The Third Annual Icelandic Design Awards

Let’s talk about fruit stickers. Why should every piece of fruit have to wear its own tiny, gummy, frustratingly delicate identity on its skin? Fruit stickers have always been a part of my life, I can’t imagine a time without them. But they weren’t always a thing. It took a designer to point this out to me. And now I can’t stop noticing them.

Designers notice thing that many of us don’t. Design pervades our lives: good design improves our entire existence, bad design gets stuck under our fingernails. Recognizing and rewarding good design is vital to securing its proliferation, which makes all of our lives a little bit better.

The third annual Icelandic Design Award will be announced on October 6! The Award was established by the Icelandic Design Centre in collaboration with the Iceland Academy of Arts and the Museum of Design and Applied Art.

Two categories are open for nominated projects: best design and best investment in design. The best design award is given to a project that demonstrates creativity, good presentation, and professional process. Last year’s award went to the design team behind the newly opened Eldheimar—an interactive exhibition center on the Westman Islands. The designers demonstrated exemplary innovation and creativity in bringing to life an ambitious project: to reconnect to and honor the memory of the 1973 Heimaey eruption. The second award—best investment in design—was created to recognize a company which has incorporated good design into the core of its operations to “create value and increase competitiveness.” Last year’s award went to Össur, Iceland’s world-renowned manufacturer of prosthetic limbs.

This is not a normal talent show. Hundreds of nominations are sent in every year. Keep an eye out over the next couple of weeks as the Design Centre announces its top three contenders! Rewarding good design should be a collective effort, as it has implications for everyone. It’s time to start noticing those things you never noticed, even those that you wish you never had…

Read about the competition and explore the past year’s winning projects here.