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The Design System Awards are back! It’s time to celebrate the best teams and individuals who contribute to our great design systems community in zeroheight’s second Design System Awards. Recognising the talented work that people do across the world on their design systems, as well as the amazing individuals who contribute to the community day in and day out.
Nominations close August 22, 2025
This category rewards the best design system documentation, from providing clear and comprehensive documentation for all parts of the organization, to innovative approaches to documentation.
Accessibility is one of the most important aspects for a design system today. This category rewards the best accessibility implementation for a design system, whether that’s strategy, implementation or innovation.
Rewarding the best in design system governance and collaboration, from effective process and change management, to killer contribution models. This category recognizes great governance in your design system.
Design systems are about humans after all and they should ease collaboration and build bridges between teams. This category rewards design systems that are successful in bringing people together so they can better work together.
Reward the design system that has succeeded in setting up adoption with the design system’s consumers. From strategy through to implementation and measurement, the winning design system should be seen as an exemplar of good design system adoption practices.
One area we wanted to recognize is that the whole industry is constantly pushing to find the best way to make design systems. This category rewards teams who have found innovative approaches to their design system, whether it be in tooling, process or architecture.
The community is the beating heart of design systems. Therefore, we wanted to include an award that is decided on by you! This is to recognize excellence in the eyes of the community across all the categories. Voting for the People’s Choice award will open later in 2025.
This category is to reward the community members who are driving the conversation on design systems through written word
This category is to reward the community members who are driving the conversation on design systems through public speaking, at both online and offline events
This category is to reward the community members who are driving the conversation on design systems through podcasting and webinars
Conferences and meet-ups are the beating heart of our community. This category is to reward the people who make these events possible for the community, whether it be design systems or design systems-adjacent
The design system tools ecosystem is growing, with amazing third-party tooling being created by companies and individuals. This category is to reward the plugin creators who are building the tooling that makes what we do possible
Within our community, there are individuals who deserve recognition. This category is to reward the folks who spend their time pushing the design system community forward, whether it be in communities, on social media, or at events
Nominations will be open from Tuesday 13 May. If you have any questions about the nomination process, then check out the FAQs, or if your question isn't answered, please get in touch at community@zeroheight.com
13 May, 2025
Once the nominations are closed, we'll be collating the longlist and working through it to determine a shortlist. The shortlist will be determined by the team at zeroheight, and will be based on uniform judging criteria (which we will share in a month or two). With the shortlist creation, we aim to remove as much bias as possible and give everyone a fair chance across the board.
22 August, 2025
In September, the shortlist will be announced, including public voting! We'll notify all folks as to whether they made the shortlist. The judges will then individually judge each shortlisted entry. We'll also have public voting on each category live on the site!
15 September, 2025
Once all the judges and public votes are counted, we'll then be able to determine the winner for each category, based off a weighted compilation of votes.
3 November, 2025
In December, we'll gather the community together at an event in London to announce the winners live. We'll also be live-streaming the ceremony for those who can't make it. The live event will be invite only, but we'll offer the community a chance to apply for a ticket later in the year! We'll also post the results to the zeroheight site the day after the event.
December 2025 (TBA)
