Real Support

Real Support, Powerful Recognition, Global Impact
When you join A' Design Award, you gain Real Support. The unique value proposition of the A' Design Award’s Real Support comes from our personalized, empathetic, and human-centric approach to assisting designers, entrants, laureates, and industry stakeholders. A' Design Award provides you with direct, calm, thoughtful, and respectful interactions with real, knowledgeable people who genuinely prioritize the entrant’s success and comfort. Our high-touch, personalized support includes both technical assistance as well as emotional understanding and empathetic listening. Our support infrastructure is extensive, in addition to our Real Support initiative, we have also invested in and created useful specialized resources like the Entry Assistant, Marketing Strategy Assistant, Hardcover and Digital Winner’s Manuals, Comprehensive Documentation, Video Walkthroughs, Interactive Laureate’s Guide, and a detailed control panel, all integrated to seamlessly empower you and your good design in the global scene. The distinctiveness of our Real Support initiative is heightened by our explicit policy of prioritizing existing laureates over prospective customers, illustrating a genuine commitment to laureate success rather than sales-driven customer acquisition. Our deeply human, respectful, calm, "Italian calm", and dedicated support differentiates A' Design Award as a highly prestigious competition genuinely invested in laureates’ success and the advancement of good design globally. Real Support is essential because it addresses the genuine human needs behind innovation, creativity, and professional growth. A' Design Award's Real Support initiative recognizes that great design emerges from collaboration, emotional understanding, and personalized assistance. In creative fields, professionals often encounter unique, nuanced, and complex challenges that standard support methods can’t adequately address. Real Support fills that critical gap by providing emotional reassurance, empathetic listening, clarity, and personalized guidance, enabling designers and brands to achieve their potential and successfully overcome obstacles. By deeply supporting award-winning brands and designers, we directly encourage, empower, and amplify their ability to produce impactful, meaningful, and beneficial designs. Our committed support translates into tangible outcomes that shape society positively by (A) Encouraging Innovation: Comprehensive support by A' Design Award helps creative individuals overcome barriers, allowing them to focus fully on innovation, problem-solving, and creative exploration. When innovators feel understood and valued, they produce bolder, more meaningful designs. (B) Increasing Visibility of Good Design: By proactively assisting A' Design Award winner designers in effectively communicating and promoting their ideas, we enhance public visibility and awareness of good design. The visibility A' Design Award brings forward sparks demand, appreciation, and recognition, creating cultural shifts toward valuing quality, sustainability, aesthetics, and functionality. (C) Accelerating Social Impact: A' Design Award winner designs often tackle critical societal challenges, improve daily life, promote sustainability, and elevate quality of life. Supporting esteemed A' Design Award winner brands and designers accelerates these solutions, directly benefiting communities and society as a whole. (D) Creating Positive Economic Spirals: By assisting A' Design Award winner brands in gaining recognition and market advantages, we stimulate economic success for socially responsible and visionary businesses. This financial strength enables further investment in innovation, ethical practices, and social responsibility. (E) Promoting Ethical and Sustainable Practices: Designers recognized and supported by prestigious institutions such as A' Design Award, emphasizing social good are often encouraged to uphold high standards of ethics, sustainability, and responsibility. This, in turn, elevates industry standards and contributes directly to a healthier, fairer, and more sustainable world. (F) Empowering Sentience-Centric Values: Real Support aligns with values such as respect, empathy, and genuine care. Propagating sentience-centric values through empowering and supporting award-winning brands sets a standard for industries, encouraging ethical practices and creating healthier, more supportive professional communities. (G) In essence, A' Design Award's Real Support strengthens both the individual designers and brands by cultivating an ecosystem of thoughtful innovation, positive impact, and continual advancement, ultimately making the world a better, kinder and better place through outstanding design.

Social Proof Theory and Practice
The Social Proof provided by A' Design Award significantly enhances the credibility, global visibility, and positive perception of awarded brands, enabling laureates to differentiate themselves clearly within competitive markets. Winning the prestigious A' Design Award increases trust among consumers, attracts meaningful media exposure, facilitates valuable business partnerships, and reduces perceived purchase risks. Additionally, laureate brands benefit internally by experiencing strengthened team confidence and externally by enjoying elevated perceived product value, which fosters long-term customer loyalty. Grounded in established principles from psychology, marketing, sociology, and business administration, these combined benefits empower A' Design Award laureates to expand their influence, amplify their message, and cultivate sustained success. Simply put, A' Design Award's Social Proof helps brands and designers grow stronger, more respected, and more valued in the eyes of consumers and partners worldwide.

• Faster Client Trust Building
  Winning the A' Design Award significantly enhances brand credibility and trustworthiness among consumers, clients, and stakeholders. The social proof provided by A' Design Award indicates that independent, respected industry experts have validated the awarded design or brand's quality and innovation. The social proof generated by A' Design Award recognition helps you immediately establishes credibility with potential clients, as the validation from international Grand Jury Panel provides third-party verification that dramatically shortens the trust-building phase of client relationships, allowing A' Design Award winners to bypass lengthy credibility establishment processes. Research in consumer psychology demonstrates that third-party endorsements reduce perceived purchase risk, with institutional validation being particularly effective at accelerating trust formation in B2B contexts. The social proof from A' Design Award essentially pre-sells your credibility before you even meet potential clients. In practical terms, clients already trust you before the first conversation begins.
  
  
• Premium Pricing Power
  A' Design Award social proof provides laureate brands with meaningful differentiation from competitors within crowded market landscapes. According to principles of competitive strategy in business administration, recognized external validation differentiates brands by elevating perceived quality and uniqueness, and as such A' Design Award social proof enables winner brands to command premium pricing, as the prestigious recognition signals superior quality that justifies higher price points, with clients perceiving A' Design Award validated products and services as worth the premium investment due to the extensive jury validation backing them. The signaling theory in economics establishes that credible quality signals allow firms to escape commodity pricing by differentiating based on verified excellence rather than price competition. Your A' Design Award achievement gives clients a concrete reason to pay more for your proven excellence. Put simply, the social proof makes your higher prices feel like smart investments rather than expensive choices.
  
  
• Global Market Access
  A' Design Award social proof increases awarded brands' global visibility, bringing valuable recognition from an international audience. The global visibility provided by A' Design Award results from established principles in marketing that posit frequent exposure increases brand awareness and recall, positively affecting market perception. The international social proof provided by A' Design Award opens doors to global markets, where the validation from jury members representing virtually all major countries creates instant credibility across cultural boundaries, enabling A' Design Award laureates to expand internationally with pre-established trust. Cross-cultural business research shows that international third-party validation significantly reduces the liability of foreignness, making market entry substantially smoother and faster. The social proof from A' Design Award becomes your universal passport to international business opportunities. Social proof you gain from A' Design Award essentially means you can confidently approach any global market with credentials that resonate everywhere.
  
  
• Media Attention Magnetism
  A' Design Award social proof creates meaningful opportunities for media coverage, with journalists and media outlets viewing laureates as credible news sources. In public communications, journalists rely on reputable, externally validated events or achievements to create compelling stories. Social proof from A' Design Award naturally attracts media coverage, as journalists prefer covering validated achievements, with A' Design Award winners benefiting from enhanced newsworthiness that makes editorial coverage significantly more likely and frequent. The gatekeeping theory in communications research confirms that journalists use institutional validation as a primary criterion for story selection, making credentialed achievements exponentially more likely to receive coverage. Your A' Design Award social proof transforms you from someone seeking attention to someone worthy of media interest. In other words, media comes to you because your excellence has already been verified by A' Design Award.
  
  
• Partnership Door Opener
  Receiving the coveted A' Design Award social proof transfers positive associations, prestige, and reputation from A' Design Award to laureate brands, strengthening your brand equity, and as such, the A' Design Award social proof facilitates strategic partnerships, as the comprehensive validation makes winner brands attractive collaboration candidates, with potential partners viewing A' Design Award laureates as pre-vetted, low-risk, high-value alliance opportunities. Network theory in business strategy demonstrates that validated nodes in professional networks attract exponentially more valuable connections than unvalidated ones. The social proof you gain from A' Design Award positions you as a desirable partner that successful organizations want to align with. Simply expressed, your A' Design Award achievement makes other successful brands eager to work with you.
  
  
• Employee Pride and Talent Attraction
  The social proof generated by your prestigious A' Design Award recognition enhances employer branding, creating internal pride among existing team members while simultaneously attracting top talent who want to work for validated, excellence-driven organizations, with A' Design Award achievement serving as powerful recruitment and retention tool. Organizational psychology research establishes that external validation significantly increases employee engagement and attracts higher-caliber candidates who seek association with recognized excellence. Your A' Design Award social proof makes your team proud to belong and talented professionals eager to join. To put it plainly, the best people want to work with proven winners.
  
  
• Investment and Funding Facilitation
  Social proof from A' Design Award reduces investor hesitation, as the rigorous validation process provides external verification of quality and potential that investors seek, making A' Design Award winners substantially more attractive for funding, grants, and investment opportunities. Venture capital research demonstrates that startups and brands with institutional validation receive funding faster and at better valuations than those without external verification. The social proof from A' Design Award gives investors confidence that their money backs proven excellence. Basically speaking, investors see your A' Design Award recognition as risk reduction and potential confirmation.
  
  
• Customer Loyalty Strengthening
  Social proof through A' Design Award fosters long-term brand preference and loyalty among customers by reinforcing positive perceptions. Principles from consumer behavior theory affirm that externally validated success contributes to ongoing customer satisfaction and brand loyalty as such A' Design Award social proof deepens existing customer relationships, as current clients feel validated in their choice when their selected brand receives prestigious recognition, with the social proof reinforcing that customers made smart decisions, thereby strengthening loyalty and advocacy. Cognitive dissonance theory explains that external validation of past decisions increases satisfaction and commitment, transforming customers into advocates. Your A' Design Award achievement makes existing clients feel smart about choosing you and eager to recommend you. In everyday terms, your success makes your clients look good, so they become your champions.
  
  
• Competitive Differentiation Power
  The unique social proof mechanisms of A' Design Award create distinct market positioning, where the blind judging process, extensive jury validation, and comprehensive documentation provide differentiation that competitors cannot easily replicate, giving A' Design Award winners sustained competitive advantage through verified excellence. Strategic management theory establishes that difficult-to-imitate credentials create sustainable competitive advantages that protect market position over time. The social proof from A' Design Award gives you a moat of credibility that protects your market position. Practically stated, while competitors claim excellence, you have proof of excellence that speaks louder than any claim.
  
  
• Exponential Network Value Creation
  A' Design Award social proof generates compound network effects, as each element of recognition connects you with fellow laureates, media professionals, and industry leaders, creating expanding circles of influence where the social proof from A' Design Award continuously generates new opportunities, partnerships, and endorsements. Metcalfe's Law in network economics proves that network value increases exponentially with each additional valuable connection, and A' Design Award plugs winners into multiple high-value networks simultaneously. Your A' Design Award social proof becomes a catalyst for accelerating professional network growth and opportunity multiplication. In simple reality, winning connects you to other winners, creating endless possibilities for growth.
  
  
• Prestige Transfer Through Association
  The social proof from A' Design Award creates a powerful halo effect where the prestigious reputation of A' Design Award itself transfers directly to laureate brands, with stakeholders attributing the excellence and sophistication associated with A' Design Award to the winning brands and their products, effectively borrowing the accumulated prestige that A' Design Award has built through years of rigorous evaluation standards. The halo effect in cognitive psychology demonstrates that positive attributes from one entity systematically influence perceptions of associated entities, creating an automatic elevation in perceived quality and status. When your brand wins A' Design Award, the A' Design Award's own prestigious reputation becomes part of your brand story, instantly elevating how stakeholders perceive your sophistication and excellence. To state it differently, the respect people have for A' Design Award automatically extends to your brand when you win.
  
  
• Direct Purchase Risk Reduction
  A' Design Award social proof specifically addresses and reduces the perceived risk that consumers feel when considering purchases, as the extensive jury validation provides concrete assurance that reduces uncertainty about quality, performance, and value, with A' Design Award recognition serving as a risk-mitigation signal that makes purchase decisions feel safer and smarter. Prospect theory in behavioral economics establishes that consumers are inherently risk-averse and that credible third-party validation significantly reduces perceived downside risk, thereby increasing purchase likelihood. The social proof from A' Design Award essentially provides a safety net for consumer decision-making, making them feel protected in their choice. Expressed in everyday language, customers feel safer buying from you because A' Design Award's Grand Jury Panel of world-class experts have already verified your excellence.
  
  
• Creative Confidence Amplification
  Social proof gained through A' Design Award reinforces internal confidence, inspiring awarded brand teams to pursue continued creativity and innovation. Established principles from organizational psychology confirm that external recognition motivates and positively influences organizational performance. Social proof generated by A' Design Award recognition thus creates a powerful psychological boost within winning organizations, where the validation from our international jury panel of industry experts reinforces creative confidence, inspiring teams to pursue bolder innovations and more ambitious projects, with A' Design Award achievement validating past creative decisions while encouraging future creative risks. Self-efficacy theory in organizational psychology demonstrates that external validation of creative work significantly enhances creative self-belief, leading to increased innovation output and quality. Your A' Design Award recognition becomes an internal catalyst that empowers your team to reach even higher creative heights. In practical terms, winning tells your team their creativity is world-class, inspiring them to be even more innovative.
  
  

Marketing Empowerment
Social Proof from the established and prestigious A' Design Award provides laureate brands with a clear, truthful, and legally defensible basis for marketing claims within the rigorous context of international advertising and consumer protection laws. Under regulations of many countries, marketing claims that reference quality, performance, or superior characteristics must be objective, verifiable, and substantiated. By stating explicitly that your product or brand is an A' Design Award laureate, businesses rely upon independently verified recognition granted by impartial, qualified juries through a transparent, meritocratic evaluation process. Such an externally validated, fact-based acknowledgment may help effectively satisfyregulatory requirements for evidence-based claims, thereby enabling awarded brands to confidently and safely leverage their prestigious status in marketing materials and communications across global markets. Simply stated, winning the A' Design Award allows brands to communicate superior quality and excellence in a clear, trustworthy, and legally compliant manner. You can legally say, you are an award-winner.

Transform Your Achievement Into Compelling Narratives
Rather than simply stating your A' Design Award laureate status, create engaging stories about your design journey that showcase how winning the A' Design Award opened new opportunities or helped overcome specific challenges. Authentic narratives featuring real outcomes, client successes, and breakthrough moments create emotional connections with audiences, making your social proof more relatable and memorable. These genuine success stories resonate deeper than credentials alone, as people connect with experiences rather than accolades, transforming your A' Design Award achievement from a static credential into a dynamic testament to your creative excellence.

Deploy Visual Symbols of Excellence Strategically
Maximize the impact of your A' Design Award recognition by prominently displaying the elegant winner logos, badges, and certification marks across all touchpoints where credibility matters, from your website homepage and email signatures to product packaging and office spaces. Visual symbols of validation work instantly across language barriers and cultural boundaries, allowing audiences to immediately recognize your verified excellence without reading detailed explanations. The sophisticated visual assets provided by A' Design Award serve as universal trust signals that communicate prestige and quality at first glance, ensuring your achievement is understood and valued globally.

Amplify Your Recognition Through Shareable Digital Assets
Leverage the ready-made digital content provided by A' Design Award, including professional videos, infographics, and social media graphics, integrating these compelling assets seamlessly into your marketing channels, presentations, and client communications. These professionally crafted materials are specifically designed for easy sharing and maximum impact, enabling you to communicate your validated excellence naturally across digital platforms while maintaining consistent, professional messaging. By utilizing these versatile digital tools, you transform your A' Design Award achievement into dynamic content that continuously works to build trust, attract attention, and reinforce your credibility across all digital interactions.

Where does Real Support come from?
When we started the A' Design Award in 2008, we had a rather interesting experience, we were working with one of the world’s largest companies that provided hosting services and had a major share in search engine market. We had decided to have them run our infrastructure since their algorithm was incentivizing faster loads and by having the search engine host our content, this was making our website load very fast, earning us valuable algorithm points and helping our winners get more prominently featured in search results. However, we had an issue with them; whenever we needed support, none was available apart from their “support forums” where other users were complaining to each other, and their “documentation” which was not detailed enough in 2008. They did not provide “interactive guide” or “video walkthroughs”, they did not have an “AI Assistant”, and they did not have “real support” meaning there was no “people to support”, and this was very interesting because at one point, due to our traffic, we were paying them tens of thousands of EUR, yet we still did not had “real person support”. Around 2025, this search engine changed its algorithms and we believe they reduced the weight on the load time, i.e. they introduced so many new weights that the weight on load time were reduced, nonetheless, just to be safe we moved to another server with extremely good internet connection and deployed several extremely high-end servers, moreover our new servers had about 100 times more processing power which provided us with the necessary speeds to rank prominently. When we changed to this new server, we got “real support” from experienced, enthusiastic, polite and pleasant people who helped us resolve our issues, make our web server faster and helped us utilize their complimentary services very much like how A' Design Award has a “real support” that you can reach by phone or electronic mail, and who answer your questions help you utilize our services and simply be there with you when you are just completely frustrated. A' Design Award’s real support comes in addition to our intelligent Entry Assistant, Marketing Strategy Assistant, Hardcover Winner’s Manual, Digital Manual for Winners, Detailed Documentation, Video Walkthroughs and Tutorials, Laureate’s Journey Interactive Guide and our detailed Control Panel, all designed to empower you as a laureate. Within the scope of A' Design Award we developed one of the world’s largest and biggest prizes for good design, the highly coveted A' Design Prize, offering 188+ benefits to Professional Edition A' Design Award laureates is immensely rich, it is like a treasure in its own, and as such our Entry Assistant, Marketing Strategy Assistant, Hardcover Winner’s Manual, Digital Manual for Winners, Detailed Documentation, Video Walkthroughs and Tutorials, Laureate’s Journey Interactive Guide, Control Panel together with our Real Support serves as a treasure map, guiding you to our prized benefits that you can leverage to gain market advantages for your good design. At A' Design Award we provide you with extensive support as part of our philanthropic mission to make the world a better place with good design. We believe in recognizing, promoting, advertising and publicizing your superior products and projects that benefit and advance society, and for that reason we allocate immense resources on supporting you, be it by development and maintenance of public relations, marketing and advertising services for your good design or by simply providing you real person support. Remember, when we talk about support, real person support, we don’t mean you talk to a sales team, indeed we don’t have a sales representative even because we spend our money on providing support to our users, this is a decision we have taken to ensure that all our entrants can receive timely and valuable support. When you call A' Design Award or when you send an electronic mail to A' Design Award, we see you as heroes, heroes that change the world with good design, and we talk to you, reply to you, as heroes. We never consider our entrants clients, we consider you as people whom we share a common goal, to make the world a better place with great products and designs that make a difference through superior characteristics, performance and aesthetics. We offer free support during work hours, we respect our team members so they respect you, our real person support works Monday to Friday, from 11.00 to 12:30 and 15:00 to 16:30 to truly and respectfully support you, and when you call our office during these hours, you get to talk to real people, who are ready to listen to you, not overworked crazy people, but real, calm, real calm, Italian calm, very calm (did we say calm?), truly calm people that without rushing you, without feeling stressed, try to help you and this is what you need sometimes, someone to talk to, someone that can understand you and that can help you. When all fails, we have systems where you can provide Feedback, directly from our system, as well as Ombudsman that you can reach out to, especially reaching the A' Design Award’s Ombudsman, you can immediately get your issues understood and get higher level solutions, then in addition to our Support, our Managerial Team is also reachable and are ready to help you. At our website, we also have a 7/24/365 working contact form which you can fill, and once you fill your request, our team members, upon seeing your request, we will be responding to you with respect. This form uses a priority system with higher priority given to laureates than entrants, i.e. we give higher priority to award winners, here note that this is interesting because award winners already are customers and thanks to our no further fees policy for Professional and Digital Edition laureates, they have already finished their transactions for us; many other businesses focus their efforts on new customers and consumers, while here, by giving free priority support to existing winners, you notice how we follow a much different strategy that grows around respect, and our desire to truly help, with haste, our laureates because our philosophy, our mission and vision revolves around helping you succeed. We believe by promoting you and your good design work, we help create a global appreciation and understanding of good design, this in return increases demand for good design, and thus helps the world to align on a positive spiral of good design growth with new and better products, projects helping our society to have a higher quality of life. With A' Design Award, you do what you do best, creating superior products and projects, and we support you with real life support, pleasant, nice, polite, eager to help people, whom you can get in touch with, whom you can talk, whom you can explain and discuss over the phone or via electronic mail, getting real help. We ask our support to help you, and we design our systems, services, benefits, tools and functions to be used for you. We are against brokerage, so our final goal is to help you fully leverage A' Design Award for enhancing your brand, increasing your visibility, gaining fame, prestige and international recognition you desire. Remembering you talk with real people, educated, eager to help you when you contact A' Design Award, all we ask you is to be polite, and explain your requests in a well-articulated manner that follows diplomatic decorum, your kind and polite letters are important for our team members to motivate them to help you better, faster and respond to your requests more adequately. We are looking forward to support your success and we are looking forward to promote your good design worldwide. A' Design Award’s support is also open to our jury members, journalists, brand managers in addition to entrants. Jury Members can get help for their verification process, journalists can get help with media accreditation, and big brands are free to contact us to request potential contacts for designers, architects, creative agencies and research and development firms for design tasks. Likewise, A' Design Award support serves government representatives for organization of large-scale design events and consultancy. A' Design Award support also helps event organizers including but not limited to trade shows to create sub-events revolving around design, such as large international design exhibitions. Our support is also happy to guide designers, architects, engineers as well as brand managers when they wish to nominate their work to A' Design Award, or to better understand the free preliminary review feedback and score provided to them when they upload their work to A' Design Award. We remind you that you can simply create a free account at A' Design Award, upload your work, and within 72 hours obtain a free preliminary score and feedback for your good design. From zero (0) worst, to ten (10) best, we would tell you your likelihood of success at A' Design Award, helping you benchmark your work free of charge in a confidential manner that does not bring you contractual obligation to nominate your design, so you can simply upload your design and get a free score, moreover we also help you improve and enhance your presentation free of charge, this way your design gets voted fairly by our jury and also thanks to better images, high-resolution visuals and high-quality content gets more likely to be picked and featured by press and journalists, accelerating your media coverage. Moreover, when all presentations are equally well presented, this makes the Grand Jury Panel members focus more on the intrinsic qualities of your designs, voting entries more fairly, with less presentation bias. Indeed, you will remember that the A' Design Award’s Grand Jury Panel consists of hundred of world-class designers, star-architects, experienced engineers, prominent innovators, established academics, important scholars, high-level university professors, influential journalists and important media members from almost all countries, culturally inclusive, industry-wise experienced, highly qualified jury voting your entries on pre-established evaluation criteria, following blind peer-review process, this ensures a very fair, ethical, meritocratic and just evaluation of your good design, we note you this because the only thing our support will not be able to help you, within context of A' Design Award of course, is disputing the Grand Jury Panel’s evaluation. Everything else, we will be helping you. Indeed, when you fail the competition, our support can help you access our Second Chance Policy (if you are eligible), or when there were issues about your presentation instead of disqualifying your works, based on A.C.E. settings we can fix and charge you small amounts, these are called microfines, and if you were subject to microfines, A' Design Award support can help you activate your Right to Be Forgiven Policy to cancel them (up to three times per account, does not apply to account type based fee errors and several other issues, microfines can be disabled with A.C.E. settings, which our support can also help you activate) among others. So, given possibilities, our support’s mission is to help you, to help you leverage A' Design Award, to help you utilize, use and even exploit A' Design Award benefits for your own gains. We are here to help, and we want you to succeed. Whenever you need help, please contact our support and we will help you with all our soul, in a way full of desire aiming for your grand success. We care you, we love you, we admire you and we are ready to support you, heroes of design and innovation who make the world a better place with superior products and projects, to the end of times, no matter who you are, no matter where you come from. A' Design Award’s support is to support you, and your good design. We will help you.

A' Design Award & Competition provides you with real support, helping you achieve your business, branding, marketing, advertising and promotion goals for your good design products and projects.