It’s hard to believe we are already ending the first quarter of 2025, but a new year brings fresh opportunities and renewed goals! One of Tomorrow Lab’s objectives for 2025 is to get back into entering our projects into various design competitions. There are so many benefits in entering into design awards, from visibility and marketing, to industry benchmarking, to potential global recognition. With so many options for competitions, we want to share with our community our findings, what has worked for us and what our goals are for the remainder of the year in this regard. We have already sent out four Tomorrow Lab projects in the first quarter of this year for competition, and we can’t wait to see what comes of that and others in the near future!
What Product Design Awards Are There?
Last year, in preparation for knowing we were going to apply to a plethora of awards competitions, we scoured our resources and the internet to find the best options specifically for product design and technology. We came up with a top 8 that we believe meets our requirements of offering categories in which our projects fit into, industry recognition, reasonable entry fees and competitions that span globally to ensure our projects get seen by a vast array of judges and participants.
Adi Compasso d’Oro – International Design Awards – This competition has a theme that changes every year and is based in Italy with entries allowed globally. The 2025 theme is ‘Designing Future Society for Our Lives,’ with subthemes ‘Saving Lives,’ ‘Empowering Lives,’ and ‘Connecting Lives.’ The entry or product must have been launched into the market during the past four years.
Dieline Awards – A competition for innovative packaging exclusively! Based in New York City, this competition is open to global entries and the product must have been created, produced or launched into the market within the last approximately year and a half prior.
Good Design Awards – Based in Chicago, this 75 year old virtually judged and global entry competition does not require the physical product. The product must have been launched into the market within the last two years.
FastCo Design Awards / Innovation by Design Awards – The renowned US magazine Fast Company hosts an annual design competition open for global entry and has three main categories: ‘Experimental’ for concepts and prototypes, ‘General Excellence’ for innovative contemporary designs and ‘Impact’ for any design that has ‘major impact.’
iF Design Awards – Based in Germany, this renowned competition is open for global entry and products must have been launched into the market less than two years prior. This competition offers a broad range of categories from architecture, interior design, product design to UX/UI.
The One Club – The One Show Awards – American and New York City based competition with a very broad range of categories. New categories for 2025 are ‘Creative use of AI,’ ‘Creative Effectiveness,’ and ‘For Good.’ Global entries are welcome, the product must have been launched into the market within the past year and the physical product is required for the Product Design category.
The One Club – Annual Award in Design & Craft – In their 104th year, this separate competition also boasts broad categories such as Digital Media, Gaming, Photography and Product Design. Red Dot Awards – Based in Germany, this well known design competition does require the physical product for entry. The product must have been launched into the market within the prior two years. Their main three categories for global entries are Product Design, Design Concept and Brands & Communication Design.
What Are the Benefits of Applying to Design Awards?
No matter what size firm, if there is an outstanding product, why not have it be seen and celebrated even in the smallest of ways! Submitting that product to a design competition is a great way to get in front of fresh eyes, along with many other positive benefits.
Simply entering into a competition creates a great marketing opportunity for any firm or brand. An announcement can be made on the Company’s socials and website that participation is happening, and can provide updates there with any winnings or accolades. Ensuring the proper credits is important, credits to all who worked on the design and any outside stakeholders as well. Ensuring these credits are attributed correctly furthers the initial reach of the announcement, and could turn into other opportunities down the road. If an award is won, the marketing opportunities expand greatly – being involved in any presentation ceremonies, discussions in print (both digitally and physical media) and could open discussions for potential new partnerships that otherwise may have been challenging to acquire.
All participants of an awards competition also receive the benefit of getting fresh eyes on their project or product. While direct feedback should not be expected, getting the firm, brand and specific product to be reviewed by various industry professionals is valuable in and of itself. Should the same firm or brand decide to enter the same competition in a following year there is a good chance that that information could be passed along and some of the judges could be participating again. Being judged alongside industry heavy hitters and respected executives should be seen as productive, worthwhile and potentially beneficial to the Company in the short and long term. Should the product receive any kind of recognition or award, it will speak volumes across the industry in which it pertains. The potential positive impacts this outcome will have for the Company are exponential – making it always worthwhile to participate in any competition.
Finally, participating but even just reviewing past award winners will allow participants to gain a wealth of knowledge regarding industry benchmarking. What types of products are being made in your field or industry? What sparked the judges’ interest in the winning designs? Whether the entry won or not, it is incredibly important to review what did win, not only in the category your product was submitted to, but all product categories and any ‘best in show.’ Read through those winners’ product descriptions, look through their imagery and videography to learn what sets them apart so you can go into the next design competition with even more knowledge than you had before!
What is the Best Way to Apply?
For Q1 this year, Tomorrow Lab decided to enter three projects to Red Dot in Germany, and one to the packaging competition, Dieline. In anticipation of submitting the applications, we made sure our website had up to date pages for each project. We made sure all the projects that were submitted aligned with each competition’s requirements and decided about a month prior to applications opening which exact projects we would submit.
For Red Dot, we decided to enter the Belay Medlocker®, the SymplBrush Jr. and the Power Serum Duo by Exponent. These three span very different industries, allowing for vast visibility for the Tomorrow Lab brand at this competition and showcases the broad range of capabilities Tomorrow Lab has. For Dieline, we decided to submit a just-launched into market product, OK Capsule’s Pill Packaging System and wanted to highlight the sustainability aspects of the project and product.
There are many considerations to take into account when deciding to apply to an awards competition. Firstly, decide what projects or products you want to enter, as that will help determine which exact competition you may want to enter. You will want to match each product to the best potential competition, for example many have a packaging category, however Dieline Awards is specifically for packaging. Create a list of all the awards competitions you may want to enter and then create a rough calendar of when applications open, close and winners are announced for each one, so you never miss an opportunity to apply when that time comes. Go ahead and create the log-ins and accounts for each competition and in that process also sign up for email blasts to stay informed. It is helpful to create a spreadsheet to log all competition information, with dates, entry fee amounts, potential projects to enter and the imagery and description requirements for each as they differ greatly. When you are ready to apply, ensure if a physical entry of the product is required and if so, make a shipping plan. For example, Red Dot requires physical entries to be shipped to their Germany headquarters and will require special shipping instructions and if you do not do international shipping often, it may be worthwhile to work with a third party shipper to ensure it gets through customs and the final destination smoothly. Always make sure that the project description is to the point, and cleared with all stakeholders beforehand. Peruse previous imagery used in past competitions and make sure the imagery you are going to use is of the same quality and all specs updated to each competition’s requirements. Apply as early as possible to save on costs, and some competitions allow you to pay in advance and then upload the final application later. And finally, have patience and give yourself grace! These competitions are competitive and there can be quite the time lag between submission and final announcements. Know that if you do not win the first time, try entering the product in another competition and/or try again the following year with a brand new entry! We are crossing our fingers for 2025 and will do the same for you! 😀
For a throwback, Exponent won the Dieline award in 2023 for Best in Sustainability for the Tomorrow Lab designed ‘On Demand Skincare Pro Packaging System.’
For more information on the newest tech design out there – check out Tomorrow Lab
Founder, Ted Ullrich’s journey at CES this past January!