Are you ready to let the world know about you as a web designer? If your answer is yes, then this post is for you. We’ve compiled a list of Web Design Awards you might want to participate in this year. Some of those awards are free and some require registration fee. Some of them are conducted just once in a year; other nominations are done monthly, weekly and even daily. Choose the ones you like the most and may the force be with you. Good luck!
Submission Deadline: February 21
Submission Fee: starting from EUR 40 (for students) and EUR 140 per single standard submission.
The European Design Award is the most reputable design award in Europe. It has 35 separate design nominations and you can take part in all of them simultaneously. The only limitation is its cost – you pay EUR 140 per submission. For multiple submissions, you get volume discounts. Each nomination has three levels of distinction: Gold, Silver and Bronze. Gold winners receive a trophy during the official Award Ceremony. All winners additionally get some recognition and promotion, as they will be published in the ED-Awards catalogue and on the website itself.
2. D&AD Award
Submission Deadline: February 18 (may be extended until February 25)
Submission Fee: starting from GBP 105.
The non-profit British Design & Art Direction organizes this prestigious international award each year. If you are between 18 and 23, you can participate in their New Blood Award section. Otherwise, you have to register for the Professional Awards section. There are many nominations available with different categories. All winners get a Yellow, White or Black Pencil as recognition of their achievements. New Blood Award winners can use their Pencil Marks in their portfolios, CVs etc. The winners’ works will be showcased at the D&AD Awards Night, as well as their international exhibitions and events. This Award is a great opportunity to get some buzz around your name in a designer community. However, it’s not the cheapest one.
Submission Deadline: no deadlines, sites can be submitted all year round
Submission Fee: EUR 40 for a one-time single website entry, EUR 120 for an entry followed with a featured profile in the Awwards directory.
According to the site, they get more than two mil unique visitors per month. So if your website is featured as “Site of the Day” you will theoretically get visible for at least 100K visitors. All winners will be published in an annual book “The 365 Best Websites Around the World”. Depending upon the category, you have an opportunity to get official Awwwards certificates for the following nominations: Site of the Day, Site of the Month, Site of the Year and Honorable Mention. Judging criteria include 40% design, 30% UX, 20% creativity and 10% content. Once per year, Awwards.com holds a conference, as well as price-giving. So in addition to online exposure, you have a great opportunity to get featured at that event.
Submission Deadline: no deadlines, sites can be submitted all year round
Submission Fee: USD 30 per submission.
CSS Design Awards is a global platform showcasing the best web designers and their works. They say they are one of the top two most visited online web awards in the world (according to Alexa) and the most followed awards group on Facebook. The winners for Site of the Day get site badges and certificates. The winners of Website of the Year and Designer of the Year additionally get a handcrafted trophy finished in brushed chrome and gold. Judging criteria include the design itself, creativity, functionality, usability and code.
Submission Deadline: no deadlines, sites can be submitted all the year round
Submission Fee: free of charge.
CSS Winner is an international platform awarding best designs on a daily, monthly and yearly basis. The main evaluation criteria are the design, user experience, creativity and content. All winners get exposure on the website and through social media network and obtain a CSS Winner certificate. The main jury consists of nine designers from all over the world, and 80% of the total ranking for each website takes the opinion of those designers. The community can also participate and vote – their opinion is taken into consideration as 20% of the total ranking.
6. Favourite Website Awards (FWA)
Submission Deadline: no deadlines, sites can be submitted all year round
Submission Fee: free of charge.
FWA is a UK-based design award portal for designers from all over the world. They were the first online award program that received over 200,000,000 website visitors. FWA accepts websites, online games and online movies/animation for nominations. The main criteria are creativity, originality, design, and content. A remarkable feature of this portal is their collaboration with Google’s Creative Sandbox. The winners of the Site of the Day nomination are reviewed with Google, and if Google finds the website suitable for their program, this particular website is featured on Google’s Creative Sandbox.
7. Promotion & Marketing Design Awards
Submission Deadline: Early-bird entry March 20, regular submission deadline – April 17
Submission Fee: starting from USD 40 for early-bird student submission, up to USD 85 for regular single entry.
This award is held by the HOW brand, which initially started as a print magazine in 1985. With time, they grew into a bigger hub for designers providing design competitions, online design courses, job portal and more. The award itself contains several categories and supports single entries and campaigns. They provide discounted prices for students and are quite flexible with submission fees. The winners get a free trip to the 2016 HOW DESIGN LIVE event and will be published in HOW’s FALL 2015 issue.
8. CSS Awards
Submission Deadline: new submissions accepted at any time
Submission Fee: USD 9.99 per submission, or alternatively, it’s free in exchange for a Like or Follow on Facebook and Twitter.
This website accepts website designs from all over the world. They have quite a tricky system for submissions – you can submit your website for a small fee of USD 9.99 or alternatively you can like them on Facebook or Follow in Twitter and then send a message with your website URL + Agency / Freelance URL. This is partially the reason why they have around 43K followers on Twitter and around 7K Likes on Facebook. But at the same time, they have 1,192 followers on Pinterest and 2,127 pins, so they’re still worth your attention.
This website also has an additional website exclusively for submissions of one/single page websites. All terms and conditions are the same.
Submission Deadline: January 30
Submission Fee: USD 345.
The Webby Awards is one of the most prestigious international awards, presented by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences (IADAS). They have several categories, and each category has two honors – The Webby Award and The Webby People’s Voice Award . The winners for the Webby Awards are determined by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences. The winners of the Webby People’s Voice are selected by the online community. For the previous year they received 12,000 entries from over 60 countries. This year, the submission deadline was December 19, but they extended it until January 30. Even if you won’t manage to participate this year, you have some time to thoroughly prepare for the challenge for the next year.
There are lots of other awards and contests worth mentioning here, but we’ve limited the list to an uneven amount intentionally. Hopefully, you’ll propose to us the tenth award you like best. So what award would you like to be mentioned here? Share your thought with us on Facebook and Twitter.