The American Design Awards was founded in the year 2000 by design professional and educator Brandon McKay, as well as graphic designers Kevin and Art Javid of San Diego, California. Their mission was to not only provide the graphic and web design community (domestic and international) with a legitimate and accessible design awards program, but more importantly educating graphic artists worldwide on the importance of upholding and practicing ethical design guidelines.

“Every year thousands of graphic designers give up on their dreams of working in the creative field, because no one knows that they exist, or because someone else is always undercutting their prices and leaving a wealth of talent untapped and/or unemployed.” says Art Javid on the goals of the American Design Awards. “We created ADA to not only showcase various designers’ talents to the world (and by doing so help them advance in their careers), but at the same time try to put an end to the unethical design tactics practiced by inexperienced and money driven designers who constantly undercut design industry pricing and work ethics in hopes of turning a quick profit.”

The American Design Awards hopes to change how people view graphic designers, by offering design awards to the most creative, rewarding excellence in design and business, reaching out to young designers who need advice and mentoring, and providing positive criticism and feedback to those who are just a step away from stardom.

“The design industry as a whole suffers when an online logo design shop offers 20 logo design and unlimited revisions for $99… it tells business owners, marketing managers, and corporate decision makers that graphic designers aren’t worth a lot of money, and as a matter of fact creativity is worth the price of a couple of ink cartridges for your desktop printer” says Kevin Javid.

To keep the design field competitive and surging with new talent, the American Design Awards holds a Monthly Design Contest, two (2) Semi Annual Design Contests in Summer and Winter months, as well as a newly established Student Design Contest, set to debut in the Spring of 2006. All design contests are open to graphic and web designers domestic and international, with the Monthly Design Contest being free to participation. All submitted design pieces, regardless of affiliation, client name, or popularity are judged by real life design professionals, who grade each piece based on creativity, effectiveness and practicality.

The American Design Awards established certain rules and guidelines for accepting, judging, and grading various design pieces, all with the ultimate benefit of the designers in mind. First ADA only accepts designs that have been created for a fair-paying client (or for the artist’s self-promotion) versus those created for the so-called "contests", whereas hundreds of young and inexperienced designers are asked to create dozens of custom-designer logos or other design pieces for submission into a "contest", in hopes of landing a meager payoff down the line (also called speculative work).

“The American Design Awards has not, and will never accept designs that have been created in this fashion, nor accept entries from those online vendors who resell unsuspecting designers’ work at ridiculously cheap prices” says Brandon McKay. The ADA rules for entry dictate clearly that any artwork deemed to have been created in this fashion will be rejected and any award revoked. Not only do these "contests" diminish the value of designers and the design industry as a whole, but often times leads to legal issues regarding copyright and intellectual rights in the future.
The American Design Awards is well on its way to becoming one of the most respected independent awards organizations globally, and it can be attributed to not only their policies, procedures, and vision, but more importantly having the best interest of their fellow graphic designers, and the industry in mind.

American Design Awards is sponsored by TAXI Design Network

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