit-based evaluation is. It is important that we document our process clearly, it is important that we list our award criteria openly, it is important that you know how we vote the entries using blind peer-review process, it is important you know why your entries are anonymously voted on pre-established evaluation criteria, it is important you know why our jury is big, it is important you know the jury composition and why such composition exists, it is important you to know why our jury is diverse both culturally and industry-wise, it is important you know why we have a jury agreement and why we have a processes to check the integrity of jury votes after votes are cast, it is important you to know why we have a license and declaration process and how it affects judging, and it is important you to know that ethics require not just fair voting but also equal opportunity for promotion after results, we share all these because you too play an important role as a prospective entrant, a prospective juror, and also as a member of public, you should know how to organize a fair award yourself, be it for your brand, for your country or your nation, we hope that you can find A' Design Award’s documentation of fair, ethical and meritocratic award organization guides you properly. You can refer to our methodology to learn more. We share these because in the end, our goal as A' Design Award is to make the world a better place with good design, and by promoting really good designs, true and real, ethical and just, we know we can achieve this goal.

License and Declarations for Meritocratic Recognition and Better Promotion
At A' Design Award, meritocracy and fairness permeate every single detail of our competition, and the License and Declaration processes are no exception. Our License and Declaration procedures fundamentally reinforce the integrity and equity of A' Design Award's evaluation, ensuring every participant competes on a truly level playing field, where creativity, originality, and societal value are the only factors that determine success. First, when you provide a License, you confirm that your design can be legally promoted, exhibited, and published worldwide. Your license signals ensures our jury can evaluate your entry confidentially, and it also signals us that if and when you win we can confidently showcase, promote, advertise, market and publicize your winning work without concerns about intellectual property infringement or legal complications. Your license thus removes hidden biases and legal uncertainties that could unfairly hinder certain works, ensuring that your design receives equal opportunity for visibility, assessment, and subsequent recognition based purely on merit. If you are unable or unwilling to provide a license, rather than excluding your valuable work outright, we place your design within a special "Concealed Category". Our thoughtful measure helps make sure that your intellectual property rights remain respected, while still providing a fair chance at evaluation and recognition. Concealed Category entry and license procedure together, ensures no entrant is unjustly penalized or disadvantaged due to legitimate intellectual property concerns, thereby maintaining absolute fairness. Your Declaration complements the License by explicitly once again affirming the originality and authenticity of your submitted designs and our rights to publicize, advertise, promote, advertise them. When every participant explicitly commits to originality, all entries are evaluated solely against other genuinely original creations which significantly reduces unfair competition from copied, derivative, or plagiarized designs, benefiting true innovators and original thinkers. By insisting on declarations of authenticity and licenses, we uphold an ethical standard to have your design fairly and honestly evaluated, without dilution or contamination by unfair competition. A' Design Award’s License and Declaration process enhances meritocratic evaluation by providing jurors with confidence in the authenticity of your work, allowing jurors to focus entirely on assessing your design’s true merits, innovation, aesthetics, functionality, sustainability, and societal contribution, rather than on concerns over originality or legal issues (and of course, sometimes jurors will have concerns, but at least they start disarmed, but we also should let you know we empower jurors to signal any potential third party intellectual property infringements and others via the evaluation system – so even if we create a positive environment, this does not mean that we will close our eyes once you sign our paperwork, on the contrary we ask jurors to be diligent and ready, we want you to know this clearly). Regardless of this, of course, License and Declarations help make sure that your work competes fairly, authentically, and honestly, standing out purely because of its inherent quality and not influenced by doubts or ambiguity, indeed it makes the overall competition also more fair and ethical, because also journalists know that we have licenses and documents to publish the awarded works, our media partners are also more easy to publish you because they also know that we have at least a paperwork trace where you indicated originality of your work, and where you granted publication rights, these are all very important for truly fair promotion after awards if you win, not just during your evaluation. In the end, we hope you understand that our License and Declaration processes is designed to respect your creative rights meanwhile also significantly contribute to the fairness, integrity and meritocracy of the A' Design Award, in addition to also making it easier for your winner works to get coverage by also relieving anxiety of journalists and editors (because with publication license, the journalists are less nervous about getting copyright strikes or takedown requests due to infringing works). By proactively addressing potential legal and ethical issues, A' Design Award makes your recognition more valuable, and helps you get both the evaluation and media attention you truly deserve, based on your original creative excellence. We hope our License and Declaration processes set clear standards for originality, authenticity, and intellectual property, directly reinforcing the fairness, transparency, and ethical integrity of our competition.

Meritocracy Starts and Exists at Each Step at A' Design Award
Your fair and ethical treatment starts from the very moment when you agree to our terms and register for the A' Design Award. First, you know that registration, signing-up for an account at A' Design Award is free of charge. When you sign up for an account at A' Design Award, you unlock an important benefit: Free Preliminary Evaluation. The free preliminary evaluation is where you can upload your design free of charge to A' Design Award, and at this moment, you don’t pay anything yet, you just upload your design for free and wait about 72 hours, about 3 working days, and within this time, your work’s presentation if is complete, goes under our preliminary review process, if the presentation is not complete, we generally inform you what is missing, and nudge you to complete your presentation so that we could provide you with a realistic and fair preliminary evaluation. The “Preliminary Evaluation” is provided to you confidential (we don’t tell anyone about your preliminary assessment) and anonymous (we don’t know who you are as we provide this assessment, as such it is provided without prejudice and bias) and without contractual obligations to nominate your work later (you at your sole discretion decide whether you wish to nominate your work later based on your assessment, meaning you are not forced to nominate your work, you are not under contractual obligation to pay money to nominate your work). A' Design Award’s preliminary review serves several important purposes within the context of meritocratic assessment, meritocratic recognition and meritocratic promotion as well as for inclusivity. First of all, during the preliminary review process, which is free, we review if your presentation is compliant with our entry guidelines, doing so, we first ensure your entry is properly presented and complete, thus when and if you nominate your work, it would be properly judged in a complete manner. Moreover, with the preliminary compliance review, we also push you to increase the quality of your design’s presentation, and this is super important because if all designs are equally well presented, then the jury members focus less on design presentations and more on intrinsic design qualities, this makes the A' Design Award’s jury voting, which happens later, more meritocratic, less biased. So, the preliminary review round, ensures your work is judged fairly and ethically in two levels; individually ensuring its complete presentation, and then by making all presentations good to reduce potential presentation biases of the whole organization. Now, once you win if you win, thanks to the preliminary round which pushes you to enhance your design presentation also contributes to your meritocratic promotion because with better images of your design (as pushed by our preliminary round), high-quality content, high-resolution images (that we include in the electronic press kits of Professional and Digital Edition laureates, we prepare these free of charge for you), we are able to provide journalists with publication-ready content, and thus we serve you better by providing you with better prospects for media to cover your award-winner news, accelerating your press coverage. So, the preliminary review round, which is free, later also works to enhance your press feature prospects. All these steps are provided to you for free, as respect of your design. Moreover, the preliminary round educates you on how to present your score suitable for awards evaluation and for media, A' Design Award’s education and review of your design is provided to you for free as part of our free preliminary review round. In our preliminary review round, we also provide you with a technical overview of your presentation, for example whether your images are proper size, if their resolutions are correct, if the texts are adequate and similar, you get a score from zero (0) to hundred (100) for technical compliance, this is not your “preliminary score” but technical “presentation score”. For many, one of the great values is the “preliminary score” the preliminary score ranges from zero (0) to ten (10). A' Design Award’s “preliminary score” tells you the likelihood your work gets recognition from our grand jury panel, this is an estimate, and a score of six and higher (6, 7, 8, 9 or 10) means a likelihood towards success, while lower scores indicate lower likelihoods. These are not guaranteed as in the end it is the Grand Jury Panel that decides whether you win or not, but we do our best to be indicative with the scores and preliminary jury members give their honest and sincere feedback based on their experience in seeing many entries and their final outcomes, so even though it is intuitive, it is a good assessment that you get free of charge. With this assessment, if your score is lower than six for example zero, one, two, three, four or five, then we recommend you not to join and at this very step, you did not lose anything; you did not pay us any money, you did not nominate a design, you simply created a free account, uploaded your design for free, and got a free preliminary assessment that told you your design is not ready, this is very ethical because this way you keep your money and resources, this is another way how we deeply respect you, and it comes at a great financial cost to us, of course because we would be deterring so many entrants not to join by simply telling them their work is not yet good enough. Of course, some still join, and since this is just a preliminary score and not cast in concrete, some of the entrants with low scores (less than or equal to five) still win, and of course the Grand Jury Panel when voting your work don’t see your preliminary score and thus not biased with these initial assessments. Like a coin, the system has two sides, in some cases you may get a high score and still lose, again because the preliminary jury cannot guarantee outcomes, however since we acknowledge that this may feel bad, we provide a “Second Chance Policy” where if the score you got from preliminary jury is very different from your final outcome, then we issue you a free ticket if you fulfill select criteria (search for A' Design Award Second Chance Policy to understand better). This helps you save resources by not joining, or to save resources if you join and could not win, under certain conditions of course. Furthermore, the preliminary score system allows you to make better informed choices as well, by uploading say, top ten projects, you can get free score for all ten, and then decide which works to enter based on how they were received and perceived by our preliminary jury. A' Design Award’s preliminary review system thus helps make the competition more ethical, fair and just by respecting your resources and finances, helping you improve your presentation, helping you get better press coverage upon success. Again, A' Design Award’s free and confidential preliminary review is one of the many ways how we organize a truly ethical award that respects its entrants. We created the preliminary review system as part of our integrity, offering free, confidential, unbiased feedback as a way to give back to our global design community. By offering a technical compliance review and pushing entrants to improve their presentation, we proactively level the playing field, helping you compete with big brands with big budgets for PR and marketing, and at the same time ensuring jury evaluations focus purely on intrinsic merit, rather than presentation quality. We hope you understand that we actively put fairness, integrity, education, and genuine meritocracy at the core of every decision we took when we have created the A' Design Award.

Democratic, Global and Meritocratic Promotion after Meritocratic and Ethical Recognition
Meritocratic evaluation is extremely important, but also equally important is meritocratic promotion. A' Design Award winner designs receive promotion based purely on their quality and societal contribution, not influenced by financial status, race, nation affiliation or brand power. Indeed, this created us many problems in the past because of lazy journalists; as you know we work with a lot of journalists, and one of the ways we work with journalists is by editorial article sponsorship where we would pay money to journalists to incentivize them to create articles covering our winners, this also helps independent journalists to have an income while also having opportunity to cover good design, as we do this, we have a rule that requires the journalists to select the winners to feature among our winners list, but some journalists were asking us to send them a few of our winners so that they could publish what we send them, we got a bit angry over this as it was as if an illusion was broken, moreover we obviously don’t want to select a few winners and send to journalists especially because that would be against our meritocratic promotion process; we want the journalists to browse the winners (this creates exposure and equal opportunity) then the journalists should select among our winner works which one of them to promote themselves without us pushing them specific works, journalists browsing our winner list and choosing winners to feature creates another layer of meritocratic recognition as it gives equal opportunity to all laureate works, not just Platinum, Gold or Silver works, since if a Bronze or Iron A' Design Award winning work is more suitable for their publication they can choose it, and of course most journalists would trust jury and feature Platinum and Gold works, whenever available anyway, but by making journalists make the selection we create an additional opportunity for meritocratic media coverage. Anyway, we had to remove from our media partners and we had to stop working with so many lazy journalists due to the fact that we were pushing us to choose the works, they were saying “send us top 20” for example and of course this was not something we wanted to do as we prefer to only work with journalists that are really interested in good design, who would invest their time to see our winners and choose themselves which winner works to feature, this is very important because it creates an opportunity for other A' Design Award winner works to be explored by journalists and creates additional media opportunities for all A' Design Award winners, so we had later added this to our partnership contacts, now we work solely with journalists who help us cover good design by getting involved themselves. Then we also had some very weird issues with journalists and media conglomerates due to politics, in one example, it was around 2010, and think of about 10.000 EUR was a big money at that time, we wired the money to a magazine, and due to us having awarded winners from a certain group of people that they did not want to recognize, (this is our conjecture and educated guess with empirical evidence), so due to political issues simply put, they first hinted their dissatisfaction of some laureates and insinuated their exclusion, and then when we refused (isn’t this crazy anyway to ask an award to disqualify a group of entries due to political interest), this one crazy publication returned our money, a lot of money, and this was a shock to us (but at least they did return the money), however it also though us an early lesson; the world is not fair, the world is not just, and who controls the media, controls the world, and who controls media controls what “good design” is. Obviously, this realization was heavy for us, as these are stuff of conspiracies, that we don’t believe, but we see it happen, thus for us, this was such a wicked, immoral, unethical thing that we had experienced, this ignited us to help establish our own media channels; remember A' Design Award is absolutely meritocratic, and to stay meritocratic, we don’t take money from some country or organization, because in general, if you take money you take orders, everybody knows this. But it is not enough not to take money, if you really want to make a meritocratic award, you also need to have at least some degree of true outreach, you need to control media as well, and that’s why we have developed throughout the years not only a very large network of media publications but also we established rapport with other independent media from around the world, many small yet independent publications, as well as some extremely big, ethical and merit based publications, we had made them part of our media network by working with them, and as we said, we also developed our own network, just because, we wanted to truly and meritocratically advertise good design worldwide. Within a few years from that incident, we had established about 3000 Media Assets, content syndication networks, magazines and publications, in over 108+ languages worldwide, so that we could promote good design worldwide, without any political influence and we did it. By advertising good design worldwide, we increased demand for genuinely superior designs, fueling a virtuous cycle of better products and projects benefiting society, and doing so in an ethical way. Indeed during all this, also be reminded that in addition to culturally sensitive topics we don’t allow political entries to our competition, the aim is to ensure that A' Design Award remains independent third party, whose content is neutered on purpose, clean, devoid of political and religious messaging, devoid of themes that create issues, in any way, almost all design, say 99.9% don’t involve politics, there is 0.1% that is 1 in thousands about, is political propaganda posters, or some other type of content, and to ensure the 99.9% does not get diluted, touched and adulterated, we simply don’t allow political content, this creates a brand safe environment and also allows us to be able to advertise, publish and promote your works, almost everywhere, of course once in a while, international conflicts limit us, but these are not things we impose themselves but generally imposed by our governments or foreign governments, so that said, to repeat, we keep our competition clean from political messaging, discriminatory content, and anything that could be interpreted remotely as hate speech to ensure that everything else, which is the significant 99.9% of the designs, be it architecture, product design, or packaging design, can be showcased worldwide. When it comes to promoting your works in our media assets, we follow the Platinum, Gold, Silver, Bronze and Iron order as well as your involvement; there are functionalities we provide which with your involvement can help create better results, so for example, interviews; if you respond to interviews you get published, the opportunity to take part is equal for all, and if everyone takes part we would start publishing from Platinum, but when partial entrants take part, then this creates a pareto efficient point where those who value the service gets to better utilize it, providing fair and ethical promotion. Moving forward, with anything else, we follow the same principle; propose it to all laureates, allow all laureates to take part, and promote starting from Platinum, Gold, Silver, Bronze and then Iron laureates, following meritocratic promotion. In our exhibitions we have dedicated displays for all works, Platinum, Gold, Silver, Bronze and Iron for example, and for Platinum and Gold, or Platinum, Gold and Silver we may have further additional screens, so giving Platinum, Gold and Silver winners more prominence. Likewise, in our winner list, we show first Platinum, Gold, Silver and then Bronze and Iron works, and it does not matter whose work it is, if it is Platinum, it gets shown first, creating equal opportunity for equally meritocratic works. When it comes to obtaining our promotion benefits, Professional and Digital Edition A' Design Award laureates, gain these free of charge, so there are no financial gatekeeping either. Indeed, if you check A' Design Award, you would also notice we provide over three dozen ways to join for free, especially for young designers, so this shows how A' Design Award is not only meritocratic in recognition but also in the opportunity to take part. We promote all winners, regardless of their race, gender, nationality, politics, in a meritocratic way by promoting Platinum winners first, following by Gold, following by Silver, followed by Bronze and last but still heavily promoting the Iron winners, this helps ensure that your promotion is as meritocratic and achievement-oriented performance-based, ability-driven and competence-focused as your recognition. As you may understand, it is eye-opening (and somewhat unsettling) to see the extent of political and financial bias influencing design promotion, and at that extent you know that we have created an exceptional system that controverts this reality by establishing our own independent media network and partnering with a great number of ethical, integrity-driven publications, by building independent channels and comprehensive checks to ensure that our meritocratic vision remains pure. We noted all these so you know the lengths we have gone to uphold a truly meritocratic system, in both recognizing and promoting good design, as our sincere dedication to fairness is a monolith; rather than ignoring or glossing over these realities (real-world complexities, such as the fact that political dynamics, media biases, and financial interests inevitably shape what gets recognized), we have directly confronted them by building independent media and content distribution channels, directories, dictionaries, platforms, websites together with comprehensive journalistic checks when working with media to ensure that your good design gets promoted meritocratically. Indeed, here we also want to establish another harshness we had come, again how we resolved it; we wanted to post to foreign “social networks” and “encyclopedias” our winners, because these “social networks” and “encyclopedias” were featuring “top designers of the century” or “best designers” list for example, they would not allow our winners and delete our articles one after another because “these winners were not published in prominent newspapers in the countries where the encyclopedia was originating from”, so this requirement of “credible sources” was ignoring our tens of thousands of publications via media partners in English and Non-English languages, and refusing to publish “foreign designers”, “foreign architects”, “foreign brands”, as you would imagine, this is such a blatant racist thing to do; you don’t publish an amazing designer’s work because they did not get newspaper coverage in your country? This was disgusting for us, so we created our own design encyclopedia where we feature all winners, and we did it back in 2020, and by doing so we were able to also create a pathway for our “foreign” laureates to get understood and discovered in AI systems, we fought against systematic and structural racism of the media industry complex, and we fought this for our laureates whose designs were worth fighting for, whose designs helped create a better world with their superior characteristics and design qualities, of course we would take on this fight. We have branched our media network into ratings systems, ranking websites, landing pages, foreign language design and lifestyle publications, directories, designer listings, our own social media, forums, directories, dictionaries and much more, we do this because we care. By establishing our own media, we turned frustration and injustice into equality, equity and affirmative action, we published the award winners far and wide, we created our own media ecosystem, our own independent publishing platforms, our own advertising network as part of our genuine and steel dedication to fairness, equality, meritocratic and ethical principles. With our independent infrastructure, and of course also with the help of existing apolitical structures as well as our highly esteemed media partners, today, A' Design Award promotes good design worldwide, in over 108+ languages, and on average, each winner gains about 138+ media appearances. This is our dedication crystallized. Our structured approach to promoting and prioritizing winners based purely on their award status (Platinum, Gold, Silver, Bronze and Iron) and ensuring genuine, equal opportunities for promotion is meticulously fair and ethically balanced.

A.C.E. Settings Respects Your Resources, Brand Narratives and Creative Wisdom
When you join the A' Design Award, our preliminary review round helps you better your presentation, however not all designers and entrant brands follow the jury feedback or review their technical compliance with our presentation guidelines, thus it happens that every year there would be fairly a small percentage, yet still a large number of entrants due to our size and scale, who have issues with their presentations that make their presentation incompliant with our rules; these maybe simply text on images or brand name on images (other than logos that are naturally part of the product, i.e. graphic applications) or names on images or watermarks (against our blind peer-review rule, makes work identifiable), cases where the presentations may contain infringing 3rd party intellectual properties or when they may seem to have it, cases where the texts are in foreign language etc. In these kind of cases, many other competitions simply disqualify the entries, and this burns your money and time you put into making a nomination, so as a respect of your resources, creative wisdom and time, we have a system called A.C.E. (Automated Corrections and Enhancements) where you can tell us (there is a menu in your control panel that allows you to update its settings) what we can do when we encounter a problem with your presentation; can we fix it, or because of legal requirements, even if there are issues, we are perhaps not supposed to touch anything, and based on your guidance, we follow you and fix whatever we can fix, and we charge you with “Microfines”, these are very little amounts, generally a small percentile of nomination fees that are symbolic amounts that show we have intervened, and you can disable “Microfines” by turning of Automated Corrections and Enhancements (closing all A.C.E. settings so we don’t fix anything and just disqualify next time, but also no “microfines”) and also because we truly love and respect you we have a “Right to Be Forgiven Policy” where up to three (3) times per account, you can just ask to cancel the “microfines” arising from our interventions, and to a certain amount per year, as noted in our “Right to Be Forgiven Policy” page. This is yet another thing we did that respects you and makes the competition ethical and just. Instead of immediately disqualifying your submission due to technical or minor compliance issues, the A.C.E. system provides our entrants a fair opportunity to have their submissions corrected by us (we do the corrections as much as we can such as fixing image resolutions, translating texts etc based on your permissions you set). A.C.E. system respects your time, effort, and financial investment, preventing unnecessary losses especially when you combine it with our preliminary review already. We understand that mistakes can happen to anyone, and a rigid system that penalizes entrants for simple oversights isn't truly fair or just. By performing small, corrections with clear and minimal microfines, by fixing your presentations, within the constraints you allow us, and also offering you the option to waive any such fees, to a certain amount, up to three times per entrant, we hope you understand that A' Design Award demonstrates empathy, fairness, and flexibility. With A.C.E. system, you maintain control by setting your own preferences within the A.C.E. settings. Thus, the A' Design Award respects your autonomy and creative wisdom, ensuring corrections align strictly with your choices, brand requirements, further promoting justice through transparency and consent. Our Right to Be Forgiven Policy explicitly acknowledges human error and allows your forgiveness multiple times. Our Right to Be Forgiven Policy aligns with principles of justice, recognizing that genuine fairness involves not just rules, but understanding, empathy, and reasonable accommodation of mistakes. A' Design Award’s A.C.E. settings ensures that minor issues (such as accidental branding or formatting errors) do not overshadow your genuine creativity or innovation. A.C.E. Settings keeps the focus solely on merit and design quality rather than on superficial errors, preserving the A' Design Award & Competition’s integrity and ethical commitment. By incorporating fairness, empathy, transparency, and autonomy, through A.C.E. System and Right to Be Forgiven Policy, the A' Design Award enhances justice, ensuring entrants are evaluated purely on design merit rather than penalized unnecessarily for minor procedural errors. We hope you find and see our A.C.E. Settings and Right to Be Forgiven Policy as a genuinely thoughtful, empathetic and deeply considerate piece of our equilibrium that demonstrate our absolute and clear commitment to fairness when it comes to design evaluation.

Jury Agreement and Jury Identification for Fairness, Ethical and Meritocratic Evaluation
A' Design Award requires Jurors to read and agree to our Jury Member agreement, and also we run a process to identify juror’s identities. At A' Design Award, identifying our jurors and requiring them to explicitly sign our comprehensive Jury Agreement greatly contributes to our ongoing effort to create a fair, ethical, and meritocratic evaluation process. First, we request jurors to provide government-issued identification to verify their identities. Why is this helpful? Because ethical judging begins with trust and accountability. By verifying identities, we aim to confirm that our jurors truly are who they claim to be, qualified, experienced professionals, academics, journalists, or entrepreneurs. Although this cannot completely eliminate all risks, it certainly helps reduce potential conflicts of interest or unethical conduct, enhancing transparency and helping entrants feel confident that qualified individuals are evaluating their designs. Especially because when they sign the jury agreement, and since we also verify their identities, this creates a legal deterrent. A' Design Award’s detailed Jury Agreement complements our identification process by clearly outlining our expectations and jurors' responsibilities. Jurors explicitly agree to uphold confidentiality and impartiality guidelines to the best of their ability. A' Design Award jurors, by signing and agreeing our jury agreement, promise to respect your confidential design submissions and to avoid misusing or sharing your intellectual property. We designed and created our jury agreement to strongly discourage unethical practices such as misuse of intellectual property, unfair biases, or favoritism. Our Jury Agreement further guides jurors on how to ethically manage potential biases or conflicts, instructing them clearly to disclose whenever they recognize a design or entrant personally. (Jury members can simply bypass voting designs they recognize, this way their votes are not counted for that specific design). The Jury Agreement also demonstrates to you, as our entrants, that we sincerely care about the integrity of our competition. Even though we cannot guarantee absolute security or perfect impartiality, our rigorous process provides significant reinforcement toward creating an environment of fairness. By clearly identifying jurors and requiring their explicit commitment to our Jury Agreement, we actively strengthen A' Design Award & Competition’s integrity and fairness. We take all these precautions and make jury agree to our agreement and also verify the juror’s identities because we genuinely care about ethical judging and meritocratic recognition. We hope you find our juror identification process and juror’s agreement as ethical and responsible tools that make A' Design Award, yet more fair and ethical, especially considering the fact that our juror’s agreement requires meritocratic, fair, unbiased evaluation of your good design work.

Independent and Ethical Governance
The A' Design Award operates independently, free from undue influence or commercial interests. Our ethical stance and detailed methodology prevents any form of corruption, favoritism, nepotism, or dishonesty from affecting the outcome of your entries. We are completely financially independent, we don’t take money from any country, any special interest group, any religious organization, any government organization, any brand and since we don’t have any kind of financial ties to foreign governments, interest groups, religions or political organizations, we are able to organize our competition in a truly independent, impartial, sovereign, self-sufficient, self-reliant, self-governing, unbiased, unprejudiced, nonpartisan and apolitical way. Of course, as we are organizing the A' Design Award in Italy, as an Italian entity, we are bound by Italian and European laws, and this is also good for you as both Italian and EU laws give great importance for intellectual properties and fair competition. A' Design Award is organized since 2008 with the aim of creating the world a better place with good design, we have synthetically engineered the A' Design Award, as you can clearly see, and we have designed each and every detail to be fair, ethical, just, meritocratic, balanced to help truly determine, recognize, and award the very best designs worldwide. With our technical design that brings together preliminary review process, subsidy and support policies for entrants, presentation recovery settings, extremely large Grand Jury Panel, blind peer-review process, anonymous voting on pre-established criteria, jury agreement and identification, license and declarations from participants, fair promotion of winning entries via vast media network, equal opportunities, highly detailed documentation and established methodologies, employment of statistical methods, research based transparent evaluation criteria, highly experienced and culturally diverse jury, juror compartmentalization and isolation during voting, among many other intelligent and diligent systems, we help reduce bias in evaluation of entries, increase the fairness of evaluation and organize one of the world’s most ethical, just, meritocratic and fair competitions, because we care your good design and its role in shaping a better future. Taken together, our measures form a transparent, independent, impartial and merit-based system where creativity and good design alone define success. We have gone to extraordinary lengths to structure our process around fairness, transparency, and inclusivity. The Independent and Ethical Governance of the A’ Design Award is what the last pillar that enables our meritocratic structure to function without compromise. Because we are financially independent and refuse funding and influence from governments, corporations, political groups, brands or religious organizations, we operate free of hidden agendas and external pressure. Our independence ensures that jury decisions cannot be swayed by sponsorship, lobbying, or backroom deals. Moreover, our vision and mission to create a better world with good design, and our ethical governance principles, structures and tools, adds an added layer of meritocratic excellence: jurors must sign agreements, provide verified identities, and follow strict impartiality and confidentiality rules, while their votes are monitored with statistical checks to prevent collusion or bias. Votes are cast anonymously following blind peer-review process, jurors cast votes isolated and compartmentalized and in a way that protects both the entrants and the jurors, helping jurors vote without getting pressured by peers and helping entrants get their entries voted solely on their intrinsic design qualities. Our research driven criteria, anonymous evaluation create a sovereign, ethically bound model that is able to identify good design. A' Design Award is therefore extremely meritocratic, fair, ethical, unbiased, transparent, impartial, objective, equitable, just, accountable, trustworthy, independent, principled, integrity-driven, honorable, conscientious, respectful, balanced, inclusive and authentic. We are able to say all these, because we did undertake and implemented a truly significant number of evaluation frameworks, governance mechanisms and integrity safeguards. Moreover, at the very end, please remember, we provide real support to guide and assist entrants throughout our meritocratic entry process, and we also provide access to our ombudsman that you can turn to for help or resolution whenever needed, this in addition to our feedback mechanism where you can tell us what you need, to help organize an even more fair, more meritocratic and ethical competition that truly recognize outstanding designs solely on their merits.

Equal Opportunity and Community Support Initiatives for Absolutely Meritocratic Recognition
In this page, we list all sorts of things we do for meritocratic evaluation and consequent meritocratic promotion, but what are they worth if not everyone could join? To ensure everyone can join the A' Design Award, regardless of their wealth, nationality, race, political affiliation or background, we have gone above and beyond by creating a rich ecosystem of opportunities to participate A' Design Award completely free of charge; we call these the Community Support Initiatives, and we openly and transparently list all over three dozen free-to-join pathways because genuine meritocracy demands genuine accessibility. You could become a Design Ambassador and represent your university to earn free A' Design Award nomination tickets, apply for our Award Scholarship if you are a talented designer without financial means, or represent Underrepresented Nations or Underrepresented Categories to enrich global diversity. We invite you to blog about A' Design Award winners, get involved with cultural events, suggest talented individuals, or participate in Creative Duels. You might also engage through our A' Design Challenge, Design Competition Surveys, or Tradeshow Surveys to win A' Design Award nomination ticket opportunities, you may further crowdfund your participation, or even leverage the goodwill of your clients which we teach you how to do. At A' Design Award, we have programs designed specifically to reward your good deeds, human kindness, and acts of goodwill through initiatives like Recompense for Good Deeds and Karma Against All Odds. With Second Chance Policy we help you if you lose especially if you got a preliminary score discrepancy. We also openly embrace inclusivity through Global Design Patronage, Low Income Sponsorship, Purchasing Power Parity Adjustment, and special promotions during Women in Design Week, ensuring that less privileged but highly talented individuals receive equal chances. Moreover, A' Design Award built opportunities for you to earn free nominations by creating testimonial videos, showcasing winner works, contributing to our Design Encyclopedia, and many other creative paths that reflect our belief that everyone matters and everyone deserves equal consideration. Why do we do all this? Because genuine ethics demands genuine inclusivity, genuine meritocracy demands genuine equality of opportunity, and genuine democracy in design recognition requires us to dismantle barriers and biases related to wealth, power, nationality, and social status. Thus, no one can ever accuse us of playing a pay-to-win game when we have painstakingly built an amazing comprehensive system of free nomination opportunities to A' Design Award, genuinely leveling the playing field and allowing creativity, talent, ingenuity, and societal benefit alone to define success. At A' Design Award, meritocracy is engraved to our soul and foundation of what we do. Combine this with the fact that there are no “contractually obliged winner fees” for Professional and Digital Edition laureates, you will understand that this is absolutely ethical, not just during evaluation, but the whole process is societal, it is democratic, A' Design Award allows you to join, whoever you are, no matter who you are. Even if you pay, if you are a student, you pay less than professionals, professionals pay less than large creative agencies, and large creative agencies pay less than multinational brands and large enterprises, this tiered fee structure, helps subsidize the entries of professionals, young designers, and even agencies, by imposing a larger nomination fee to big brands, this makes the A' Design Award an exceptional place to be, if you want to have an equal footing with the giants of the world. Moreover, in many cases, we work with media and try to get agreements that in return for media to publish our winners we would give them free nomination tickets to distribute to their readers, this helps winners get more publicity and gives opportunity for a wider more diverse audience to join. Here we always said “nomination tickets” and not “entry tickets” if you notice, because the first round of “entry” to A' Design Award is completely free of charge; you create a free account, you upload your work for free, whoever you are, and then after 72 hours, we give you a free, preliminary assessment of your good design and its presentation, we teach you how to improve your presentation (and doing so is important because if we can uplift the quality of all presentations, this ensures jury in the end, votes all entries without being biased by the presentations, thus making the competition more fair), and we provide you a likelihood of your success; so if you get a score of 0 to 5, we hint you, don’t spend money, don’t join. If you get a preliminary score of 6 to 10, we say, join. If you join with a good score and don’t win in the end (as you understand it is all based on final jury score – so the preliminary score does not guarantee a win and is only a likelihood), if the score vs result discrepancy is too high, the Second Chance Policy provides you replacement ticket. Moreover, by teaching you how to improve your presentation, we are also educating you free of charge, teaching you how to better represent your design; remember architects, furniture designs, industrial engineers are not necessarily all are graphic designers and not every design field knows how to make perfect presentations, so we help you by teaching how to do it better, guiding you for a better outcome, the preliminary score is provided to you completely free of charge, it is absolutely anonymous also (preliminary jurors don’t know you), and it is confidential (we don’t tell anyone) and also it does not create obligations to nominate your work (no obligation to pay for a nomination), you at your sole discretion decide. Now combining the free to join ways, the preliminary evaluation and judging mechanism, the tiered approach of subsidizing young designers and professionals, you should understand that this is love, it is simply our love and respect for your good design, we designed this system because we love you, your good design, and we clearly see the value your good design has in creating a better world. We hope you appreciate our almost divide love for your good design and the many ways how we make the A' Design Award highly inclusive, representative, barrier-free, democratic, honorable, dignified, socially responsible, nurturing, conscientious and welcoming, by doing so, we can truly have a fair, ethical, meritocratic competition, open to all. With A' Design Award, you know your recognition is truly valuable, because it is not that everyone could win, but everyone could join, and everyone with exceptional design could potentially win, our open approach makes the A' Design Award a true pillar of fairness, an ethical sanctuary that stands resolutely against the unjust tides of pay-to-win awards. A' Design Award is a lighthouse, guiding creators from every corner of the globe toward the shores of genuine excellence, merit-based recognition and universal respect. At A' Design Award, your success is pure, meaningful, and authentic, earned solely through creativity, innovation, and societal impact, not purchased by wealth, nor biased by power. Everyone with good design can win, and that’s what makes us extremely powerful. Please understand that our vast, comprehensive network of free-to-join opportunities represents a phenomenal level of commitment to fairness as we have created a genuine ecosystem to actively facilitate equal participation, dismantling barriers based on wealth, geography, status, or influence especially when you consider the range and creativity of A' Design Award’s community initiatives, from scholarships and design ambassador programs to crowdfunding and rewarding good deeds which illustrate thoughtfulness, generosity, and genuine ethical intention. We hope, you see that our fee structures, subsidizing students and smaller creatives with higher fees from larger corporations, as remarkably fair, economically sensible and ethically admirable. We hope you use our free and confidential preliminary judging and scoring system which helps you obtain a free assessment of your design, also serving as an education program, as part of our genuine care for good design where we actively guide, educate, and empower participants to improve. We hope you see our direct acknowledgment and active dismantling of systemic inequalities underlining our ethical clarity and moral courage. Genuine meritocracy is rooted deeply in dignity, and that’s why A' Design Award ensure every entrant feels respected, dignified, and welcomed, and that is why we created all these systems, to ensure our competition and its inclusivity enriches the global design industry by genuinely reflecting global creativity and cultural diversity. At A' Design Award, we actively create possibilities for a better, fairer, meritocratic and more inclusive world through good design, this is a competition that you will be proud to win. A' Design Award is good competition. A' Design Award is open, fair, ethical, just, meritocratic and barrier-free, inclusive competition.

A' Design Award & Competition is meritocratic, fair, ethical and just thanks to anonymous peer-review process where your entries are voted by a grand jury panel of experienced design masters from across the globe.