The Aiap Women in Design Award (AWDA), at its fifth edition, is a project curated by Cinzia Ferrara, Laura Moretti, Carla Palladino with a small team of volunteers and with the organizational support of AIAP. It is a biennial international award open to visual communication women designers. The main goal is to investigate the languages, poetics and different approaches to graphic design as well as to explore the conditions in which women designers work.

History over the years

AWDA 2021-2022

The 70 projects identified as worthy of publication, together with those of the previous edition, have merged into a special volume, UNCOVER AWDA 3-4, distributed internationally and presented as part of the exhibition SIGNS II: Grafica Italiana Contemporanea during the Milano Graphic Festival held at BASE on 26 March 2022 and again in Florence on 22 October 2022, at the L'Eredità delle Donne festival, together with an exhibition of illustrations contained in the volume.
UNCOVER AWDA 3-4 is a collective project, which expresses a new challenge for AWDA and the curators of the award, welcoming new energies, visions and professional skills. The graphic design of the special volume AWDA is the result of the agreement with the ISIA of Urbino, and the collaboration with a group of young designers which have subsequently joined the AWDA team.

AWDA 2019

The great novelty of this edition is the partnership with ico-D, the International Design Council, which, having recognized the social and ethical value of the Award, has become an Institutional Partner of AWDA and since 2019 has supported and promoted it worldwide. Thanks to this agreement, AWDA was supported by two international associations: Graphill, Norwegian Association for Visual Communication, and ADGI, Asosiasi Desainer Grafis Indonesia.
The fourth edition of the Award was attended by 132 designers from 25 countries, and saw 70 projects selected by an international jury composed of six acclaimed professionals in the field of visual communication, and a national jury to assess the research, composed of five profiles from the academic and professional world.
The award ceremony was held in Florence on 8 November 2019 at the Tepidarium del Roster, in the presence of selected and awarded visual communication designers, members of the jury and the presidents of ico-D and Aiap.
https://www.aiap-awda.com/2019/

AWDA 2017

Participation in the third edition of the Award was open to women designers from all over the world: 186 projects were submitted from 34 Countries, selected by an international jury made up of 8 leading figures in the field of visual communication design.
The award-giving ceremony took place in Rome on 30th September 2017, in the framework of Aiap Design Per, International Graphic Design Week “Visible Cultures”, on the premises of Istituto Centrale per la Grafica, with the participation of many of the selected visual communication designers.
On that occasion 3 honorary mentions, a special mention and an AWDA 2017 first prize were awarded.
The 62 projects deemed worthy of publication have been collected in the UNCOVER volume, published after the 2019 edition.
https://www.aiap-awda.com/2017/

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 made up of 5 leading figures in the field of visual communication design and were later included in the second volume of the series of the same name published by Aiap Edizioni, released in 2016). Among the works deemed worthy of publication, the jury chose the visual communication woman designer to be awarded the first Aiap Women in Design Award 2015 and given the Honorary Mention. The official award-giving ceremony took place during the following edition of Aiap DX, International Graphic Design Week, which took place in Milan from 4th to 8th November 2015.
In 2016, the projects awarded in the first and second edition of AWDA were exhibited at the XXI Triennale di Milano International Exhibition, ExpoGate, Milan.
https://www.domusweb.it/it/notizie/2015/11/10/aiap_women_in_design_award_2015.html

AWDA 2012

The first edition of AWDA, open only to Italian women designers, received submissions from 112 designers for a total 237 projects. The jury selected 25 designers for 30 projects for publication.
The award-giving ceremony took place during Aiap Design Per, International Graphic Design Week, which took place in Treviso from 26th to 29th September 2012. The AWDA catalogue, edited by Cinzia Ferrara and Daniela Piscitelli and published by Aiap, presents the winning projects as well those that received an honorary mention.
https://aiap.it/2000-2020/documenti/13798/67.html

AWDA Background

A story that started with the Stanze contest and related exhibitions at the Archaeological Museum of Gela (Sicily) and at the Florence Festival of Creativity and continued with the retrospective exhibition The unbroken sign. Graphics between art, calligraphy and design dedicated to Simonetta Ferrante, at Milan’s Galleria Aiap and the publication of the volume Il segno continuo published by Aiap.
Even earlier, this story began with the Manifestinno exhibition, which collects the posters created by 30 young Italian women designers on the topic of innovation and progress presented in Aosta and Florence, and with Singolare femminile, a series of seminars with four communication designers, organised in collaboration with AIAP in Rome.