Award Winners
OKAZAKI Mariko, SAKAMOTO Shunta, YAMAGUCHI Agata

Publication

“Graphic Design in Japan 2024” (July 2024)

Award Ceremony

JAGDA General Assembly on 22 June 2024 in Okayama

Exhibition
Monday 1 July – Sunday 25 August 2024 | Tokyo Midtown Design Hub

Monday 22 July – Saturday 24 August 2024 | Ginza Graphic Gallery

Selection Process of the JAGDA New Designer Awards 2024

The JAGDA New Designer Awards were established in 1983 with the goals of calling attention to outstanding young designers and energizing the realm of graphic design. The award winners – normally no more than 3 – are selected each year from among all entrants whose works are featured in the JAGDA Annual who have not reached their 40th birthday as of the end of October of the judging year.

This year 139 designers with works featured in Graphic Design in Japan 2024 qualified as “new designers” (JAGDA members under age 40 as of October 31, 2023). Among these, a first round of voting was held for the 30 individuals who had 3 or more featured works in total selected in the 10 categories (2 or more if the Integrated Design category was included). The featured works of each designer were grouped together at the judging session, and all names were kept anonymous. (In the event that a work was made in collaboration with a member or members above age 40 or with a previous recipient of the New Designer Award, JAGDA rules preclude said work from consideration for a New Designer Award. However, this year snapshots of such works were taken by the JAGDA Secretariat and displayed in the designer’s designated space for reference purposes.)

In this first round, the 29 members of the Selection Committee were permitted to cast up to 7 votes in total, but they were not required to use up their quota. The outcome showed 6 individual designers and 1 group garnering 10 or more votes, qualifying them as the award nominees.

The final round of voting was then conducted, this time with each judge casting 3 votes in total (without the option of not casting all allotted votes). Again, the designers’ names were kept anonymous. In this round each committee member indicated his or her choices for 1st, 2nd and 3rd places; a 1st-place vote was worth 3 points, 2nd place 2 points, and 3rd place 1 point. The results showed a significant gap between the top 3 vote recipients and the designer placing 4th. Accordingly, this year’s JAGDA New Designer Awards were presented to Shunta Sakamoto (39 points/18 votes), Mariko Okazaki (38 points/17 votes), and Agata Yamaguchi (32 points/14 votes).