A' Design Award & Competition Recenzje 

SCAM ALERT!
It starts as a "normal" competition, and they but slowly step by step more fees in it... Zero exposure, there website if you dig a bit is overwelming with links and subawards ... all bull shit.. .90% of all lins are dead... and rederict to own created sites.

STAY AWAY!!!

I paid EUR 751.50 (their Invoice #378, 27 Feb 2026) for a "Professional Edition" entry in the Architectural Lighting category — a package their published "No Further Fees" policy describes as including public winners' listing, yearbook, exhibition and PR, with "no payments expected from winners."

What happened instead, all documented in writing:

1. My entry (a realised architectural lighting project for a national landmark) passed their preliminary checks four times and my yearbook page was being prepared by their own staff.

2. On 15 April, without my request or consent, they moved the entry to a different category and placed it in a "Concealed Category" — meaning no public winners' list, no yearbook, no exhibition, no PR. My publication consent was on file; my licenses were submitted and confirmed by them as accepted ("with a valid license on file" — their own words).

3. At the same time they confirmed, in an official letter signed by their Vice-President: "Your final status is official and confirmed: Silver A' Design Award… The Grand Jury panel has recognized your exceptional talent." Yet their support manager wrote the opposite: the entry "didn't receive a good score" and was moved to a concealed category "that is less competitive." Both cannot be true. I formally requested the score sheet their own email promised — it has never been provided.

4. Restoring the visibility I had already paid for was offered exclusively as a paid "Concealed to Regular Conversion" service, under 24–36-hour countdown deadlines, with re-voting that "can often result in a lower award level" and a "No Refunds" condition.

5. A EUR 250 "Account Type Review Fee" was added to my account automatically ("an automatic fee that the system assigned you to lock your profile" — their admission), then deleted "as a gesture of goodwill" after my protest. My 13 written complaints, including 10 refund requests, received no substantive answer, while I received over 40 promotional emails, including suggestions to donate "388 EUR for auspicious luck."

6. After my formal GDPR access request for the promised score sheet expired unanswered (10 Aug 2026), my account login simply stopped working: the password-reset page reports "successful" but no reset email is ever delivered. The paid account, the award record and my entry materials are now inaccessible to me.

The result: I hold a "confirmed Silver Award" that appears in no public list and cannot be verified by anyone. A formal notice under Italian consumer law was served in June 2026; a complaint is now filed with the Italian competition authority (AGCM, segnalazione n. W00152085).

If you are considering entering: read their "concealed categories" and fees policies very carefully first, and keep every email.

— Entry #181767, account 380515 (documentation available)

Absolutely stay away. It is nothing but a total scam. You will regret the day you entered this competition. I have never encountered such a dishonest and pathetic organization. You don't even deserve a one-star rating.

Scammy organization that keeps year and over year to keep engaging with us. They don't even follow basic EU laws considering that they are located in Italy.

In the EU, you must be able to unsubscribe from any list. This is not even allowed in their scammy emails. Technically, they are not following EU laws.

As a small business owner, I joined hoping for fair exposure and recognition. Instead, I faced ongoing unexpected chaarges that were never clear from the start.
For small busineses, this lack of transparency makes it nearly impossible to participate on equal terms. It’s simply not fair.

You get a reward if you pay. And if you are in their system, they continue to SPAM you.

They found me through my Behance profile. I have never reached them nor I was keen to take part in a design competition. They are sending emails for years and I have never answered. It seems like a spam to me.

Complete scam. I fell for it back in 2018 registering my design for an extortionate fee thinking it was a genuine competition. Since then, I've received non-stop spam, which is impossible to unsubscribe from. Submitting a ticket online always results in an error: 'message could not be delivered', or you have to find your login code to unsubscribe which is not the case with any other mailing service. Apart from that, after looking into their business address, it seems far from a 'prestigious award office'. Looks like a simple apartment building covered by thick trees. After doing more digging on Reddit, many others have done their research and confirmed that they're suspicious. Seems like a ploy to lure young, aspiring designers who are seeking exposure and charging them around 550 euros to partake in a fake competition to receive a fake award that isn't recognised by any major design platforms. If you're a designer reading this, save yourself the trouble and ignore their invitation.