The RIMOWA Design Prize is presented by RIMOWA GmbH, Richard-Byrd-Str. 13, 50829 Cologne (hereafter referred to as “RIMOWA”) and is a celebration of German design excellence through the empowerment of creative talent shaping tomorrow (the prize shall hereinafter be referred to as the “Design Prize”). Under the 2024 - 2025 theme „MOBILITY“ (hereinafter referred to as the “Theme”), RIMOWA wants to promote empowerment, innovation, timelessness, inclusivity and global change.
In collaboration with some of Germany’s top design universities, the awarding of the Design Prize benefits from a burgeoning community and healthy competition, which will be divided into several rounds (hereinafter the “Competition”).
With a diverse jury, RIMOWA nurtures the perception of German design on a global scale, while supporting RIMOWA’s collaborative and professional networks in parallel. Seeking to define excellence across multiple categories, jurors have been pulled from a broad spectrum of backgrounds and disciplines (hereinafter referred to as the “Jury”).
Students must be in their 2nd semester or higher, studying in the field of Design at one of following participating universities, - list to be revealed soon. (hereinafter the “Universities”).
Businesses and mercantile companies of any kind are excluded from participating at the Competition. All nationalities are welcome. The registration phase for participating at the Competition begins at the start of the Winter semester 2024/25.
The Universities will each appoint professors (hereinafter the “Professors”) that shall be supporting the Competition in close collaboration with RIMOWA. Students interested in participating in the Competition shall get in touch with their Professors and then follow registration steps on the RIMOWA Design Prize website under “How to Participate”.
The Professors are further responsible for supporting the Students with the registration and the participation at Competition and will serve as an auxiliary support during the whole Competition and will guide the Students through all necessary deliverables (the students participating in the Competition shall hereinafter be referred to as the “Students”).
In close cooperation with the Professors and in accordance with any additional guidelines provided by RIMOWA, each Student will develop a piece of work in relation to the Theme, which can be a physical product, a system, or a service, and must show a clear consideration for society, resources, and/or conservation (hereinafter the “Work”).
All Works must further:
Be owned by the Students at all times
Have been submitted to no other prizes previously
Each Student may only participate one Work. It is allowed that 2 (“two”) Students create and submit one Work collectively.
In case of detection of any irregularity of the Works with the guidelines provided by RIMOWA and / or these terms, the Student may be disqualified, and his/her submission may not be considered.
The students shall submit their registration (initial submission) via the RIMOWA Design Prize website under the “APPLY” page.
In course of the different Competition rounds, the Students will develop and mature their Works in accordance with the guidelines and specifications provided by RIMOWA and the Jury.
At the end of the first official round, RIMOWA’s internal designers (hereafter the “RIMOWA Designers”) will be involved in the selection of the semi-finalists, i.e. the RIMOWA Designers shall select 21 (“Tweny-One”) Students which will be allowed to participate in the semi-finals. Out of the Students participating the semi-finals, the Jury shall then select the final 7 (“Seven”) Students, which are allowed to enter the last round of the Competition (hereinafter the “Finalists”).
At the last round, which is envisaged to take place in Spring 2025, the Finalists will present their respective Works at a Final competition round. From these final Students the Jury will select 1 (one) winner (the “Winner”) as well as 1 (one) special mention (the “Special Mention”).
Any Student shall be obliged to act in compliance with any applicable public ethics and morals and shall not act or behave in a way that manifests contempt or disregard for public morals or decency and / or discriminates minorities (including but not limited to any racist, offending, sexist or comparable behavior). In case of any of the aforementioned acts, behavior or statements RIMOWA shall be authorized to exclude the respective Student from the Competition at any time in its sole discretion and with immediate effect.
The jury will -inter alia- grade the Students against pillars such as:
The above order given is coincidental and does not represent any binding ranking or weighting of the criteria. The evaluation of the Works and the according ranking and selection of the places will be in the Jury´s sole discretion and will be based on a subjective and collective assessment of the Jury.
No decision, ranking or valuation of the Jury shall be in any way contestable, and no appeal shall be admitted in any case.
RIMOWA will award the winning Students the following amounts:
€ 20,000.00 for the first place
€ 10,000.00 for the second place
€ 5, 000.00 each for the third, fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh place
All Students receiving any of the aforementioned prizes, are solely responsible for paying any taxes due on their prize.
The Students declare on their honor that the Work they submit is original and that it does not violate or infringe trademarks, copyrights, designs patens, or any other industrial and/or intellectual property rights, or any third-party rights, including image, patronym rights and/or rights over the voices, whether registered or not (hereinafter referred to as “Intellectual Property Rights”).
Each Student further ensures and warrants to be the full owner of their Work and that they have not licensed, assigned nor transferred any rights of ownership or any Intellectual Property Rights in whole or in part to any third party from its creation until the end of the Competition.
Each Students agrees that RIMOWA will create images and / or authorize third parties to create images of the Works (the aforementioned images together with any images of the Works provided by the Student or a Professor shall hereinafter be collectively referred to as the “Images).
Each Student grants to RIMOWA a royalty-free, exclusive, worldwide, unlimited in time, irrevocable, transferable and sublicensable right to use and exploit the Images as well as any other information, descriptions and representations about or in relation to the Works for all kinds of promotional purposes in all media. The rights to use and exploit expressly include all known and unknown online and offline media. In particular, the Student hereby acknowledges and accepts that RIMOWA might:
to use and/or make publicly accessible the Images and information, descriptions, and representations about the Work in all online media, including but not limited to websites, social media platforms and online magazines,
to use and/or make available and/or reproduce the Images and any information, descriptions, and representations in any offline media,
to use and/or publish the Images in print media, in particular but not limited to magazines, newspapers and/or other press or written materials.
In addition, each Student grants RIMOWA the right to use the Student´s name, image, likeness, photograph, persona, biography or other distinctive personal elements and information provided by the Student in connection with the Work and the Competition in any media whatsoever e.g. for communication purposes and on RIMOWA´s website.
The Students shall not, subject to any mandatory rights, make any claims on copyright or any other intellectual property rights against RIMOWA.
The Students are not permitted to use RIMOWA’s name, trademarks or any other content owned by RIMOWA for its own purposes. RIMOWA is free to decide on any nomination and use as a reference and may allow this at a later date if necessary; such approval must be given in writing.
For the purposes of this Section the term "GDPR" shall mean Regulation (EU) 2016/679 and any applicable national legislation enacted thereunder and the term "Personal Data" shall mean any information relating to an identified or identifiable individual, where an identifiable individual is one who can be identified, directly or indirectly, taking into account all means likely reasonably to be used to identify that individual.
In connection with the Design Prize and the Competition, RIMOWA might collect and processes the following personal data for the sole purpose of managing and conducting the Competition and the awarding of the Design Prize (legal basis of the processing: performance of the contract, Art. 6 Abs. 1 lit. b GDPR):
First and last name of the Students
E-mail address
Postal address and telephone number
Date of birth
Information about course of study, semester and degrees.
Further RIMOWA might collect and processes the bank details of the Finalists in order to transfer the prize money.
Any publication of Students Personal Data in accordance with Section VII requires the Students explicit consent (Art. 6 Abs. 1 lit. a GDPR). RIMOWA will collect such consent prior to publishing the and Personal Data of Students.
If not stipulated otherwise, RIMOWA will delete the Personal Data of Students after the Competition and in accordance with legal requirements.
RIMOWA applies technical and organizational security measures in line with accepted practice particularly regarding the security of its information system. RIMOWA strives to take all the necessary steps in order to protect the confidentiality and security of your Personal Data and prevent it from being amended, damaged, destroyed or accessed by unauthorized third parties. RIMOWA will ensure in this respect that its data processors present similar, appropriate security, technical and organizational guarantees.
For further information on how RIMOWA processes Personal Data and which rights can be practiced in relation to the processing of Personal Data, please visit:
https://www.rimowa.com/de/en/Data_protection.html
In case you have any questions about the collection and processing of your data by RIMOWA, you can also contact the data protection officer at the following e-mail address: dataprotection@rimowa.com.
The local supervisory authority responsible for RIMOWA is The State Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information of North Rhine-Westphalia, Kavalleriestr. 2-4, 40213 Düsseldorf.
RIMOWA reserves the right to make changes and/or additions to the event and/or the conditions of participation and/or to cancel the event altogether. Prizes will only be awarded if the Competition is held properly.
The Competition and the awarding of the Design Prize are subject to German law.
Students who violate the conditions of participation or manipulate the Compeition may be excluded from participation with immediate effect.
Should any provision of these terms and conditions be or become invalid in whole or in part, this shall not affect the validity of the remaining conditions of participation. In place of the invalid provisions, the parties shall in this case find an appropriate provision that comes as close as possible to the provision to be replaced.