2021 Material Design Awards

Update

We are less than 3 weeks away from the submission form closing! Read on to learn about the 3 categories of Dark theme, large screen, and motion. The deadline to self-nominate is October 1, 2021; winners will be announced in December.

Material Design Awards 2021

The annual Material Design Awards help us celebrate the best in design from our talented Material Design community. This year, we’re looking for products that use Material Design to deliver more dynamic, personal experiences through Motion, Large-screen design experiences, and expressive implementations of Dark Theme. Nominate your product and review this year’s official rules. Keep reading to learn more about the criteria for each category, and explore some of the latest resources for building with Material Design.

Dark Theme

Dark themes offer new ways of fulfilling user needs, whether it’s by tailoring their experience for low-light environments, extending battery life to meet the demands of a busy day, or—in the words of Mike Scopino, design lead of 2020 winner KAYAK— reacting “to [user] needs and preferences.”

For 2021, we’re looking for products that are both beautiful and legible, day and night, and that apply color and contrast thoughtfully to craft a harmonious and personal brand experience.

Learn more

Read Material’s Dark Theme guidelines.

Design a dark theme in this step-by-step tutorial.

Create your own dark theme Material layouts with this component library for Figma.

Watch and learn how to design a dark theme with Material and implement on Android.

See how four Google products go “into the dark” with Material.

Large Screen

How your design adapts is just as important as what’s adapting: we’re looking for products whose interfaces embody adaptability—from layouts to components— across device types and screen sizes, while staying true to their unique identity, personality, and functionality.

Learn more

Read an introduction to Material Design Guidance for Large Screens.

Watch the I/O on-demand session on preparing your app for large screens.

Learn how to build an adaptive layout in this step-by-step tutorial.

Motion

Used well, motion forges a natural link between users and their devices. Motion can communicate energy, and responds to touch with precision and personality. It can tell a story that guides a user forward by revealing information at just the right moment. This year, we’re looking for products that come to life through elegant animations that make the complex feel simple and express style and brand effortlessly.

Learn more

Read the Material Motion guidelines.

Start implementing Material’s new motion system and transition patterns on Android and Flutter.

Watch and learn how to implement motion with Material Design.

Read Making Motion Meaningful.

Check out more practical and inspirational resources from the Material Design team

Learn how to implement Material Theming using MDC-Android with our in-depth guides on color, typography, and shape. Also learn how to implement Dark Theme and Material Motion.

Material Design for WordPress makes it easy to design with Material Theming on the web. Choose from multiple starter styles, block patterns and easy theming configurator. Download the theme and plugin to get started with WordPress!

Build a Material Theme is an interactive project that helps you customize Material Components and implement them into your app.

If you’re using Jetpack Compose, check out our overview of Material Design in Jetpack Compose as well as the Compose Material Catalog.

Learn how to design and build for more devices with Material’s large screen guidance, design lab, and get 5 easy steps to prepare your app for large screens in this I/O talk and blog post.

Listen to 2020 Material Design Award winners on the Design Notes podcast.

Read all about last year’s winners.