Sprudge Design Awards
The Sprudge Design Awards are an annual awards programme for design work in coffee — packaging, café interiors, websites, glassware, menus, merchandise, photography — run by the coffee news site Sprudge.12 The first edition ran in 2023;3 the second ran across the winter of 2024–25 and announced winners on 17 January 2025.41
The thing to hold onto is that nothing here is about how the coffee tastes. Almost every other event filed under this wiki’s competitions folder measures the drink or the person making it: Cup of Excellence and Best of Panama put lots on a cupping table and sell them at auction, and the World Barista Championship runs competitors past certified judges. The Design Awards judge the bag, the room and the picture — the visual and physical craft wrapped around coffee. There are no cupping scores, no lot prices, no buyers, no altitudes and no processing methods anywhere in the programme, and any figure of that kind attached to it would be a mistake.
They are also the narrower of the two awards Sprudge owns. The reader-voted Sprudgie Awards cover the whole trade — roasters, producers, podcasts, events — and have run since 2009; the Design Awards, launched fourteen years later, take the single “Best Design/Packaging” idea and split it into two dozen separate prizes.5
How they work
The cycle runs across the back half of the calendar year and finishes in the new one:
| Stage | 2024–25 edition |
|---|---|
| Entries open | Closed 11 October 2024, extended to 18 October 20241 |
| Entries received | ”Nearly one hundred noms”1 |
| Finalists published | 6 December 20246 |
| Public voting | 6 December 2024 – 7 January 20256 |
| Winners announced | 17 January 20254 |
| Votes cast | More than 50,0004 |
Winners are chosen by public vote, not by a judging panel.4 Entrants — companies and individuals alike — nominate their own or other people’s work, Sprudge narrows each category to a shortlist of finalists, and then readers vote. That makes the result a popularity measure filtered through an editorial shortlist, which is a different instrument from the blind, scored, rulebook-driven judging used at a World Coffee Championship. Read a Design Award the way you would read a magazine readers’ poll with a curated ballot.
The 2024–25 finalist ballot carried 24 categories, grouped into three families:6
| Family | Categories |
|---|---|
| Packaging | Whole Bean Coffee · Ready To Drink · Seasonal or Limited Edition · Milk / Alternative Milk / Creamer · Flavoring / Syrup · Food / Consumable Product · Specialty Tea · Equipment / Non-Consumable Products |
| Design achievement | Café / Roasting Facility · Commercial Product · Event Exhibition · Goods and Garments · Menu Design · Pastry · Vessels · Print Materials |
| People, teams and one-offs | Outstanding Designer · Outstanding Design Agency · Outstanding In-House Design Team · Outstanding Design Collaboration · Outstanding E-Commerce / Web Site · Best Coffee Photograph Of The Year · Best Home Coffee Design Of The Year · Design Inclusivity Award |
That spread is the point of the programme. “Outstanding Packaging: Specialty Tea” and “Outstanding Design Achievement: Pastry” are categories no green-coffee competition would ever have, and they show the awards treating a café as a whole designed business rather than as a place that sells one product.
Winners — 2nd Annual (2024–25)
| Category | Winner |
|---|---|
| Best Coffee Photograph Of The Year | Phillip Leeroy White |
| Best Home Coffee Design Of The Year | Amer Ajami, Ken Tanaka and Osamu Hironaga |
| Design Inclusivity Award | Cafe Retiro |
| Outstanding Designer | Swasti Mittal |
| Outstanding Design Agency | Truffl, for Fat Miilk |
| Outstanding In-House Design Team | Brandywine Coffee |
| Outstanding Design Collaboration | Verve Coffee Roasters |
| Outstanding E-Commerce / Web Site | Dayglow |
| Outstanding Design Achievement: Café / Roasting Facility | Three Monkeys Coffee |
| Outstanding Design Achievement: Commercial Product | Cafe Imports / La Bodega |
| Outstanding Design Achievement: Event Exhibition | Squeaky Coffee |
| Outstanding Design Achievement: Goods and Garments | PERC Coffee Roasters |
| Outstanding Design Achievement: Menu Design | Matyroshka Coffee |
| Outstanding Design Achievement: Pastry | La Cabra |
| Outstanding Design Achievement: Print Materials | Onyx Coffee Lab |
| Outstanding Design Achievement: Vessels | Subko Coffee |
| Outstanding Packaging: Equipment / Non-Consumable Products | La Marzocco Linea Micra |
| Outstanding Packaging: Flavoring / Syrup | Monin |
| Outstanding Packaging: Food / Consumable Product | Coffee Blossom Honey |
| Outstanding Packaging: Milk / Alternative Milk / Creamer | Ghost Town Oats |
| Outstanding Packaging: Ready To Drink | Stumptown Coffee Roasters |
| Outstanding Packaging: Seasonal or Limited Edition | Brulerie du Quai |
| Outstanding Packaging: Specialty Tea | DONA |
| Outstanding Packaging: Whole Bean Coffee | People Possession |
All twenty-four winners are from the 2024–25 cycle.4 The list is a fair snapshot of who the design-literate end of the trade currently is — American roasters like Onyx Coffee Lab, Verve Coffee Roasters and Stumptown Coffee Roasters alongside Subko Coffee in India, La Cabra in Denmark and Brulerie du Quai in Canada.
One thing a reader should know while looking at that table: the equipment-packaging winner, the La Marzocco Linea Micra, is made by a company that also underwrites Sprudge’s Special Projects editorial strand.2 Nothing about the vote suggests that mattered — it was a public ballot — but the general caution in Coffee media applies, because in specialty coffee the organiser, the electorate and the sponsors are drawn from the same small pool.
What they are not
Sprudge is a publisher, not a standards body. The Design Awards are not administered by, affiliated with, or accredited by the Specialty Coffee Association, the Coffee Quality Institute, the Alliance for Coffee Excellence or World Coffee Events; no source consulted for this note connects them to any of those bodies.461 They are an independent, media-hosted award of the kind that exists in most trades — closer to a design magazine’s annual than to a certification.
To verify
How many categories there actually are. Three of Sprudge’s own pages disagree. The October 2024 entry-deadline article describes the programme as having 26 categories;1 the December 2024 finalist announcement lists 24 category names;6 and the January 2025 winners announcement says voting ran “across 23 categories” while itself naming 24 winners.4 The 24 in the finalist and winner lists is the figure used above because it is the one that can be counted directly, but the discrepancy is recorded rather than resolved, and the true 2024–25 category count is unconfirmed.
To verify
The 2023 inaugural edition. Sprudge’s own site search lists an article titled “The 2023 Sprudge Design Awards Winners,” dated 5 December 2023,3 and the October 2024 article calls that year’s programme the second annual.1 Both point to a first edition in 2023, but the 2023 article itself was not read for this note, so no inaugural winner, category list, entry count or vote total is stated here. Whether the first edition also used a public vote is unknown.
To verify
How you enter. The research report behind this note describes a four-step submission process on the awards site — pick your projects, register basic details, receive a private upload link by email, then submit a one-paragraph statement plus photos — and gives info@sprudge.com as the contact address, citing the programme’s “How To Submit” and FAQ pages.75 Both pages returned an HTTP 429 rate-limit error on every attempt made for this note and could not be read directly. Nothing above is confirmed, including whether entry is free; the Sprudgie Awards are explicitly free to enter, but no equivalent statement was verified for the Design Awards.
To verify
The programme’s own description of itself. The awards’ FAQ is quoted in the Sprudgie Awards note as calling the programme “a user submitted global platform honoring the best in coffee and drinks design, with a focus on original packaging design, products, and art.”5 That quotation reached this wiki through a research report, not through a direct reading of the page, and the FAQ remained unreachable when checked again for this note. The scope described above is instead reconstructed from the published category and winner lists.46
Related
- Sprudge — the news site that owns, runs, shortlists and reports on the awards
- Sprudgie Awards — Sprudge’s other, broader, reader-voted programme, running since 2009
- Coffee media — the trade press that funds itself from the industry it covers, and why that matters here
- Good Food Awards — the other American coffee award in this wiki, blind-tasted rather than voted
- World Barista Championship · World Coffee Championships — rulebook-and-judges competitions, the opposite model
- Cup of Excellence · Best of Panama — cupping-and-auction competitions that produce scores and prices, which these awards do not
- Specialty Coffee Association · World Coffee Events — the institutional machinery the Design Awards sit outside of
- Onyx Coffee Lab · Verve Coffee Roasters · Stumptown Coffee Roasters · La Cabra · Subko Coffee · PERC Coffee Roasters · Brandywine Coffee Roasters — roasters among the 2024–25 winners
- Cafe Imports · La Marzocco — a green-coffee importer and an espresso machine maker, both category winners
- Specialty coffee · Third wave coffee — the culture whose visual language these awards catalogue
Official links
Footnotes
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This Is The Final Week To Enter The 2024 Sprudge Design Awards | Sprudge — published 7 October 2024; source of the second-annual framing, the 11 October deadline and its extension to 18 October, the “nearly one hundred noms” figure and the 26-category claim — read via WebFetch ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7
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About | Sprudge Coffee — the publisher’s own page; source for Sprudge’s ownership of both awards programmes and for the La Marzocco sponsorship of Special Projects ↩ ↩2
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The 2023 Sprudge Design Awards Winners | Sprudge — the inaugural edition’s results announcement, listed with the date 5 December 2023 in Sprudge’s own site search; the article itself was not read for this note, and nothing from inside it is stated here ↩ ↩2
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Announcing The Second Annual Sprudge Design Award Winners | Sprudge — published 17 January 2025; the official results announcement and the source of every winner listed above, the public-vote method, the “more than 50,000 votes” figure and the “23 categories” wording — read via WebFetch ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8
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Frequently Asked Questions — Sprudge Design Awards — the programme’s own FAQ; returned HTTP 429 on every attempt made for this note and was not read directly ↩ ↩2 ↩3
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Here’s All The Finalists For The 2nd Annual Sprudge Design Awards | Sprudge — published 6 December 2024; source of the 24 category names and the 6 December 2024 – 7 January 2025 voting window — read via WebFetch ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6
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How To Submit — Sprudge Design Awards — the programme’s own submission instructions; returned HTTP 429 and was not read directly ↩