The Aiap Women in Design Award (AWDA), at its third edition, is a project by Cinzia Ferrara, Laura Moretti and Daniela Piscitelli, curated and organized by Aiap. It is a biennial Award open to visual communication women designers.

The story in years

AWDA 2012

The Award originates within the research activities of Aiap, the Italian Association of Visual Communication Design, and aims at reconstructing and acknowledging the contribution that numerous visual communication women designers have given and continue to give to the universe of graphic design. In the first edition of AWDA, open only to Italian designers, 112 designers participated for a total of 237 projects submitted. The jury shortlisted 25 designers for 30 projects deemed worthy of publication.

AWDA 2012 ceremony and book

The official Award-giving ceremony took place during Aiap Design Per, International Graphic Design Week, held in Treviso, Italy, from 26th to 29th September 2012. The AWDA book, edited by Cinzia Ferrara and Daniela Piscitelli and printed by Aiap, presents all the winners and mentioned projects.

AWDA 2015

Participation in the second edition of the Award was open to women designers living or working in the European area and the MENA region (Algeria, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Cyprus, Djibouti, Egypt, Georgia, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Yemen, United Arab Emirates, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Palestine, Israel, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Somalia, Sudan, Tunisia). The projects submitted were selected by an international jury of 5 prestigious design and visual communication experts, and were later included in a dedicated publication.

AWDA 2015 ceremony and book

AWDA 2015 was the second volume of the Aiap editions’ series of the same name and was presented in 2016. Among the works deemed to be suitable for publication, the jury chose the visual communication women designers to receive the Aiap Women in Design Award 2015, and awarded Honorary Mentions. The official Award-giving ceremony took place during the following edition of Aiap DX, International Graphic Design Week, that was held in Milan, Italy, from 4th to 8th November 2015.

design biennial award for communication

AWDA Background

This line of research was opened by the Stanze contest and related exhibitions at the Archaeological Museum of Gela (Sicily) and at the Festival of Creativity of Florence, and was followed by the retrospective The unbroken sign. Graphics between art, calligraphy and design dedicated to Simonetta Ferrante – held at the Aiap Gallery in Milan – and by the book Il segno continuo (The unbroken sign), published by Aiap.

The process first started with the Manifestinno exhibition and the cycle of seminars Singolare Femminile – organized in collaboration with Aiap in Rome. The Aiap Women in Design Award wishes to explore and promote the little-known universe of women working in visual communication design. The aim is not rhetorical or self-referential, in an attempt to celebrate “women’s graphics”, but rather to investigate the idioms, poetics and different approaches to graphic design which otherwise would never be brought to light.