Taking a look at some competition providers, potential briefs and initial proposal

Taking a look at some competition providers, potential briefs and initial proposal 

When choosing a brief my main considerations are to look at the external recognition opportunities if I win before considering cash rewards. Thinking on the long term is going to benefit me the most in achieving employment and future external work opportunities. Cash rewards would also be nice, the Royal Mint award has good opportunities of external recognition as well as a healthy £10'000 prize. 

The final obvious consideration when choosing a brief would be weather my specialist design practice would fit the brief. Concentrate on my design area strengths when choosing a brief to give me a better chance of winning.  Don't go choosing a brief that requires lots of digital design as this isn't my speciality at current. 

Royal Mint £1 competition

After having a talk from Danny about an old friend of his previously winning the last currency competition royal mint held there are a fair few positive points I could take from winning this brief. The basic's of the brief is to design the tails side of the £1 coin that is been made in 2017, I think the main concept behind the coin would be to express British culture & Heritage. 

• Large cash prize.
• Lots of external recognition through your design that will be placed in the hands of the whole nation.
• Future projects could arise from Royal Mint were they call me forward again. 
• Allow me to add my own design aesthetic to typical british heritage presented in previous £1 coins.

Penguin Design Award

The opportunity that could come from winning Penguin's Design award has both a cash incentive as well as an employment incentive, the cash prize is a lot smaller than Royal Mint but the opportunity to do a work placement with Penguin Design studios would provide invaluable experience opportunities and would look amazing on a CV for future employment, it would also get my foot in the door within the editorial industry which is something I have an interest in. Also potential future employment with Penguin would be a possibility if I impressed them enough. 

There are also 3 competitions to enter so it gives me a little bit better chance to win the overall prize package by entering all 3. 

It would also give me the opportunity to revisit illustration based design work something I used to do quite alot, as I feel it would suit the idea of a book cover more, obviously I need to read into the brief requirements more to establish if I can input my specialisms into the briefs. 

YCN

Had a look at the YCN website to see what sort of opportunities were available on here, I need to get signed upto this competition service its definitely going to be a resource I used for future competition briefs due to previous success stories and the professional external opportunities the organization allows up and coming designers to take advantage of. 

Each individual brief you enter all shares the same prize, recognition within the creative industry through a huge award ceremony were lots of large companies headhunt potential creative talent so these events would be a good place to obtain employment opportunities. 

An award in the form of a certificate/trophy is awarded to winners and all winners are placed in the winners annual providing a print based promotion of your work for future employment and work opportunities to be passed along worldwide.

I chose a few different briefs that could provide me with good opportunities to create some nice work. I chose 3 different types of briefs that would result in different outcomes.

Creating work for these briefs would give me experiences and recognition into many different target market areas if I won, getting my name and creative practice out there to a range of areas which is always good. 

Food & Drink target market. 

Design/Arts & Crafts market.

Corporate Target Market.

D&AD

Another design competition opportunity that offers amazing external recognition is D&AD's New blood awards. 

The award has briefs hosted by huge internationally recognized companies so the obvious rewards here would be recognition on a huge scale, winning briefs for companies like Sky and putting this down on previous experience would be an invaluable recourse for future employment and work opportunities. 

The awards you win alongside this recognition from big companies is another huge benefit while giving myself a good sense of achievement are also internationaly recognized by the creative industry so winning one of these awards is a good promotion point in itself without evening presenting your work people will understand your potential of been a good designer. 

Design Contests

Had a quick look at this website, it has lots of potential areas I could enter work in so entering an area that suits me the most would be the best benefit of this resource.

But not meaning to judge something by its appearance looking at the website the external opportunities don't look too strong as the companies wanting work done don't look like they would gain you much external recognition. But the fact that they are smaller companies may mean less competition, so I may have a better change of winning. Even if the client isn't well recognized its still external work to put in my portfolio? 

RSA Student Design Awards

I like the look of this resource, it doesn't have a large amount of choice in the design briefs which may make competition high but all the briefs are very well considered. They give good opportunity to create work individual to your creative practice giving me a better opportunity to aim my brief choice around my strengths.

Cash incentives are the main reward here but the work you produce would have a good social, economical and environmental impact giving my work a very ethical appeal within its promotional output within my portfolio. 

Creating an employable designer is RSA's desired outcome, making the entrant consider all social, economical and environmental aspects to really give there work real world meaning while allowing them to add there unique aesthetic and conceptual thinking too it. 

99 Designs

This is the final resource i analyzed and will be avoiding websites like this. Much like the Design Contests website the website looks very generic and cheesy, very corporate and looks like your typical marketing website. 

Its the strap line that got me though "Get a design you'll love - Guaranteed Let our community of 905248 designers created dozens of designs for you"

The idea of design competitions is a subjective thing, people either agree or disagree but the ethics this website gives off is what makes me understand why people disagree.

It seems like the website is just a resource for companies to get cheap design work, or free design work. Playing on up and coming and junior designers taking advantage of there need and want to get recognized within there industry. Allowing clients to pick and chose designs to use for there business with the designers gaining no real recognition. It just doesn't seem very appealing to me it doesnt offer much opportunity for the designers so I will be avoiding all sites like this. 

Further plan of action & Initial proposal 

I have looked at most of the design resources and have narrowed down to wanting to chose briefs from a definite 5 competition bodies due to the following opportunities that I can gain from them.

Royal Mint.

Penguin Design Awards.

YCN Awards.

D&AD 

RSA Student Design Awards

• Good external recognition from big creative companies.
• Recognized awards, trophies, and certificates. D&AD New blood and pencils & YCN Awards are recognized through creative industries.
• Potential work placement opportunities.
• Cash incentives. 
• Recognition within a large area of possible market areas to create design work for. 
• Ethical design work that takes considerations of social, economical and environmental work outcomes. 
• Lots of big companies like BBC visit these awards so potential employment from large companies would be a possibility. 
• Self achievement.
• Allow me to produce work that allow me to use my specialist practices (been able to pick briefs that allow these). Rather than been given briefs that don't allow me to explore my strengths. 

Chose 1 brief that I am going to focus most of my studio time within college, it should be the one that has the most beneficial rewards if I win. 

Chose 4 other briefs that will allow me to produce well considered and strong design work within the module's time frame, deadline days for these external briefs all need to be within the module deadline.

Definite Brief choice
Royal mint is a definite brief I am starting to look into, didn't realize the deadline is so soon but going to give a good go on it, mainly for the cash incentive and the sense of self achievement having something I made internationally distributed.

I had a look at some hints & tips on the competition to give me a little insight into what concepts and aesthetics they are looking for.

Symbolise Britain, I could do this through representations of:
Heritage & History 
British food, music, fashion, architecture, religion, engineering, trades, markets, royalty, nature/landscape, language, monuments. Past & Present. 

Make whatever concept I chose clear and concise and suited to a spread of target audiences and age ranges so 
it needs to be have an easily perceived appearance, nothing suggestive or vague. 

Gather other peoples feelings on Britain and get them to share what there most positive aspect of the country is gather old and young generation for a mix of opinions to combine together or present individualy into a visual output. 

What are my thoughts on Britain, what do I think makes it iconic. Present this in a visual. 

Think about how the aesthetics of the design will work with a 12 sided shape.

How it will work with the gold and silver materials.

Will the design bleed over the silver centre and gold outer ring or make use of both sections?

Think about use of symbols or emblems to fit with the common trend of presenting heraldic elements in the design.