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Design Effectiveness Awards

DBA Design Effectiveness Awards: 2019 update

The DBA Design Effectiveness Awards celebrate and prove how powerful partnerships between clients and designers can be.
 
Announced in April 2018, the DBA Design Effectiveness Awards are being reviewed to broaden the coverage and advocate the effectiveness of design across all disciplines. Launched in 1989, the Awards spearheads the case for design’s value as a transformative agent of a business’ success for 30 years. A lot has changed since 1989, including the design industry and design’s role within business.
 
As 2019 marks thirty years in existence, DBA placed the Design Effectiveness Awards programme into a comprehensive review to ensure all elements are truly reflective of the industry in today’s world.
 
We are carefully developing this highly regarded and respected award scheme across the next year or so, starting with some changes to the 2018-2019 entry and judging process. The review has a long-term approach to allow us to continually evolve alongside the industry.
 
As an entrant, what changes should you look out for?
— The entry guidance encourages you to contextualise your results against the market context and client’s business context and there is a list of suggested metrics you could use to monitor your design effectiveness.
— Whilst looking at design effectiveness, the entry pack provides some suggested other influencing factors that can help you provide judges with the relevant market context surrounding the design and build your case by tackling it head on and evaluating why the results were linked to the design solution used.
— We’ve implemented a feedback system that will provide those that don’t succeed an insight into ways to improve for the next year.
— Note that the entry format no longer asks for art-working of the entry PDF. Only shortlisted winners will be asked to do this when they are notified of their win.
— For 2019, entries must not state the design agency or in-house design team, as entries are now anonymised.
— If you are submitting confidential versions of your entry, you must also indicate redacted data in the body of the entry for the publication version.
— Check the entry format on page 13 of the Entry Pack which provides the number of pages required for the entry. There is no word count.
— Plus, you also have the ability to enter older work as long as it features data that has been collated after 1 January 2017.

For this first stage of the review, we really wanted to provide a platform that helps you to show the influence you have on a clients’ business strategy and articulate how design works alongside other business units in the creation of value. We’ve broadened the metrics to include the use of soft data and open the conversation about effectiveness being about more than just money.
 
And, for complete transparency, we’ve provided a clear breakdown of the award level criteria and how judges allocate the wins.
 
As we continue to work on carefully developing the well-respected scheme, do feel free to share your thoughts and feedback by emailing our Strategy Director, Sally Lukins.
 
In the meantime, enter the 2019 DBA Design Effectiveness Awards to be a part of the indisputable worldwide advocate of design’s impact.

About: DBA Design Effectiveness Awards

The DBA Design Effectiveness Awards recognise impactful, wide-ranging examples of design that have had a tangible and measurable impact upon business success.

Judged by business leaders and entered jointly by client and designer, the Awards draw focus onto design’s strategic and commercial value to business. They celebrate what’s possible when the best brains from design and business come together in true partnership and provide powerful evidence that design thinking combined with business acuity can bring about the right conditions for business transformation to occur.

View the Design Effectiveness Awards website for entry information.

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