The Wallpaper* 2025 Design Awards issue is on sale 9 January

Wallpaper* Design Awards 2025 issue February cover with yellow asterisk held up by two people

London-based design duo Isabel + Helen created the Wallpaper* asterisk for our newsstand cover (left) using a manually operated pulley system, seen in motion on our limited-edition, subscriber cover (right)

(Image credit: Isabel + Helen)

By Bill Prince

published 7 January 2025

in News

Welcome to Wallpaper’s annual Design Awards issue, a fixture of our editorial calendar (this is its 21st year), but also a hugely valuable, time-stamped appraisal of the very best the world has to offer in terms of fashion, technology, architecture, interiors, travel and art.

As ever, the Wallpaper* team has been both avid in their appreciation and acute in their adjudication of each of our winners; mindful, too, that applying a ‘time stamp’ to achievement is necessarily limiting.

After all, truly great design isn’t for a month or a year, but has the potential to permanently alter our direction of travel, affecting lives in ways that might take a little time to comprehend. It’s with this in mind that we decided to shake up the awards process itself (and I would personally like to express gratitude to the 100-plus creatives who have, over two decades, lent their shoulder to the judging wheel) in order to bring a fresh perspective to our selections.

Choosing the Wallpaper* 2025 Design Award winners

Our editors have thus taken full ownership of this year’s winners’ enclosure, stipulating not only who won, but why and how they achieved their award.

To add further context, we asked five leading figures from across the creative industries to pen their own appraisal of what counts – and what doesn’t – in a world both buffeted by, and borne aloft on, seismic societal, technological and cultural change. I’d like to thank Es Devlin, Ilse Crawford, Lesley Lokko, Sou Fujimoto and Yves Behar for taking the time to share their thoughts, the Wallpaper* team for their diligence and insights, and all the winners for satisfying our insatiable appetite for the new, the novel and the next.

Bill Prince
Editor-in-Chief

The February 2025 issue of Wallpaper* is available in print on newsstands from 9 January 2025, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today

TOPICS

Bill Prince is a journalist, author, and editor-in-chief of Wallpaper* and The Blend. Prior to taking up these roles, he served for 23 years as the deputy editor of British GQ. In addition to editing, writing and brand curation, Bill is an acknowledged authority on travel, hospitality and men's style. His first book, ‘Royal Oak: From Iconoclast To Icon’ – a tribute to the Audemars Piguet watch at 50 – was published by Assouline in September 2022.

Choosing the Wallpaper* 2025 Design Award winners

Wallpaper* Newsletter