We are pleased to announce the winners of the 2025 GOOD DESIGN GRAND AWARD, GOOD DESIGN GOLD AWARD, other Special Awards, and GOOD DESIGN AWARD. These honors are a testament to the tireless efforts of the awardees and the generous support of all those involved. We extend our heartfelt congratulations. This year marks the hosting of the Osaka-Kansai Expo, with the theme “Designing Future Society.” The inclusion of the word “design” in this theme suggests that design plays a vital role across various sectors of society. It transcends boundaries and has the power to question and guide the very nature of how our society should be. Next year, the GOOD DESIGN AWARD will celebrate its 70th anniversary. Since its inception as a program to promote exports, it has evolved with the times into a comprehensive and internationally recognized award that embraces diverse values. We remain committed to ensuring that design continues to contribute as a creative force to the advancement of our economy, society, and culture. We are also pleased to announce that the “GOOD DESIGN EXHIBITION 2025,” showcasing all award-winning works, will be held in early November at Tokyo Midtown. We warmly invite you to visit and experience firsthand the creativity and social value embodied in the award-winning designs. Finally, we would like to express our sincere gratitude to all applicants, the jury members who devoted themselves to the evaluation process, and everyone who continues to show interest in and support for design.

October 2025 Hiroyuki Fukano President, Japan Institute of Design Promotion

I would like to sincerely thank all of you who applied for the GOOD DESIGN AWARD 2025. I extend my heartfelt congratulations to all the winners. This year, once again, we were able to encounter many wonderful designs.

I sent out the following message when applications for this year’s award opened.

“A Small Step, Design Leaps” Where does design truly begin? Once created, who nurtures it, and how does it make its way into society? This year’s GOOD DESIGN AWARD seeks to explore these questions.

Today, the power of design is permeating a wide range of fields, and what came across particularly strongly from this year’s entries that it is not possible to talk about design using the traditional terms of "tangible design" or "intangible design" alone. For example, Genbe River, a Clear Stream Where Fireflies Dance and Aquatic Flowers Bloom, aimed to redefine a place which had come to be taken for granted by the local community over many years, leading to a tendency to forget the background to its birth and the passion felt at that time. DLT Timber Temporary Housing, which was implemented in an attempt to supply living spaces with the highest possible quality as speedily as possible in the event of an earthquake or other natural disaster in Japan or overseas, operating autonomously in each region, also started from the passion of individuals. Each of these is the result of a process of repeated thought and implementation and many small steps, not being satisfied with completing the project. This year, we saw a particularly large number of entries displaying this attitude.

Design has a time axis. In order for something born out of someone's enthusiasm, realization, and awareness of the issues to continue to be implemented in a beautiful state for a long time, reconsideration, research, and ongoing actions are needed.

Design has mechanisms for persistence. It requires close relationships with business, the economy, the community, and the changing times, and diverse cycles of funding, organization, and so on which continue to support its implementation are essential.

Objects are always surrounded by ideas of experience, and ideas of experience are always surrounded by objects. When design is implemented in society, it takes a variety of forms, including products, services, mechanisms, initiatives, and architecture, so it tends to be difficult to see the perspectives, awareness of the issues, and enthusiasm behind these. That's why the GOOD DESIGN AWARD is not just an award which recognizes the end results, but a place to share processes and activities, share methods, and gain courage, as well as an opportunity for more people to know about these. I felt once again that we should continue to exist as a strong community founded on such design.

The GOOD DESIGN AWARD will continue to evolve with the times to bring the power of design to even more people. May even more people become aware of the courage to take small steps, and design continue to leap from these. I hope that the GOOD DESIGN AWARD will continue to function as an opportunity for many people to realize that they, too, are involved with design.

Congratulations to all the GOOD DESIGN AWARD winners.

This year, we again received many applications from a variety of genres, and were able to encounter diverse designs with the will to open up the future while confronting complex changes in society. I would like to express my sincere gratitude to all those who applied.

This year’s theme was “A Small Step, Design Leaps.” A small realization that you want to make society better, or an urgent desire to confront an inconvenience right in front of you: these are the small steps that will eventually develop into larger proposals as you draw in colleagues and gain technologies and knowledge. We carried out the screening based on our wish to examine the power of design residing throughout the process.

In fact, many of the entries clearly articulated the questions and wishes of the creators themselves. I was deeply impressed by the fact that they were not simply the manifestations of ideas, but had been sublimated into design that leaps, nurtured over time and refined through collaboration. Designs that, while originating from the voices of individuals, transcended and leapt beyond the boundaries of organizations, regions, and industries truly embodied this year's theme.

On the other hand, I was able to encounter many wonderful design results that possess a unique ambiance as a result of a sincere commitment to honest manufacturing and thorough attention to technical development and design details. I sensed a further maturation and deepening of design when I saw how development was being taken even deeper with a spirit of enquiry while also overcoming practical constraints by means such as radically rethinking materials and manufacturing processes, implementing the circular economy, and collaborating with generative AI.

Design plays an increasingly important role in addressing ever more complex issues. However, this is by no means a burden, but rather evidence that humanity’s powers of innovation and empathy serve as the hope that shapes our future. I hope that by learning about the questions and challenges behind each award-winning work and experiencing the pure beauty of the designs that have emerged from these, new perspectives and inspiration will appear in your life and work.

I would like to offer my congratulations to all the winners.

This year, as always, I gained a lot of insights and learning through the screening. The two finalists for the Grand Award which were discussed right until the end of the selection process made a particular impression on me. One was DLT Timber Temporary Housing, which won the Grand Award, and the other was Genbe River, a Clear Stream Where Fireflies Dance and Aquatic Flowers Bloom, which was chosen for the Gold Award. Each of these are initiatives aiming to pass down the results of activities which have taken place over many years to the future.

The project on the Genbe River in Mishima City applied for the award out of a sense of crisis that although the beautiful river had been restored through action spanning 35 years, the scenery was now being taken for granted by the local community and its value was instead going unnoticed by the younger generation. The applicant's words, "We want to use this award as an opportunity to convey our thoughts and feelings to the younger generation and pass them on to the future," left a strong impression on me.

In fiscal 2023, when I was appointed vice chairperson of the Judging Committee, we discussed the nature of the GOOD DESIGN AWARD and came up with the theme of "Design and its Outcome." At that time, I wrote the following message: "The present time is a point through which we pass on the way from the past to the future, and design is a means of drawing our desired future closer." From that year, we started trying to come up with a theme for the next year based on an analysis of trends in, and summary of, the winning works. And this, the third year, has truly become a year which symbolizes the spirit of that first year’s theme.

The GOOD DESIGN AWARD not only celebrates new beginnings: evaluating the present, which is being handed down from the past to the future, is also important. Through this year's screening, I realized once again that just like the ability to create something from scratch, the ability to continue evolving from this starting point is also an irreplaceable value.