“Design has the power to connect ideas with people and turn them into meaningful experiences,” said Mauro Porcini, President and Chief Design Officer of the Device eXperience (DX) Division at Samsung Electronics. “At Samsung, we will continue to deepen our understanding of people, uncover new possibilities in everyday moments, and create experiences that enrich lives and shape a better future.”

IDEA is one of the world’s most prestigious design award programs and was founded by the Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA) in 1980. This year, the organization selected winners across 20 categories, including Home, Consumer Technology, and Digital Interaction. Key evaluation criteria include Design Innovation, Benefit to User, Benefit to Society, and more.

Meanwhile, the Red Dot Design Award is widely recognized as one of the world’s premier design honors. Established in 1955 and organized by German organization Design Zentrum Nordrhein Westfalen, it recognizes excellence across three categories: Product Design, Design Concept, and Brands & Communication Design. Specifically, Red Dot Award: Brands & Communication Design recognizes and celebrates creative approaches that shape how brands communicate and connect with people.

Samsung was recognized by these organizations for expanding its design excellence beyond products to encompass services, brand experiences, and forward-looking design concepts.

IDEA 2026: 45 Honors, Including One Impact Award

Samsung’s Accessibility Design for Home Appliances received the inaugural Impact Award at IDEA 2026. Introduced this year, the award is presented as an additional honor to select winning designs that demonstrate strong sustainability and social impact.

Accessibility Design for Home Appliances considers the diverse needs of users with visual, hearing, mobility, and cognitive differences, helping everyone use home appliances like washers and refrigerators more easily and conveniently. Key features include Easy Mode, which simplifies complex functions and provides larger on-screen text and voice guidance, and Auto Open Door, which allows users with limited physical strength to open appliance doors with a gentle touch or voice command.

Accessibility settings configured on a mobile device can also be carried over to connected home appliances. Voice ID recognizes individual users and automatically applies their personalized settings, as well, allowing multiple users to enjoy a convenient appliance experience tailored to their individual needs and preferences.

Nine Samsung designs were honored with Bronze awards at IDEA 2026 for their innovation in premium appliances, branding, and sustainable design. These honorees include:

• Infinite AI Air Purifier: a premium air purifier featuring soft curved lines and a pop-up clean booster that elegantly integrates into any space.

• Micro RGB Brand Identity: visually expresses the superior picture quality and immersive display experience of Micro RGB technology.

• Portable SSD T7 Resurrected: a premium portable storage device with an enclosure crafted entirely from recycled aluminum.

• Samsung Mobile Origami Package: an advanced smartphone packaging concept that applies origami folding techniques using a single sheet of recycled paper.

• AI Design Companion (AIDC): an AI-based advanced design solution that leverages AI, digital twins and virtual simulation to rapidly validate and verify product wearability performance and usability.

Samsung also had 35 designs honored as IDEA 2026 Finalists.

Red Dot Award 2026: 12 Awards, Including Best of the Best for Galaxy’s Privacy Display

Notable among Samsung’s 12 winning designs in the Brands & Communication Design category at the Red Dot Design Award 2026 was Galaxy Privacy Display, which won the Best of the Best award.

Introduced on Galaxy S26 Ultra as the mobile industry’s first built-in privacy-protecting display, Privacy Display is designed to protect personal information in everyday situations such as public transit, cafés, and shared environments. Users can customize when the feature activates — such as when entering PINs, patterns, and passwords, or opening selected apps — and adjust privacy levels depending on the situation. By allowing the screen to remain clearly visible from the front while limiting visibility from surrounding angles, Privacy Display offers a more seamless and intuitive way to protect privacy.

Samsung also won 11 awards in the Red Dot Award 2026 Brands & Communication Design category for innovations that enhance the user’s quality of life through more personalized experiences. Key award-winning projects include:

• The Movingstyle Visual Branding: expresses the freedom and versatility of a portable screen through a distinctive visual identity.

• Vision AI Companion: provides a personalized experience by combining real-time viewing context with user preferences.

• Design is an Act of Love: an immersive exhibition at Milan Design Week 2026 that offered a glimpse into Samsung’s evolving design vision and explored how design can shape everyday life and new ways of living. 

• Galaxy XR Package: designed with an internal structure that allows it to be repurposed as a long-term storage and display solution.

• Samsung b.IoT Digital Twin: recreates real-world buildings as 3D models in a virtual environment and maximizes operational efficiency by visualizing the status of building systems in real time.
  

“As technology continues to advance, the more important it becomes to understand people,” said Mauro Porcini, President and Chief Design Officer (CDO) of the Device eXperience (DX) Division at Samsung Electronics. “Guided by our Expressive Design approach, we will continue exploring how technology can better understand each individual, adapt naturally to their needs and inspire more personal and meaningful experiences for the future.”

The Red Dot Design Award is widely recognized as one of the world’s top design honors. Established in 1955 and organized by German organization Design Zentrum Nordrhein Westfalen, the award recognizes excellence across three categories: Product Design, Design Concept and Brands & Communication Design. Specifically, Red Dot Award: Design Concept identifies and celebrates design concepts before they become tomorrow’s leading products.

Two Best of the Best Winners in the Design Concept Category

The advanced concept design for Samsung Home Appliances Accessories helps users naturally recognize the management and disposal methods of consumables based on their color. Some filters for air purifiers and vacuum cleaners are consumables that require periodic replacement; therefore, Samsung applied a color-coding system corresponding to management type so consumers can easily distinguish disposal and management methods.

With semi-permanent parts categorized as gray, recyclable parts as green and general waste as brown, the system proposes a way to intuitively recognize the correct disposal method without separate explanations.

This concept achieved a triple crown at the Global Design Awards, winning the highest award once again — following the iF Design Award 2026 Gold and the IDEA Design Award 2024 Gold.

The advanced concept Samsung Kids Robot Dremo & Minimo is a next-generation kids robot concept that provides personalized experiences for children using AI. Users can create a unique AI character for their child by setting the name, personality and voice. It consists of Dremo, the main robot body used at home, and Minimo, a portable version that ensures connectivity anytime and anywhere. The concept proposes a vision of a futuristic AI companion that grows with the child through interactions tailored to their interests and growth stages.

Six AI-Powered Concepts Recognized as Red Dot Winners for Providing Personalized Future Lifestyles

Beyond its top honors, six projects dedicated to improving the quality of individual lives through AI have also been honored with significant awards:

• AI Beauty Mirror: An AI-powered skincare concept that scans users’ faces to analyze skin conditions and recommend personalized skincare solutions.
• Panorama UX: A personalized UX concept that automatically optimizes screen layouts, information presentation and interactions based on user characteristics and real-time contexts.
• AI Kitchen: An AI and robotics-powered kitchen solution concept that reduces the burden of household chores by providing personalized meal recommendations, ingredient management, cooking and dishwashing based on individual data analysis.
• Spatial Tab: A future-ready, glasses-free 3D conversational platform concept that enables realistic interactions and natural eye contact with AI Companions.
• AI Home Companion PUCO: A context-aware AI home companion that delivers assistance and emotional connection by creating personalized spatial experiences through timely projection and subtle non-verbal expressions enabled by its articulated structure.
• Fluid AI Design System: A generative UI concept integrated with AI agents that interprets user interactions and contextual signals in real time to create personalized interfaces tailored to the right time and place.

Embodying this human-centered design approach, “Expressive Design”, Samsung Electronics achieved a remarkable milestone at the globally renowned Red Dot Design Award 2026, with all 16 of its submitted entries[1] recognized.

Samsung Newsroom sat down with designers from the Visual Display (VD) Business to hear the stories behind their design philosophy and innovation.

▲ (From left) Jangho Kim, Sanghyeon Na, Chulyong Cho, Minsun Kang, Jaeneung Lee and Yongjoo Lee

OLED TV S95H: A New Direction in TV Design

The OLED TV S95H received the Best of the Best award in the Product Design category, taking the long-standing paradigm of minimalist TV design in a new direction — one defined by presenting only what is necessary and boldly revealing its structure to create a framed, art-like object with a screen that appears to float.

▲ The OLED TV S95H, honored as the Best of the Best at the Red Dot Design Award 2026. [2]

Q. The S95H moves beyond the conventional bezel-less design to emphasize its presence as a design object. What inspired this paradigm shift?

Cho: Bezel-less designs have become the norm in today’s TV market, and it is increasingly difficult for brands to express a distinct identity. Beyond ultra-slim form factors, we believed it was time to rethink what a TV means in living spaces.

▲ (From left) A comparison of a conventional OLED TV and the OLED TV S95H

As TVs become larger, their presence within a space continues to grow. We believed it was important for the TV to blend naturally into the space, much like furniture or a lifestyle object. By incorporating various colors and materials into the frame, we developed designs that enable users to reflect their personal tastes.

▲ Chulyong Cho, Head of the Design Team, VD Business at Samsung Electronics

Q. The FloatLayer design — where the front panel appears to float in front of a metal frame — stands out. What kind of experience were you ultimately aiming to deliver through this design?

Cho: Our goal was to add both the atmosphere of the space and viewing immersion. We boldly exposed the metal plate to soften the contrast between the screen and its surroundings so that the product can seamlessly blend into its environment like it’s part of the interior. We also separated the screen and frame into different layers to create a more immersive experience. The screen layer highlights the OLED technology and picture quality of the S95H, while the frame layer helps the product integrate naturally into the living space.

▲ The OLED TV S95H preserves the ultra-slim profile that defines OLED displays while exposing its rear metal plate in all directions.

Breaking away from the conventional approach of eliminating the surrounding bezel, the design instead layers two contrasting materials to maximize visual impact. By prioritizing harmony with the surrounding space, the designers were able to create the S95H’s distinctive structure.

The S95H does not stop at a fixed sense of beauty. It allows users to express their personal taste through customizable elements integrated into its exterior.

Q. The customized decorative frames and art pattern on the back of the TV are also impressive. Where did these ideas begin?

Lee: We wanted to reflect users’ diverse interior preferences directly in the product — from wood tones and white tones to colorful styles. To achieve this, we applied an assembly structure that allows users to attach and detach decorative frames magnetically, with additional frame options available separately in various colors and materials to reflect their lifestyle.

▲ Jaeneung Lee, Head of the Product Design Group, VD Business

For the TV’s rear pattern, we used precision molding technology to arrange small cells in a random pattern, creating a surface with a texture that subtly changes depending on the light and viewing angle. This allows users to experience a new sense of detail every time they use the TV.

▲ (From left) The OLED TV S95H’s rear pattern and its enlarged view

Q. Users have a growing preference for zero-gap wall mounting. How have you responded to this?

Lee: No matter how beautifully a TV is designed to resemble a piece of art, it can lose its appeal and sense of immersion if it protrudes from the wall.

Essential elements required for operation — like sound holes and vent holes — were carefully integrated between the display and the frame, allowing them to remain out of the users’ line of sight while fully maintaining their functionality. With this approach, the TV fits closely against the wall, creating a clean, gallery-like composition — as if a framed piece of art were hanging in the space.

▲ The S95H was designed to minimize the size of the wall mount and integrate it into the rear of the TV, allowing it to sit as close to the wall as possible.

Where Design, Sound and Usability Converge

Beyond its elegant design, The S95H delivers three-dimensional, immersive audio through the gap between the screen and the metal plate, creating a deeply immersive listening experience. Moreover, the Wireless One Connect solution minimizes complex cable connections to maintain a clean, refined look while ensuring reliable wireless use even over long distances.

▲ The Wireless One Connect solution

TVs Designed for Any Space

Building on this achievement, TVs should evolve into lifestyle objects that reflect diverse user preferences and blend into any space. While delivering optimal viewing, the goal is to create harmonious aesthetics that allow users to express their personal style through design.

Looking ahead, Samsung will continue to advance its human-centered Expressive Design approach to reshape homes and everyday lives.

Buy the OLED S95H 4K Samsung Vision AI Smart TV (2026) here: https://www.samsung.com/my/tvs/oled-tv/s95h-77-inch-4k-smart-tv-qa77s95haexxm/

[1] The two products honored with the Best of the Best distinction were the OLED TV S95H and the Bespoke AI Laundry series. Fourteen additional products were named winners: Music Studio 5, The Movingstyle, Bespoke AI Refrigerator Family Hub, Bespoke AI Jet Bot, Bespoke AirDresser, Bespoke AI Ice Water Purifier, Bespoke AI WindFree Pro Air Conditioner, Jet Fit, Bespoke AI WindFree Combo Gallery Pro Air Conditioner, Galaxy Z Fold7, Galaxy XR, 5G Street Radio Solution, Spatial Signage and Portable SSD T7 Resurrected.

[2] These images are for illustrative purposes only and include elements created using generative AI tools.

“Expressive Design is our way of putting people at the center, celebrating their identity, emotions and diversity,” said Mauro Porcini, President and Chief Design Officer (CDO) of the Device eXperience (DX) Division at Samsung Electronics. “We design not only to function, but to create meaning and connection. Our ambition is to enrich people’s lives through experiences that are both purposeful and deeply human.”

The Red Dot Design Award is widely recognized as one of the world’s top design honors. Established in 1955 and organized by German organization Design Zentrum Nordrhein Westfalen, the award recognizes excellence across three categories: Product Design, Design Concept and Brands & Communication Design.

Two Best of the Best Award Winners Recognized for Design Innovation

The S95H stands out for its distinctive FloatLayer design, which combines an ultra-thin OLED display with a luxurious metal plate to create a layered concept in which a slim OLED screen is placed over a bold metallic surface.

The result is a new category of premium art frame design that makes the OLED screen appear as if it is floating in front of the metallic silver frame, confidently highlighting the presence of metal and producing a striking visual effect. The vivid contrast enhances the sense of immersion, while the minimalist silver metal frame seamlessly integrates into interior spaces to resemble a refined piece of wall art.

Meanwhile, the Bespoke AI Laundry appliances applies a mono-body design concept across a range of types, including standalone washing machines, dryers and combos. Through this design, the series unifies different laundry appliances under consistent design languages, enabling the products to seamlessly harmonize with a variety of interior environments.

Additionally, Smart Screen — the large 7-inch LCD screen — enhances usability by providing an intuitive and simplified control experience. Integrated with SmartThings, the interface allows users to easily manage connected smart devices while offering AI-powered, personalized lifestyle solutions for greater everyday convenience.

All 16 Entries Recognized as Winners

Beyond its top honors, Samsung achieved the remarkable feat of having all 16 products it submitted selected as winners. The recognized lineup includes:

• Music Studio 5: A wireless speaker that plays soundwave visuals that shift in shape and intensity.
• The Movingstyle: A portable touchscreen display featuring Dolby Atmos, HDR10+, a built-in battery and rolling stand.
• Bespoke AI Refrigerator Family Hub: A refrigerator with a built-in, SmartThings-connected LCD screen that allows users to check recipes, weather and more.
• Bespoke AI Jet Bot: A robot vacuum with AI Object Recognition and All-in-One Clean Station Steam+.
• Bespoke AirDresser: A fabric care machine that features Dual Air Wash and Dual Jet Steam to smooth out wrinkles and remove odors.
• Bespoke AI Ice Water Purifier: A water purifier that delivers exceptionally pure water and dispenses ice cubes.
• Bespoke AI WindFree Pro Air Conditioner: An air conditioner capable of providing tailored wind modes thanks to a three-blade system.
• Jet Fit: A cordless stick vacuum with a new slim design, delivering up to 180W suction power.
• Bespoke AI WindFree Combo Gallery Pro Air Conditioner: A standing type of an air conditioner that utilizes AI to analyze room conditions and usage patterns for optimal cooling.
• Galaxy Z Fold7: Samsung’s thinnest and lightest Fold series yet, featuring powerful Galaxy AI, a 200MP wide-angle camera and an immersive screen for multitasking and editing.
• Galaxy XR: An eXtended reality headset with multimodal AI at its core, that unleash limitless possibilities for the future of discovery, play and work.
• 5G Street Radio Solution: Designed for easy deployment in dense urban areas to offer high-capacity 5G.
• Spatial Signage: A glasses-free 3D commercial display that delivers more immersive visual experiences.
• Portable SSD T7 Resurrected: A premium SSD featuring a housing made entirely from recycled aluminum.