How to participate in DC contests

Hello new DC designers,

Due to no guide for starters and people unaware about what they can do I made this guide. Hope it will help new designer who likes to join this community.

Most here might already work for companies or work freelance for one, but this community is a great way for student or just beginning designers to learn or improve them self. Here the level of designs in the Designer Team is very high, so companies ask for designs will get good designs. So to be chosen for the Design Team is a big privileged, and it don't happen directly. So you need to prove yourself, for some its easy but for students and beginning designers it could be hard.

Don't think this place is all about winning contest and earn allot of money. Its all about trying to express yourself to make the best design and hopefully it could be actually be used, and the extra a bit of cash earnings for your sweat and tears to design it.


- Just starting

When you just started you can still do allot of stuff in this community. There are different sections where you can do different things:

1. General Information
2. Design Contest
3. Inspiration
4. Instructional Content
5. General Chat
6. DC



1. General Information
Here you can find information about this community and also advice new ideas for this community to improve. Also if there are any question how the forum works you can find it there, if you can't find the answer don't hesitate to ask. Also there is a online magazine, where you can find news about design or this community. You can also send it news to help this magazine to get more info.


2. Design Contest
Particular most people are drawn to this cause they see all the money signs. But for starters you can't submit your design in the contest where it says Design Team Members Only. Those contest you can only watch and get inspired. But don't steal the designs cause that is not appropriate. Here we need to make total new designs that you have never seen before and also try to do the best.

However in this sections we can enter 2 different contest for starters Non-profit/Charity Contest and Community Contest. These contest we can improve and show your skills. However in the Non-profit/Charity Contest you can already earn a little by winning the contest. But if you win 3 times at the Community Contest you can join the Design Team. Also main rules says you may only submit 3 designs per contest threads. Other information about the contest are found there too.

Really Important!!: All logos on DesignContest.net must be created in vector format.
For further information look at the Guidelines For Creating & Delivering Logos thread.

When submitting the designs make them in a reasonable size and upload it to the web. With flickr.com or imageshack. And post the url to the images between .


3. Inspiration
This is a interesting sections where you can do allot of things too. First you can post threads with site, pictures or other thing that give you inspiration. To help others to get inspired. You can also show off the work you did outside of this contest and community, this could also help you get into the Design Team faster.

Work in Progress. Here you can show things your still working on and want some comment about. Not just thing about the contest, but also for other things maybe schoolwork of other designs. Some people always think they are the best and what they make is best, but this is not always true. So first thing we need to learn is to trust others and ask there comment about your work. This way you know what wrong and learn to look from a different view. So this section might be very helpful when you just can't get whats wrong with your design.


4. Instructional Content
Here you can find new about the industry of Design, new programs and information. The important thing of this section is to help you or others to learn the programs or help if the run into a problem. Here you can ask anything if you don't understand how the programs work. And if you know a cool trick is might be handy to post the guide here so other can learn it too.


5.General Chat
Here you can introduce yourself and also give information about you background. Or talk about just anything or ask anything too.




-Joining Design team
To join the Design team and to be able to compete with all the contest you need to look at this page. http://www.designcon...ent/view/14/28/

These are the requirement before you can become a member of the Design Team and to send an application.

1. You must have your own online version of a portfolio

2. You should be a registered member of the Contest Forums

3. You must be an active member of the DesignContest.net community for one week and have at least 10 forum posts

4. You must be able to receive Paypal payments


If you feel you meet the above requirements, please fill out the form. All new applications will be reviewed and processed within 30 days.


If there is anything you want to ask don't hesitate just ask.

Thanks for the information! Going to subscribe right now!

Thanx for the detailed informations Chung Dha.

That is very useful - thank you. Wish more forums had such comprehensive details, as it stops newbies asking the same questions all the time.

time to start ^^
but i have one question
"own online version of a portfolio"

is it means i have my own website, or can i put my design portfolio in deviantart ?

You can upload to any image host. But please make sure to organize your work into categories; it's a lot easier to review that way.

Thank you ! cant wait to get started !

To participate in logo, website, flash, print, and/or illustration contests at DesignContest.net, you must be a member of our pre-approved Design Team. Before joining this team, you must meet all of the requirements listed on the application page. If your application gets reviewed before the requirements are met, it will be rejected.

For more information, please visit the Design Team FAQ. To be well informed about the Design Team review process, I recommend taking a few minutes to read over all of the FAQ's.

If you have any questions or comments, or if you want some information added to this post, please send me a Private Message (PM). To send a PM, click on my username and select "Send a private message to _Redrum" from the drop-down menu.

Introduction

DesignContest.net is an international community for designers. Some of us are just beginners while others are highly skilled graphic artists. The community is formed mainly around design contests with prizes ranging from $150 to $500+. These contests, called “guaranteed contests”, are only available to designers who’ve shown that they possess a certain level of design skill as well as a reasonable amount of commitment to our forums.

What’s in it for designers? Apart from earning some cash, participation in contests allows designers to advance their design abilities and build their portfolio all while interacting with real clients and getting feedback on their work.

Why start a contest? Most of our clients will get a better deal from just one of our designers than they would from anyone that they could privately contract for the project. In addition, consider the fact that you’ll have not just one, but multiple designers working on your contest and that this benefit comes without loss of design quality.

New Contests (Start a Contest)

Our concept is quite simple: Through our main website, the client (a.k.a. contest holder) submits his/her project and deposits the prize amount being offered for the work. The requirement to deposit the full prize amount is crucial and will be explained in detail below. After the project has been submitted, we post it as a contest in a particular section of our forums. The contest is, in fact, a regular forum thread, which we refer to as a "contest thread". Within the contest thread we include a description of the company, the project details, the deadline, and the prize amount being offered as well as any additional information that the contest holder may provide. After the contest thread has been created, the competition officially begins with designers submitting their entries via replies to the thread.

The Design Team

As mentioned earlier, not everyone can take part in the guaranteed contests; in fact only members of our aptly named "Design Team" have this privilege. The screening process for the team is simple but effective. To be accepted, a designer must be a registered member of our forum and he/she will be required to contribute actively to threads and activities for at least one week. It is also required for applicants to have at least 10 recent posts before sending in an application. These few simple rules are aimed at assessing the candidate’s ability to use the forums, follow guidelines, and respect other members. Preliminary criteria aside, the most important requirement is to have a good portfolio ready for review.

Having outlined our designer selection process, this would be a good place to come back to the topic of prize deposits. As we’ve already mentioned, a full deposit is crucial to our Design Team members. As a matter of fact, the entire notion of a guaranteed contest rests solely on our ability to pay the winning designer after the contest is over. This is largely the reason why DesignContest.net continues to attract a large volume of prospective Design Team members. It is also the reason that entries continue to be submitted by some of our most talented designers in every contest we host. Nonetheless, we do have provisions for obtaining a refund in certain situations. Please see our Terms of Service for more information.

Active Contests

While a contest is open, participants post their entries; the contest holder views the entries and posts his/her feedback as well as other comments. The contest holder can request changes and corrections to specific designs and designers can then update their entries as per the contest holder’s suggestions. When the contest has reached its deadline, the contest holder chooses a winner from the submitted entries. After the winning designer transfers all of the required source files to the contest holder and the administration receives confirmation that this has occurred, the prize is awarded by us to the winner via his/her selected payment option.

Security Provisions

Our goal in administrating the contests is to provide security for both contest holders and participating designers. For the duration of a contest, no form of plagiarism will be tolerated. Strict measures will be taken against those who copy others’ work and ideas or attempt to place third-party images into their designs. This strict policy not only provides a more positive environment for our designers, but also helps to ensure that each contest holder walks away with a completely original design.

Questions

The "About DesignContest.net" forum is an aggregation of all questions from prospective designers and contest holders. Please feel free to post your questions there, if you have any, and they should be answered shortly.

Edited by _Redrum, 28 October 2008 - 04:25 AM.

thanks for the detail information.. it helps alot

Just a few questions regarding the application for membership: how long does it take you to approve an application? And if denied, how long will the period for one to re-apply?

Thanks.

Hi elantonio.

Approval time can vary. Sometimes over a month depending on the number of applications and how much free time I've got.

If denied, the reply e-mail will specify the time to wait before re-applying; if no period is specified, then you can assume that no waiting is required.

^
Thanks, Redrum

this is very helpfull.

Thanks CD

Thanks, this was a very helpful post!

why do I need to post 10 times?

why do I need to post 10 times?

The answer

http://www.designcon...ticipation.html

Thanks for the info, it's very helpful, but it doesn't cover one aspect...the portfolio. I have recently been rejected 2 times due to a "lack of caliper" in logo design. This description is a bit to vague, and I'm hoping that anyone can help point me in the right direction. I've been designing for 20 years now, believe me, I have an extensive portfolio, but I fear I'm just not showing the right items to be chosen for the team. Are there specific guidelines, like "we need to see logos for 10 diferent trade markets" or "we need to see logos that are 2-d and 3d". I know they all need to be vectors, I can follow directions on that. (I hope it's not a simple oversight that my online portfolio is shown in jpgs rather than original .ai vector formats to download (gulp)). I've looked over other deasign team member websites, and I personally think I'm up to caliper with the rest of the team (although you can be the judge of that) There's something I'm missing here...can anyone give me further direction please.?.

You can peek at my portfolio here

Thanks for the advice.
Mary

This is GREAT info, thanks!

Thanks for the info, it's very helpful, but it doesn't cover one aspect...the portfolio. I have recently been rejected 2 times due to a "lack of caliper" in logo design. This description is a bit to vague, and I'm hoping that anyone can help point me in the right direction. I've been designing for 20 years now, believe me, I have an extensive portfolio, but I fear I'm just not showing the right items to be chosen for the team. Are there specific guidelines, like "we need to see logos for 10 diferent trade markets" or "we need to see logos that are 2-d and 3d". I know they all need to be vectors, I can follow directions on that. (I hope it's not a simple oversight that my online portfolio is shown in jpgs rather than original .ai vector formats to download (gulp)). I've looked over other deasign team member websites, and I personally think I'm up to caliper with the rest of the team (although you can be the judge of that) There's something I'm missing here...can anyone give me further direction please.?.

You can peek at my portfolio here

Thanks for the advice.
Mary

Mary,
I looked at your portfolio and was impressed. If you are disqualified than I can't imagine what will be said about my portfolio. I'm looking forward to a response to explain what the "lack of caliper" means.