TOGETHER WITH COMMUNITIES

KOKUYO Design Award is an international competition for product design that aims to co-create with talented designers and support their activities.
The 2025 event was titled “prototype.” In general usage, “prototype” refers to an early, unfinished version of a product used for testing. In the competition, the word implied a prototype with the potential to move an idea to the next stage.
In line with this concept, we invited people to submit product designs that could become a starting point for something amazing in the future.
We received 1,448 entries from 61 countries (716 of the entries were from Japan and 732 were from other countries). Ten of the entries earned the New Generation Award. The winners received a trophy and a cash prize of ¥30,000.
The New Generation Award was created in 2024 to encourage a new generation of budding challenge-takers. This accolade is awarded to some of the KOKUYO Design Award entries submitted by students. The entries are selected not for their commercial potential but for their compelling ideas and perspectives.
Following the final round of deliberation in March 2025, the judges picked the winner of grand prize and three winners of the highly commended prize, presenting them with trophies and cash prizes. The grand prize went to Newron (an innovative pen).
The cash prize for the entry that won the grand-prize winner was ¥2,000,000. For each of the entries that won the highly commended prize, it was ¥500,000.

• KOKUYO Design Award*
• • *Japanese Only

We hold the Campus Art Awards in partnership with The Yomiuri Chukosei Shimbun. Campus Art Awards is a drawing competition for students at junior high school and high school. The award program began in 2015, and the 2025 event, the 10th year of the program, gathered 3,057 works.
The event was titled My Sweet Hometown. This theme focused on the landscapes, customs, traditions, events, cuisine, confectionary, and other motifs associated with the students’ hometowns. The purpose was to give students an opportunity to take an interest in their hometown, discover its charms, and express them. For the top individual prize, the winner received 50 Campus notebooks featuring the person’s winning picture. The school of the winner received 1,000 of the notebooks featuring the winning picture.

• Campus Art Awards*
• • *Japanese Only

We want to contribute to a self-directed, collaborative society, in which everyone thrives. In 2014, we launched a community outreach program called Chasing Big Dreams with Small Notebook. This year marked the ninth year of the program.
Volunteers from KOKUYO’s workforce visit an elementary school in Yunnan, China. They conduct a lesson and organize games with the children to forge ties with the community. The school receives a donation from KOKUYO and the children receive KOKUYO notebooks.

As in 2023, KOKUYO participated in the community outreach program along with LAMEX,* another operating company in the group. The event provided an opportunity to deepen mutual understanding and interaction. We visited the same school as before to follow up the children’s progress.

• *
  Dongguan Lamex Furniture Co., Ltd., is a Hong Kong company that manufactures and sells office furniture.