On Monday, May 15th, the big gala of this year’s iF Design Awards took place. In an impressive ceremony at the Friedrichstadt-Palast theater in Berlin, the heart of the global design industry beat with 1,500 guests (business, politics and media representatives) from 42 different countries. This marked the 69th award ceremony of the German organization iF, based in Hamburg, which honors top achievements in various design categories, including architecture, interior design, industrial design, product design, communication design, User Experience (UX) and User Interface (UI) among others.

With almost 11,000 entries (submitted projects for evaluation) from 56 countries just for 2023, the iF Design Awards are among the largest and most significant design competitions in the world. The jury, composed of 133 independent design experts from diverse backgrounds and hailing from 20 different countries, conducted a two-stage selection process and ultimately awarded 75 Gold iF Awards during the ceremony. In total, 2,104 entries from 47 countries were honored with the iF Design Award.

Uwe Cremering, CEO of iF International Forum Design GmbH, who is celebrating the 70th anniversary of the iF Design institution this year, expressed gratitude to the international design community: “It is really great to be able to celebrate together with the award winners their special success! They can be justifiably proud of themselves and their projects, which show an excellent cross-section of current design developments! We too are proud and at the same time very grateful for the trust our participants have placed in us for seven decades. This year alone, we have been able to attract ten percent more participants than in 2022, especially from Germany, the USA and other European countries. With this design gala, we would like to close a very successful iF DESIGN AWARD year -and at the same time start the new award year! We are excited and look forward to the next innovations!”

ek magazine, a media partner of the iF Design Awards since 2017, attended the awards ceremony after accepting the invitation from the iF International Forum Design GmbH.