Danish Design Award:
We celebrate the difference design can make
How can design change our lives for the better?
The five values
The Danish Design Award celebrates innovative design solutions and their creators, highlighting the potential to shape the future and drive significant global change.
The Danish Design Award winners are chosen based on our five design values, representing design’s most crucial role and potential today. We celebrate design solutions because of their unique and stand-alone quality and experience. Boxes and defined categories do not enhance that.
Our highly qualified jury finds and qualifies the winners based on our design values: Do no harm, Pursue beauty, Lead the way, Prove your impact, and Solve problems worth solving.
The Danish Design Award is a partnership between DDC – Danish Design Center and the trade association Design denmark. The award has celebrated outstanding Danish design achievements since its launch in its current shape in 2016.
Danish design creates positive change
Design shapes our daily lives, businesses, and society much more than many Danes are aware of – and that’s what we’re focusing on with the Danish Design Award.
There’s a common thread in Danish design that doesn’t concern whether it’s a chair, lamp, or something else entirely. Today, we see how Danish design can just as well be a company’s business model or designing our society. But what unites it all is a deep respect for materials and each other, which transcends design categories and solutions.
That’s why Danish design is internationally recognized for its ability to create positive change for both people and the planet – and that’s precisely the type of design solutions we want to celebrate with the Danish Design Award.
Category-less award to focus on solutions
In 2024, the Danish Design Award is relaunched as a category-less award. Instead, seven prizes will be awarded: five main prizes called The Awards, one Best of the Best, and one Young Ideas award.
The prizes will be awarded and qualified by the year’s jury. The jury consists of several members from the international design community, selected by DDC and Design denmark.
What unites the winners is that they must show how to create positive change in the world through design. The jury will evaluate submissions based on our five design values: Do no harm, Pursue beauty, Lead the way, Prove your impact, and Solve problems worth solving.
The five values point to Danish design as both an ethical and craftsmanship-based endeavor – and at the same time, we want to celebrate the design that makes a concrete difference. We’ve assembled a very competent jury with deep expertise in the various design disciplines – and that’s why we can put values and not categories in the center.
Do no harm
Pursue Beauty
Lead the way
Prove your impact
Solve problems worth solving
Do no harm
Pursue Beauty
Lead the way
Prove your impact
Solve problems worth solving
Do no harm
Pursue Beauty
Lead the way
Prove your impact
Solve problems worth solving
"What unites this year's winners is that they must show how to create positive change in the world through design. The jury will evaluate submissions based on our five design values: Do no harm, Pursue beauty, Lead the way, Prove your impact, and Solve problems worth solving"
Martin Delfer
CEO, DDC – Danish Design Center
More than just an award
The Danish Design Award is a non-commercial award. And we aspire to be more than just an award. Our goal is to set a long-term agenda that inspires, raises awareness, and encourages the use of design in businesses and across all facets of society to do better.
Another equally important goal is to highlight and bolster Denmark’s leading position in the design field and use the Danish Design Award to showcase superior design solutions.
The partnership behind the Danish Design Award brings together the business community, the design industry, and the entire country for an annual design event that celebrates the difference design can make and pays tribute to design.
For the winners
The branding value is paramount. Winners and finalists of the Danish Design Award gain significant profiling and co-branding opportunities. From the moment finalists and winners are publicly announced, award-winners can use the Danish Design Award logo with the phrase ‘Danish Design Award Winner 2024’, and finalists can use ‘Danish Design Award Finalist 2024’ in all their marketing efforts for the winning design solutions.
Additionally, they will be featured on danishdesignaward.com with a dedicated profile, including photos and the jury citation for each award-winning solution.
Although the Danish Design Award is a Danish event, it has an international outlook and caliber. Thus, finalists and award-winning companies can enjoy substantial branding benefits in both domestic and international markets, alongside positive impacts on employee motivation and export potential.
Let’s celebrate the difference design can make!
"The five values point to Danish design as both an ethical and craftsmanship-based endeavor – and at the same time, we want to celebrate the design that makes a concrete difference. We've assembled a very competent jury with deep expertise in the various design disciplines – and that's why we can put values before categories in the center"
Henrik Lübker
CEO, Design denmark
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