Eligibility

Eligibility
The A' Design Award & Competition welcomes participation from brands, companies, creative agencies, product manufacturers, professional designers, and R&D teams worldwide, accepting submissions ranging from products in mass production to new concepts, prototypes, and previously awarded or published designs. There are no restrictions regarding the date of creation for submitted designs, and a dedicated category is available for works released more than 10 years ago. There are no restrictions on entrant age, experience, company size, revenue, or professional status. Both individuals and teams, including non-professionals, may submit. Entrants must hold the legal rights or licenses for their work. All industries are welcome except military and tobacco. There are no constraints on materials, production region, or theme. All cultural works are accepted except political works, posters, or hate speech. Submission descriptions must be in English, while designs themselves may be in any language for any market (for example, software, packaging, literature, or interfaces may be submitted in foreign languages). There is no requirement for market readiness, though products already in the market are generally preferred for their completeness. Certification is required for medical and cosmetics categories. No membership, sponsorship, or partnership is required; only a free account is necessary (note: a free account does not mean nomination is free, but no "member only" restriction applies). Submissions may be entered in multiple categories if each entry features a distinct, category-optimized presentation and main image. Exclusivity is not required, and both first-time and previously submitted entries are welcome.

Open to Everyone
The A' Design Award & Competition is; open to participation from local and international companies, open to participation from local and international individuals, open to students and professionals, open to awarded works, open to previously published works, open to teams, open to companies. Any individual, group or business will qualify. Designers, students and professional individuals can only submit their own designs. Independent participants and designers do not need to have a patent to submit works (for non-patented works, concealed category may be a more proper choice for ensuring you keep patentability of your work) and previously patented designs can also be submitted. Entrants may be individuals, teams or companies. Companies, on the other hand, have to either have the full legal licenses to enter the competition or completely own the intellectual property rights or patents of the relevant works and designs for submission. Companies can submit designs with the relevant list of designers only (companies shall list team members); anonymous submissions from companies may be denied at our sole discretion. Companies have to write down a list of people that took part in the design process, there is a limit on the list of team members that can be noted based on account types. There is no age limit for joining the competition however entrants must have a legal representative if they are under legal age. Products already in mass production are eligible. New concept design stage products and designs created specifically for the competition are eligible. Prototypes are eligible. Non-professional designers and students from non-design fields are also eligible for the competition. There is not a restriction on the country of origin of the participants (except if there may be government imposed restrictions beyond our own). Designs can be in hand-made / manual sketches, renderings, blue-prints, technicals and in any media that makes sense. There is not a restriction on how designers express their designs however there is a pre-defined format for submissions. The A' Design Award & Competition invites entries globally, welcoming submissions from worldwide brands, enterprises, manufacturers, designers, architects, creative agencies, and R&D teams. Submissions can range from fully realized products and built works to prototypes, conceptual ideas, previously published designs, or entirely new creations, without date restrictions. Entrants must possess the legal rights or licenses for their submissions, and entries are accepted across diverse industries, excluding only military-related designs, tobacco products (except certain packaging), explicitly political content, and hate speech. Descriptions must be provided in English, though designs themselves can be in any language. There is no requirement regarding market readiness, although final market-ready submissions are recommended. No membership or sponsorship is necessary; only a free account is required for participation. Certification is mandatory for submissions in medical and cosmetic categories, and may be requested for products claiming specific performance or those considered high-risk. Multiple-category submissions are permitted, provided each submission has a distinct presentation tailored to the category Entries are suggested to be realized or designed in the last 10 years to take part in the competition, however this is not a hard restriction; we will accept your entry if it is older than 10 years. However if you have a design that is older than 10 years, you can and should indeed submit it to our "Retro / Evergreen / Creative Legacy Design Award" Category which is a unique category that allows participation of older works.

Ineligibility
Military designs and weapons are especially ineligible. Tobacco (and tobacco consumption) products are ineligible (but packaging of such maybe allowed). Companies employing the winning entrants will not be credited if the design is submitted under individual category (companies must use Enterprise account type), but when a company wins, the designers will be credited (if noted in team members section). Staff and immediate family members of the Organizer; A' Design Award and Competition are not eligible to participate in the primary competitions, however the "Custom Competitions" organized by companies are open to everyone except only the jury members and their relatives or collaborators. Prizes are non-transferable and will only be awarded to the person whose name matches the entry. Although an entrant can submit as many design as they please, a particular design can only be submitted up to five times in different years. It is very important to have legal rights (or licenses) to the works you are submitting; you might be the designer of a product; but if you have sold your production rights to another company, you should first consider getting a permission as the images will be published on the books after the design competition especially for public categories.

Disqualification
Entry works that violate the proceeding conditions shall be disqualified; Entries that infringe on intellectual or industrial property rights will be disqualified. Participants shall be liable for claims by third parties resulting from the infringement. Previously patented designs; even if the patent has expired are not eligible and will be disqualified (i.e. you cannot submit works based on expired patents of others). The Organiser shall not be held responsible for any infringement. The entry must not have the same or a very similar design to any work announced to the public before. The entry must not violate copyrights, patents and other related rights of other registered products. Designs that create hatred or violate law in any way are disqualified. If a violation is discovered after the selection process, the applicant will lose all his/her rights to the competition. The designs should appear anonymous; there should not be any marks on the submitted designs displaying the name of an entrant, his or her school or firm or logo, or any other symbol that could identify the entrant. There is a very high risk of disqualification if you write anything on images (all the text should be submitted through the submission interface), if you need to communicate your design more, you might use the "optional" images.