@DavecUK
I have seen on the forum your post in the past criticising the iF award won by mazzer for the philos previously which seemed to be implying it is not deserved.
I am sure that like all human institutions, there will be politicking and lobbying etc that goes on in such design competitions but still at the end of the day, the process of selection for the respected design competitions are being done by a jury of respected design authorities. There will always be those who may whisper out of various motives behind the scenes accusing of various things in most fields of buman endeavour, but at the end of the day, whether those concerns are real or not, there must be congruence between actual merit and awards or the award will cease to have any meaning for the true professional in the field e.g. the Oscars which have ceased to bave much significance on merit years ago especialy in recent years when they have explicitly made DEI a core tenet they recognise instead of purely meritorious factors as they ought to.
Now in the Compasso D Oro’s case, that is a line up of respected names from Italy who put their names as the judges behind their selections. For example for this year’s competition https://www.modemonline.com/modem-mag/article/8374-all-winners-of-the-compasso-doro-2024
Also historically many of the products recognized by the compasso d oro are iconic designs and remain so to this day.
Furthermore we have Harvey who posted as an actual design professional who still has a high opinion of the compasso d oro awards and that is a weighty thing because it is those professionals who actually know to a higher technical level of intellectual understanding what is good product design.
So notwithstandung any imperfections with its systems or approach., it seems to me that there appears to be still sufficient congruence between the Compasso D Oro award and actual merit of the designs recognised which make those awards of continuing relevance.