The Danish Design Award is an annual international design prize awarded by the member organization Design denmark and Danish Design Centre in Copenhagen, Denmark. Danish Design Award demonstrates the value and impact of design in Denmark today and inspires and stimulates the use of design and design thinking in companies and society. The new partnership behind the Danish Design Award brings together the design industry and the entire country around an annual design event celebrating the difference design can make. Fifty years ago, in 1965, the first Danish design award, the ID Prize was launched. This was followed by the IG Prize in 1980, which merged, into the Danish Design Award in 2000. Now, the Danish Design Award is presented in a new version as a joint creation from the Danish Design Centre and the alliance of design professionals, Design denmark. Danish Design Award encompasses all disciplines within the realm of design and adopts a three-dimensional focus on form, function and value creation. The fifteen award categories range from design that has created jobs or cut costs over health solutions and resource sharing to visionary concepts demonstrating the wide range and diversity of the capability of design to bring added value.
History
;1965 - Industrial Design Prize Acknowledging the best in Danish design with an annual award began in 1965. At that time the award was called the. Danish design had become an important concept, not just in Scandinavia but worldwide. Danish design represented - and continues to represent - simple, pure and aesthetic design with a clear user focus. ;1980 – Industrial Graphic Design Prize In 1980 the ID Prize had a sister award, the, which celebrated the best industrial graphic design. ;2000 – The Danish Design Prize In 2000, the ID Prize and the IG Prize merged to become the Danish Design Prize. With the brief pause in 2005 and 2006, the Danish Design Prize 2007 marked an anniversary for Danish design: the design prizes were awarded for the fortieth time. ;2007 – The Designmatters Award A new introduction in 2007 was the Designmatters Award. This award goes to a small or medium-sized company that has made a serious effort to incorporate design and achieved a positive effect on the bottom line. The first recipient of the Designmatters Award was the lighting company Lightyears.
