Are you new to the community or perhaps you need a refresher on how to submit your work to design contests. This post is for you! We’ve updated our guidelines on the do’s and don’ts when submitting your work. Follow our recommendations and instantly increase your chance of success.
The following guidelines reflect DesignCrowd’s Minimum Design Standards – by joining our community you committ to upholding these standards in your submissions and conduct. The recommendations are driven in part by insights from our analysis of past projects and from client feedback about what they love to see in design submissions (and what they don’t like designers doing). If you follow these guidelines, you will fast-track your career as a successful freelance designer on DesignCrowd.
Logo and General Graphic Designs
101: Read the brief carefully.
Highlight the key requests (“I want a cat in a bow tie to feature in my logo”) and deliverables (“I need my logo in black and white”). If you submit a design of a design missing the cat in the bow tie in bright pink as your initial submission, you’ve failed the basic test to create a design that meets the client’s requirements.
As a professional designer, you need to ensure your design meets the brief requirements, and work with these constraints as a platform for your creativity to shine. The part about ‘how’ you meet the requirements is your creative domain and why clients come to DesignCrowd for help.
The cardinal rule for submitting a design: Your first submission to any new brief must be a flat file design, which is the design the client reviews and is your leading bid in the contest.
Don’t SPAM contests. Unless the client has requested it, don’t spam projects with 10 different colour variations of the same design concept in an attempt to screen out your competing fellow designers. You will only irritate the customer who will develop ‘design blindness’ towards your submissions and give you low feedback ratings. We recommend a maximum of 2 to 3 colour variations of the same design concept submitted as linked designs.
A note about mock ups:
As a general rule, mockups are discouraged. You can submit a mock up as a Linked Design (DC speak for iterating on the first flat file concept) – or as a follow up example to support your original flat file submission if you want to show the design in various contexts.
Read this guideline on Do’s and Don’ts of Mockups for more information.
Do not add watermarks or borders to your submissions. Submissions with borders look out of place and automatic re-sizing functionality tends to have problems processing them, so don’t undo your hard work by adding in these extraneous elements to your submission.
Looking for logo, graphic and print design jobs – we’ve got hundreds of open contests worth thousands that need submissions now.
Web, Brochure, Flyer Designs
Show me the details! Clients will view your design at full view so please upload images that are 1200-1000 pixels wide. We will make sure the thumbnail that is generated is an aspect ratio of 4:3.
Do try and make the website take up as much of the preview as possible.
Minimise white space around your designs. If you place too much white space around the design, clients won’t be able to view the detail, and it looks pretty crappy on the site. It’s stating the obvious but you instantly reduce your chances of having your design selected if a client can’t see the full width web/brochure/flyer design.
Preview images for web design
The preview image should display only the main view of the website. Upload each subsequent page separately, and link it to the main design. Do not submit more than 2-3 colour variations unless the client requests it.
Want to earn money from your design skills? We need you! There are hundreds of web design jobs, logo, graphic design, brochure and flyer design projects that need submissions. Start now!
For more information, please check out this FAQ covering everything you need to know about submitting designs.
Start earning from your creativity today. You can find the latest open design projects from clients around the world across a broad range of industries, from medical, legal, food, tech and heaps more! On DesignCrowd, you’ll earn money, build a killer portfolio and learn new design skills. Boom!
Want More?
We’re here for you!
DesignCrowd’s Minimum Design Standards
Insiders guide to the professional design process
Four reasons research will make you a better designer
Typographic terms every designer should know
Design tutorial tips and tricks you should know by now
Written by Jo Sabin on Wednesday, March 22, 2017
Jo Sabin is Head of Designer Community at DesignCrowd. She’s led the company’s public relations and social media programs since 2012. With more than ten years’ experience working with Australian and international tech startups in the creative industries, Jo has been instrumental in meeting DesignCrowd’s objectives in Australia and abroad. Get in touch via Twitter.