Work Victorian Premier’s Design Awards
Victorian Premier’s Design Awards · Arts and cultureTwelve years of winners, one living archive
The Victorian Premier’s Design Awards have recognised the state’s best design since 1996. Creative Victoria asked Ladoo to turn an ageing site into a gallery worthy of its subject, and to keep it growing. Every awards night since, the new winners have gone up on a site built to hold them.
- Winners and finalists browsable by year, category and award, with every winner since 2014 migrated and tagged
- One structured entry template, with galleries that take images and video of any shape
- Each year’s finalists loaded, sized, captioned and checked by Ladoo since 2022
A design award with a site that got in the way of the design
By 2021 the awards had outgrown their website. It ran on an old WordPress install that was not responsive, so four visits in five came from a desktop at a time when the rest of the web had moved to the phone. Entries had grown year on year across eight categories until the site could not hold them. And it had a brand it did not wear: a new identity had just been designed for the awards, and the brief was clear that the site must not look like a government website.
Creative Victoria had done its homework before the tender. A survey of 255 past entrants and a six-year analytics review came with the brief. Both pointed the same way. More than six in ten visits landed on a single entry page, because studios link to their own entry page from their websites and socials. Traffic rose through the call for entries and peaked when the winners were announced. Entrants wanted the work to be the point. The site had to be a gallery first and a government site second.
Designers, studios and students
They come in waves: to check the timetable and criteria when entries open, to find the entry portal, and after the announcement, to link everyone they know to their own entry page.
- How to enter, criteria and timetable on one page
- A clear route to the entry portal, which lives elsewhere
- An entry page worth linking to
The public, the media and the sector
They want to see the work. The survey said so plainly: more about the winners, and more about Victorian design in general. The old site put the navigation first and the work somewhere below.
- Winners and finalists at the front of the site
- Browse by year, by category or by award
- The jury, the news and the sector behind the awards
Every winner since 2014, every finalist since 2019
The site is a living archive of Victorian design. Each bar is one awards year on the live site today, and each one opens on the site. The coral years are the ones Ladoo has loaded, finalist by finalist, since 2022.
The home page is the awards night
The old home page led with a menu. The new one leads with the year’s overall winner, then the best in each category, then the news. When the next cycle opens, the same page carries the call for entries and the timetable, and when the finalists are announced it carries them.
Underneath, the years run back to 2014 and the categories run across, so a visitor who arrived on one studio’s entry page can keep going. That was the finding from the analytics: most people arrive on a single entry, and the site’s job is to show them the rest.
What an entry page has to carry
Every entrant supplies the same things: a statement, a set of images and videos of whatever shape they come in, credits, and the detail the jury read. One structured template takes all of it, so a hundred entry pages a year go up looking like one site.
12345- 1
The award, the category, the year
Best in category, which one, and which year, above the name. The hero image is the entrant’s own, cropped to a fixed frame so the grid stays even.
- 2
The project in one breath
A pull-out line and the entrant’s description, as supplied. The site presents the work; it does not rewrite it.
- 3
Who made it
Studio, client and collaborators, each linked. Studios share these pages, so the credits had to be right and findable.
- 4
The gallery
Images and video of any proportion, from a phone screen to a building. The gallery takes what it is given rather than asking entrants to crop.
- 5
What the jury read
Design process, design excellence, design impact and the change it made: the four criteria, in the entrant’s words, for the people who want to know why it won.
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Built for the way people actually arrive
A studio posts its entry page on Instagram or LinkedIn. Someone taps it on a phone. That is the most common visit to the site, and on the old site it was the worst one, because the old site did not work on a phone at all.
The entry page scrolls in a clear order, the gallery swipes, and the next and previous entries sit a thumb away, so one link becomes a tour of the year.
Black, white, and one colour
The new brand came with a clean monotone identity. Ladoo built the site on a black and white base so the colour on every page comes from the design work itself, with one accent for interaction. In June 2021 the team explored ten accents on the same home page design. Creative Victoria chose G, an electric blue.
Pick an accent. It cycles on its own until you do.
September 2021 and today
The design comps were produced as full pages in Illustrator before the build. Here they sit beside the live site five years and five awards cycles later. The structure held.
The home page. Overall winner, best in category, news. The 2020 winner in the comp, the 2025 winner today.
An entry page. The award line, the name, the hero image and the statement, in the same order on both.
A year of entries. Award of the year first, then the best in each category, then the finalists by category.
The site runs on an awards calendar
The traffic review showed a site that is quiet for half the year and busy for the other half. The structure follows that cycle, and so does Ladoo’s work on it.
Call for entries
How to enter, criteria and the timetable go up. The home page points at the entry portal.
Finalists announced
The year’s finalists are published by category, around a hundred entry pages.
The upload
Ladoo loads every finalist: pages and text, hero images and galleries, with a caption and alt text on every image, then checks each one.
Winners announced
The overall winner and the best in each category go live on the night, with the news.
The archive
Every year stays browsable, so a 2014 winner is as easy to find as this year’s.
Each cycle brings around three hundred images and videos. Every one is resized for the web, given a title, a caption and alt text, and placed in the right folder in Squiz Matrix, and every entry page is checked against the entrant’s submission before it goes live.
Six layers, one team
Every public website is a stack. These are the layers Ladoo designed and built for the awards, from the entry page a studio shares to the folders the next hundred entries go into.
From the entry page a studio shares to the folder the next year goes in.Designed and built by one Ladoo team on Squiz Matrix
- InterfaceAn entry page template and galleries that take any shape of image or video
- ContentEvery winner since 2014 migrated and tagged by year and category
- FilteringWinners and finalists browsable by year, by category and by award
- AuthoringSquiz Matrix with Edit+ so the awards’ delivery partner can publish
- MediaHundreds of images and videos an awards cycle, sized and captioned
- AccessibilityWCAG AA on a site that is mostly pictures
From tender to launch in one awards cycle
Discovery, March 2021
The entrant survey and the analytics review Creative Victoria had commissioned, read closely, plus workshops and interviews with the awards team and the design community they serve.
Design and definition
A structure built around two jobs, explore the work and enter the awards, with everything else in support. The colour exploration, then design concepts presented to the awards board in April.
Delivery
Responsive front end, Squiz Matrix implementation with Edit+ for the delivery partner’s content team, the entry page template and galleries, and the migration of every winner since 2014.
Launch, 2021
The site moved from a .com.au to premiersdesignawards.vic.gov.au, with an authoring guide, a web style guide and training, and the 2020 winners as its first front page.
The questions we get asked about this project
Did Ladoo build the entry system?
No. Entries and judging run on a third-party awards platform, and the site links to it. Ladoo built the public site around that: the guidance before people enter, and the entry page after they are chosen.
Who loads the entries each year?
Ladoo has, every cycle since 2022, under a short brief from Creative Victoria each spring. The awards’ delivery partner publishes news and updates through Edit+ in between.
Why does it not look like a government site?
Because the brief said so. The awards are delivered at arm’s length by an industry partner, and their standing depends on it. The site carries the awards’ own brand on a vic.gov.au address.
Would this work for us?
If your organisation runs an annual program, an award, a festival, a grants round, a graduate show, and needs a site that absorbs a new year of content without a rebuild, this is the shape. Talk to Nathan and he will tell you honestly.
- Client
- Creative Victoria
- Site
- premiersdesignawards.vic.gov.au
- Sector
- Arts and culture
- Platform
- Squiz Matrix
- What we did
Ladoo ran discovery, designed the structure and the interface, built the site on Squiz Matrix and migrated the archive. Creative Victoria and the awards’ delivery partner own the content, and Ladoo loads each year’s finalists.
What shipped
- A gallery site on Squiz Matrix with winners and finalists at the front, browsable by year, category and award
- One structured entry page template with galleries that take images and video of any shape
- Every winner since 2014 migrated and tagged, 779 entry pages on the site today
- A black and white design that lets the work carry the colour, on the awards’ own brand
- Edit+ authoring for the delivery partner, a web style guide and an authoring guide
- 439 finalists loaded by Ladoo across the 2022 to 2025 cycles, each one sized, captioned and checked
Talk to Nathan about your site.
Nathan runs Ladoo and reads every message himself. Tell him what the site has to do and what is in the way, and within a business day he will tell you what he would do first and whether we are the right fit.