In fast-moving tech companies, there’s rarely time to stop and look at the work itself,  to not just understand the results, but how those results came to be. Once a year (or rather, for the second year in a row – and already clearly on its way to becoming a tradition) the Wix Design Guild Awards create a rare pause:  a moment to step back and reflect on the work itself.

This year’s ceremony was less about trophies and more about perspective – how great design shows up across teams, needs, disciplines, and even geographies. In many ways, it also offered a glimpse into the future of design: broader, bolder, and more human than ever.

At the heart of the event stood a simple idea: great design doesn’t stand alone. 

“The Design Guild Awards were never meant to only celebrate polished visuals,” says Lee Kenneth, Head of Wix Playground and one of the leaders behind the initiative.

“It’s more about recognizing thinking, ownership, and curiosity – the kind of things that don’t always fit neatly into a portfolio slide.”

The initiative itself began as a designer-led idea. “Lior Giat, Wix Playground team member, envisioned the event, shaped it, planned it, and ultimately convinced all of us –including the Design Guild’s leadership – that such a moment of recognition was not only valuable, but necessary.”

“That spirit connects directly to Wix core values” Lee explains. “True ownership, operational excellence, and entrepreneurship. Letting people dream something, build it end to end, and take responsibility for turning it into a reality.”

This year, more than 400 projects were submitted. The sheer volume – and the consistently high standard of presentation – revealed something familiar to anyone who’s worked with designers: competitiveness, but the good, healthy kind.

From the TLV Campus to the global stage

This year marked a significant milestone for the Design Guild Awards.

While this was only the second time the ceremony took place, it was the first time it became truly global with design teams from Lithuania, Japan, Amsterdam, and the Kyiv Design Hub joining the celebration.

“There aren’t many opportunities for all of us to celebrate together,” Lee notes. “That’s what made this year feel especially meaningful.”

Another deliberate choice this year was who presented the awards. Rather than managers, the stage was given to designers from the guild – including some new employees.

“We wanted to show faces that are less familiar,” Lee explains, “to reflect the diversity of talent, not just the names that are the most visible.”

Design at scale

Lee Kenneth, Head of Wix Playground

Today, the Wix Design Guild includes 328 designers worldwide: around 30 in Kyiv, four in Lithuania, and teams across New York, Amsterdam, and Tokyo. In many ways, our team functions as one of the largest in-house design studios in the tech world.

With that scale comes complexity. Designers join the guild at different stages of their careers, across 18 sub-disciplines, all working under a single guiding principle: design first.

“That approach is still relatively rare for a technology company,” Lee says. “Everything at Wix is seen through a design lens – not just product, business, or technology, but language, behavior, systems, and experience.”

It’s exactly this scale and diversity that make the Design Guild Awards so essential. When hundreds of designers work across teams and locations, the awards create a shared moment of visibility – a chance to pause and surface meaningful work.

“One of the core reasons we created the Design Guild Awards was visibility,” says Lior Giat.

“When you work at this scale, it’s almost impossible to really see what everyone else is doing. The awards create a rare moment where designers across Wix can discover each other’s work - not through decks or updates, but through real projects, real thinking, and real outcomes.”

Lior Giat, Wix Playground Team member

From specialists to generalists Another clear theme emerging from this year’s submissions was a broader industry shift toward generalism.

“With the rise of AI, the way we see our role has changed dramatically,” Lee says. “We moved from micro-specialization to a more generalist mindset. In many ways, designers are becoming art directors and decision-makers, rather than purely hands-on executors.”

The challenge now is educational as much as professional: teaching designers how to adopt this way of thinking – how to lead direction, make decisions, and orchestrate work across disciplines.

Looking ahead, this shift won’t shrink the awards; it will just reshape them.

“We’ll see more collaboration between teams,” Lee predicts. “Not just animation teams doing animation, but people demonstrating capabilities beyond their daily scope – precisely because they’re more generalist in their professional identity.”

Honorable mention

At its core, the Design Guild Awards exist because of scale. With hundreds of projects and submissions, it’s increasingly hard to see everything. The ceremony creates a rare moment of recognition and visibility, highlighting work that deserves to be celebrated across the company.

For Lee, one standout moment wasn’t a category or a trophy, but the collaboration behind the ceremony itself. Bringing the Design Guild Awards to life required far more than great design work – it depended on cross-guild teamwork across environmental design, studio and video teams, IT, operations, catering, and many others who made the evening possible.

Beyond any single project, this collaboration reflects something bigger: a design culture built on shared ownership, trust, and the freedom to take ideas as far as they can go.

“That,” Lee says, “is the real honorable mention – when different teams come together to dream big, and deliver even bigger.”

And the winners are….

And if you made it this far, it’s probably worth mentioning: we’re always looking for great designers to join the Wix Design Guild.