Designing for the Final Frontier: Bennett Awards & the Everyday Astronaut’s Astro Awards
2025 Astro Awards, designed by Bennett Awards
(Part 1:) Launching the Mission (– The Project Brief)
In early 2025, Bennett Awards was approached to design and fabricate custom awards for the Astro Awards, an annual celebration hosted by Everyday Astronaut — the popular space education platform founded by science communicator and YouTuber Tim Dodd. The awards were commissioned through Grvty Coast, a design agency representing Everyday Astronaut for this initiative.
This wasn’t just any awards show. The Astro Awards are a unique blend of passion, science, and celebration — honoring the most Inspirational, Innovative, and Important missions and contributors in spaceflight each year. What began as online content in 2017 evolved into a full-scale live event by 2024, hosted at the Paramount Theater in Austin, Texas, complete with music, meet-and-greets, and a global livestream.
With the 2025 event on the horizon, the Everyday Astronaut team wanted custom-designed, visually compelling trophies that could represent both the technical excellence and wonder of space exploration. They initially came to Bennett Awards with an ambitious concept — a fully interactive, light-up award. While visually exciting, the interactive concept proved to be impractical for production and long-term durability. That’s where our expertise came in.
(Part 2:) Navigating the Design Process (– Collaboration and Creative Problem Solving)
Once the feasibility of the initial concept was assessed, the Bennett Awards team worked closely with Grvty Coast’s designer to refine the idea. Our goal was to maintain the futuristic, engaging spirit of the original concept while creating something beautiful, symbolic, and achievable with precision craftsmanship.
We ultimately developed two distinct award designs that aligned with the Everyday Astronaut brand aesthetic and met their functional and artistic goals:
The Mission Excellence Awards – tombstone style awards
The Major Mission Astro Awards – larger, pillar-style pieces
Color played a vital role in this project. Everyday Astronaut wanted a vivid, glowing green—a shade that echoed their established visual identity. Achieving the brightest possible green within our production capabilities became a collaborative effort between their design vision and our material expertise. Working through multiple samples and finishes, we landed on a 75% translucent green acrylic, striking a balance between visibility, vibrancy, and structural integrity.
(Part 3:) The Final Product – Awards Worthy of Orbit
For the Mission Excellence Awards, we fabricated 13 individual trophies, each standing 9.5 inches tall and 6.25 inches wide. Design-wise, one of the most exciting elements was incorporating the Astro Awards’ modern “A” logo as a cut-out high-polished aluminum accent affixed to the front. This introduced a sleek, space-age feel while grounding the award in a clean, minimalist presentation.
These awards featured a unique “tombstone” silhouette with one curved corner, echoing the Astro Awards’ signature logo shape. A brushed aluminum pentagonal plate carried the award details and recipient’s name — a rare decision to place all the text on the front face rather than the base, reinforcing the bold, modern look.
Recipients included major players like NASA, SpaceX, and Rocket Lab. A special version — the Lunar Legacy Award — was presented to Apollo 16 astronaut Charlie Duke, celebrating historic lunar contributions.
The second, more sculptural design was a 10-inch-tall square pillar award, encased in the same vibrant green acrylic. What made this piece truly remarkable was the waterjet-cut brushed aluminum webbing that wrapped the column — a nod to Everyday Astronaut’s branding, evoking themes of cellular structure, scientific discovery, and the very fabric of the cosmos.
These awards honored some of the most ambitious missions of 2024, including:
SpaceX’s Starship Flight 5: Most Inspiring Mission
NASA & JHUAPL’s Parker Solar Probe: Most Important Mission
Varda Space Industries & Rocket Lab’s W-1 Mission: Most Innovative Mission
Polaris Dawn: The Most Inspiring, Innovative and Important Mission
(Part 4:) (Event Impact –) Celebrating A Growing Community of Space Enthusiasts
The 2025 Astro Awards marked only the second in-person edition of the event — and it was a resounding success.
Held again at the Paramount Theater in Austin, the event featured industry panels, live music by Tim Dodd’s band (Salt Fox), and a deeply enthusiastic crowd of professionals, creators, and fans. With global livestreaming via YouTube and X (formerly Twitter), the reach of the awards continues to expand dramatically each year.
Event organizers wrote:
“Just wanted to say thanks for making our event a huge success.”
Regarding the awards:
“We were very impressed with how they turned out and everyone thought they were super cool.”
Better yet, Everyday Astronaut is already looking forward to collaborating with us again for next year’s Astro Awards, a testament to the strength of the relationship and the value our design work brought to their vision.
From overcoming design feasibility issues to delivering an eye-catching final product that captured the spirit of exploration, Bennett Awards was proud to be part of a project that connects people with the awe and possibility of spaceflight. As the Astro Awards continue to grow, we look forward to helping celebrate the achievements that shape our understanding of the universe — one stunning trophy at a time.
