2024 DBA Design Effectiveness Award winners revealed

The DBA Design Effectiveness Awards celebrate the integral role design plays in transforming businesses, improving societies and enhancing people’s lives.

Judged by a broad range of business leaders and entered jointly by client and designer, this year’s awards were presented at The Design Effect, a new event from the DBA celebrating and exploring the impact of design on business, society and beyond and featuring speakers including Monzo’s Vuokko Aro, Wolff Olins’ Sairah Ashman and Diageo’s Jeremy Lindley.

Explore images from the awards.

Says DBA, Chief Executive Deborah Dawton: “It was fantastic to bring together brands, agencies and design leaders from across the industry to explore design’s impact at the inaugural ‘The Design Effect’ conference this week. By celebrating the DBA Design Effectiveness Awards as an integral part of the day, the successes of the 2024 winners brought-to-life how design can create truly effective outcomes for business, people and planet.

 With the challenges economies, companies and communities around the world face today, illuminating the value of design in responding to change has never been more important. The Gold, Silver and Bronze Design Effectiveness Award winners do just that. Across industry sectors and design disciplines, they prove how essential design is in creating a brighter future for all.”    

Mockingbird Raw Press and B&B studio win Grand Prix

Mockingbird Raw Press’ Brand Creation by B&B studio was awarded Gold as well as the coveted Grand Prix.

By creating a brand that consumers understand is worth paying more for, the design empowered Mockingbird’s strategy of introducing a premium tier into grocery and of reshaping the UK smoothie category into a good, better, best model. The small but mighty new brand creation has disrupted the dominance of market giants to become the UK’s fastest-growing smoothie brand and number one contributor to overall category growth. Find out more about Mockingbird Raw Press Brand Creation. 

Also winning Gold was the immersive, rich experience created online by Else for Fred. Olsen Cruise Lines, which increased engagement and saw website usage leap 60% on the previous year and conversions from browsing visitors to bookings improve by 50%. Find out more Else’s work with Fred. Olsen. 

Tom Parker Creamery also took home a Gold award with White Bear for a rebrand which transformed the way the 100-year-old dairy company works, enabling it to unlock mainstream opportunities including national listings in 733 Sainsbury’s stores, 300 Waitrose and online at Ocado. Find out more about Tom Parker Creamery’s rebrand. 

Other winners include Nottingham Express Transit and Michon’s NET Freshers’ Campaign which helped increase daily downloads of a dedicated app by 141% and positively impacted on reducing fare evasion on trams in the city; GW+Co’s and Control Techniques collaboration which delivered a new-found momentum to the drives business following a rebrand and there are now 89% more staff on the UK team; NatWest’s ‘Carbon Planner’ digital tool, which in its launch year was used by over 4,000 businesses to easily understand their carbon footprint and take tangible steps to reduce it; and ‘The Kitcheneers’ by Without for school caterers Alliance in Partnership, which improved nutrition across dishes, with a 35% increase in vegetable servings compared to prior to the rebrand.     

Thank you to our fantastic judges who brought their insight and experience to rigorously judge all the entries and congratulations to the winning agency and client partnerships. Browse all of the Gold, Silver and Bronze winners and take a look at their case studies.

Says Sean Carney, Chair of the DBA Design Effectiveness Awards Judging Panel: “This year’s DBA Design Effectiveness Award winners demonstrated solutions to a truly diverse set of challenges and once again the distinguished groups of judges had to work hard to pick the winners.

The judging panels consisted of an incredible cross section of Business, Marketing and Design leadership, ensuring that we had a diverse set of perspectives when evaluating the entries. As Chair of these judging panels, it was truly an honour to witness the quality and depth of the discussions triggered by each entry. 

 The winners provide clear and compelling evidence that design can and does deliver value, improving business results, positively impacting society and improving lives. They can be extremely proud of the recognition they have received.” 

2024 DBA Design Effectiveness Award Winners