First Prize
€15,000
Network with the best
Big money prizes
All expenses covered
70%
Almost
there!
February 14 - 18, 2025
designflows2025
What is designflows
Designflows is an exclusive contest for Europe’s most promising digital product designers. Are you a European citizen or living in Europe? Ready to show what you've got? Then apply now!
Designflows is a fantastic opportunity to showcase your talent and compete against the best of the best in the European design community.
Connect with other incredibly talented designers, share your passion with like-minded peers, and motivate each other to reach new creative heights.
There’s €40,000 in total prizes. Third place wins €5,000, second wins €10,000, and there’s a whopping €15,000 for the winner. And if you’re among the 40 participants invited to the awards ceremony, you get €250 regardless of your final ranking.
Designflows is free to enter. And for those who make it to the awards ceremony, Bending Spoons covers all expenses—including travel to Milan and accommodation.
Bending Spoons served over a billion people across the globe through a suite of digital technology products, including Evernote, Issuu, Meetup, Remini, Splice, StreamYard, and WeTransfer.
At 4:30 pm CET on February 14, 2025, each participant receives a link to a creative brief with digital product design specifications.
The deadline for submission is 1 pm CET on February 18, 2025. Our expert jury determines a score for each participant based on the quality of their work, and we award €40,000 in prizes accordingly.
No spoilers.
All we’ll say is that you can expect to design a wireflow and a few screens for iOS or Android.
The awards ceremony will take place at the Bending Spoons HQ, right in the heart of Milan.
We’ve worked hard to assemble an outstanding jury, and now they’ll work even harder to evaluate your work with all the attention it deserves.
Irene Au is Design Partner at Khosla Ventures, where she works with early-, mid-, and late-stage startup CEOs. Irene has unprecedented experience elevating the strategic importance of design within technology companies, having built and led the entire User Experience and Design teams at Google, Yahoo!, and Udacity during their formative years. Irene is a trustee for the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Museum of Design and Red Dot Design Awards juror.
Diego is a husband, father of two, and the VP Design at Ramp.com, the financial operations platform dedicated to saving businesses time and money. Ramp is known to be one of the fastest growing SaaS startups of all time, reaching $300+ million in annual revenue in just over three years of operation. Today, Ramp powers $35 billion of payment volume annually, and uses AI to help its 30,000 customers to save over $1 billion of spend and automate 10 million hours of manual work. Ramp has raised $1.2 billion in funding from investors including Founders Fund, Khosla Ventures, Thrive Capital, Coatue, and more, and is currently valued at $7.65 billion.
Carola is a seasoned design leader, speaker and content creator who leads design teams building AI at Atlassian. Previously, Carola was leading teams at Dropbox carrying the unique perspective of a manager who keeps her craft sharp. She's an avid prototyper with an appreciation for visually stunning but incredibly efficient interfaces.
Designer by education and practice, Chiara leads frog design talents globally and heads the Innovation Team based in Milan, bridging practice development, people growth and program delivery. With over 20 years of experience in both academia and consultancy, she helps organizations derisk innovation and launch to market breakthrough experiences - by combining scientific rigor, systemic thinking, human empathy, and craft. As a mother of two and a passionate traveler, Chiara seeks diversity in the world around her to stimulate inspiration and maintain divergent thinking.
The inspiring winners of the last Designflows edition.
1st place 2021
2nd place 2021
3rd place 2021
How are prizes assigned?
The total prize pool is €40,000. Once all submissions have been reviewed, the top 40 participants are awarded €250 each and are invited to the awards ceremony in Milan. During the ceremony, the top three rankings are unveiled: The highest ranking participant wins €15,000, the second wins €10,000, and the third wins €5,000. Prize money is transferred to the bank accounts of the winners within five working days of the awards ceremony. Prizes are subject to taxes—see the rules for full details.
Who judges the submissions, and how?
To identify the best submissions, we follow a two-phase process. First, a jury of Bending Spoons team members evaluates and ranks each submission. The top 20 submissions from this ranking advance to the next phase, where they are scored by a second jury composed of external experts. These experts, unaware of the scores assigned in the first phase, independently evaluate the submissions without consulting one another. The final ranking of these 20 submissions is based solely on the average scores assigned by the external experts, disregarding the scores from the internal jury.
In addition to the authors of these 20 submissions, we also invite the next 20 highest-ranked participants (as determined by the Bending Spoons jury) to join the awards ceremony. Prizes are then awarded according to the final ranking determined in the second phase.
The Bending Spoons jury and all of the judges score the participants on three criteria, weighted as follows:
We vow to ensure all submissions are judged objectively, with the minimum possible amount of individual bias. It’s impossible to eliminate subjective opinion, of course. So, to avoid unpleasant and useless disputes, our decisions are unappealable, and we won’t provide the judges’ scores or the reasons why a certain work is judged superior to another.
What tools can I use, and in what format should I submit my work?
You may use any tool as long as you submit your work as a PDF file. The brief provides more details on the exact format required.
When and where does the event take place?
The contest doesn’t require your physical presence, and you may send your submission from 4:30 pm CET on February 14, 2025, to 1 pm CET on February 18, 2025. The winners are announced during the awards ceremony in June 2025, which will take place at the Bending Spoons HQ, Via Nino Bonnet 10, Milan. The 40 top-ranked participants are invited to attend the awards. Bending Spoons covers all travel and accommodation expenses.
How much will it cost me?
Designflows is completely free for all participants. Bending Spoons provides food, hotel accommodation (the night before the awards and, if needed, the night of the awards), and travel expenses. This is on top of the €250 won by every participant attending the awards.
What are you going to do with the work I submit?
We won’t use your work for any commercial purposes without your prior written consent. However, we reserve the right to display all submissions within the scope of this contest. For more details, please read the rules.
How can I apply?
Applications remain open until 11:59 pm CET on February 10, 2025. You can apply here. We reserve the right to close the application window earlier and at any time, in case we receive more applications than we can handle. When applying, you’re asked to provide your full name, a contact email, your nationality, and a link to your portfolio (for example, your Dribbble or Behance profile page, but anything suitable works).
Who can participate?
Participants must be at least 18 years old at registration, and either be European or resident in a European country. Designflows is all about stimulating and celebrating creative excellence in digital product design in Europe. So, while it’s absolutely not mandatory to be an expert, having some experience within the field will definitely help.
Email us at info@designflows.it
