The Mainichi Design Prize (毎日デザイン賞 Mainichi Dezain Shō), originally the New Japan Mainichi Design Prize, is an annual award given to outstanding Japanese designers. The award is sponsored by Japanese newspaper Mainichi Shimbun. It is considered Japan's most prestigious award for design.
Originally under the title of the New Japan Design Competition, the Mainichi Design Prize was founded in 1952 with sponsorship from the Mainichi Shimbun newspaper. It proved a key catalyst for the promotion of Japanese industrial design and was awarded to many of the post-Second World War Japanese designers of significance. These have included industrial designer Hozumi Akita (1962), graphic designers Mitsuo Katsui (1964 and 1994) and Ikko Tanaka (1854, 1966, and 1973), furniture designer Shiro Kuramata (1972), and Issey Miyake, who received the Mainichi Design Prize in 1977, the first time it was awarded to a fashion designer (he also received the Mainichi Fashion Prize in 1993). Others wining the award included furniture designer Tishiyuki Kita (1985), interior designer Masayuki Kurokawa (1986), interior, furniture, and lighting designer Shigeru Uchida (1987), furniture designer Motomi Kawakami (1991), and digital graphic designer John Maeda (2002).
Mainichi Design Prize