The winners have been announced for the Apple Design Awards 2025, and I'm not surprised to see that a popular 3D drawing app has come up for an accolade. The Feather iPad app has been getting a lot of attention on social media for its almost magical-looking ability to turn 2D art into 3D art.
Other winners in this year's awards include the beautiful video game Neva and the UI design prototyping app Play. The variety showcases the creativity and technical skill of developers as well as the creative possibilities of Apple's hardware, including the best iPads for drawing.
Apple Design Awards 2025 winners: creative apps
The Apple Design Awards 2025 celebrated 12 apps and games for their design achievements. There are winners in six categories, with one app and one game awarded in each: Delight and Fun, Innovation, Interaction, Inclusivity, Social Impact, and Visuals and Graphics.
Feather: Draw in 3D (above) from the South Korean developer Sketchsoft picked up the award for best app in the Visuals and Graphics category. Now fully offline, Sketchsoft's app allows artists to draw in 3D space using traditional presure-sensitive brushes, taking advantage of Apple Pencil interactions to create 3D models. Users can navigate freely in 3D space and to draw from any perspective on a spatial canvas, and and files can be exported in 3D formats.
In the Innovation category, the best app award went to Play from Rabbit 3 Times (above). This allows designers to create prototypes for interactive experiences using SwiftUI frameworks. It was commended for it ease of navigation and seamless synching between Mac and iPhone, allowing real-time collaboration. Taobao, an app for providing shopping experiences with realistic 3D models on Apple Vision, won the award for Interaction.
Apple Design Award: games
As for games, I'm very happy to see that the beautiful Neva won an award in the social impact category. Nomada Studio's graceful side-scrolling platformer, published by Devolver Digital for Mac, made our selection of the best indie games of 2024. It follows a young woman named Alba who must travel with her wolf companion Neva across four seasons in a world corrupted by darkness.
Apple describes it as a timely quiet meditation on care, connection, and the cost of environmental loss with themes of friendship and leadership.
Other video games that won Apple Design Awards this year include Black Salt Games' DREDGE, which was awarded in the Interaction category. The blend of slow-burn horror with exploration and adventure sees players take the helm of a fishing boat to navigate eerie islands across iPhone, iPad and Mac.
Infold Games' Infinity Nikki won the best game award for Visuals and Graphics. Apple praised the cozy open-world adventure for its "enchanted realm of color, detail, and rendering", magical outfits, whimsical creatures and unexpected moments.
Apple is taking gaming increasingly seriously, presumably having realised that it's an area where its ecosystem could bring in much more revenue. There are rumours that a new Apple gaming app will be announced at WWDC. Meanwhile, Apple's own engineers have developed a VisionOS plug-in for Godot Engine, which could lead more indie devs to make VR and XR games using what is one of the best game development programs.
You can see more about the winners on the Apple Design Awards site.
