WILD Design Awards: The Best of the Best

by Mark Bergin

In the last three years we have seen so much change. There was that pandemic thing, inflation revisited and a Russian guy decided war was a good thing. A lot has changed towards the negative, but there have been positives too; amazing WILD Souls have worked out how to solve human problems and take huge leaps into a better future.

Over the last six months, we've been working out how to respond to change and how best to recognise the ideas of these WILD souls. We have restructured the way we work, rebranded to BETTER FUTURE and now we're ready to roll out the biggest change to our award programs since we began in 2010.

From the outset, we have focused on celebrating courageous, diverse and excellent design throughout design capitals around the world. It's been amazing to witness each of these cities express how design is accelerating change and solving human challenges—economic, environmental and social.

Since we started awarding design ideas from across the world, we have been keen to develop a platform that recognizes the Best of the Best into a global awards program—a way to shine a spotlight on projects and design teams that are taking leaps into a better future and recognise these phenomenal ideas and executions from across hundreds of awarded projects in the BETTER FUTURE annual programs.

Over the first week of July 2023, BETTER FUTURE will be in Reykjavik, Iceland announcing the winners of the WILD Design Awards... and you’re invited! Put the dates in your diary now. Alongside the award presentation, we're staging a four-day study tour featuring a mix of local Icelandic projects, a deep dive into stand-out award-winning projects, and a set of WILD Expedition reports from our accelerated innovation cohorts. There will be more information to share on the program in the coming weeks.

If you'd like to be in the WILD Design Awards and be recognised globally as being the Best of the Best, all you need to do is nominate into one of our city, regional, or sector awards. When you win, you get Elevated—simple. No additional fees, just additional benefits.

The BETTER FUTURE Awards Program has the only Flat Fee model in the market! That's right, when you get your Winners notification from us, we don't ask you to pay a hefty licence fee that is 5-to-20 times the nomination fee, we just want you to celebrate! The great news is that projects awarded between July 2022 and May 2023 will be automatically Elevated into the WILD Design Awards—and we're going to keep it that way. The 80s model of license fees isn't how the future looks; our values are about celebrating and elevating, and we'll never send you a 'thanks for winning, now pay a huge fee for the privilege' email.

So, nominate into any one of our programs today for your chance to be elevated into the inaugral BETTER FUTURE WILD Design Awards! And stay tuned for further announcements about our Reykjavik expedition in July 2023.

Mark Bergin
WILD Leader
BETTER FUTURE
mark@betterfuture.design