Win a contest

One of the designer’s earning ways on the internet is logo contests. People like contests because anyone can enter them and for the first time they think there is a really high chance to win a nice prize and it becomes exciting. Actually it doesn’t last for long. Imagine, you participate in 30 contests and win nothing! What would you do? I guess you would stop entering design contests regulary. That’s because you start losing your confidence. But I am sure you will enter new contests again and again when you win your first or other prize!

The big thing is: the logo and other graphic you do has to appeal to yourself!

Some time ago I have been entering these contests. I read the description, see other entries and then open Illustrator. Then I started making a logo and it mostly took me like 2 hours of work. But suddenly I started to criticize it! I was like: “It doesn’t look that good”, “Ouch, my eyeballs!”, “What is this? Does that have any link with the company? NO!!!”. After some monologue I submitted my artwork. And guess what.. I haven’t won any contest with the logos I didn’t like. Well, you might think there is nothing to lose and you should submit the design anyway, but you will mostly win nothing. What to do when your logo doesn’t look attractive? Well, sometimes it needs just a little. I had so many cases when I just changed the sizes, placing, colours or simplified the logo and it became much better! Then you have really better chances to win a nice reward. Sometimes you even have to delete icon and make another but don’t get nervous! It’s a practice and you need it. When you do a second logo for the same contest it mostly seems to be better than the first one. That’s because you have to think harder of what to draw and how to express it. And this is also the reason why you should enter the contest again if your first design was eliminated or rejected. But don’t take it too seriously. If you submit 10 different concepts and the contest holder doesnt like any of them then he doesn’t like your style or so. That wat you should find other competition and try your skills there.

Try to stand out from the crowd.

I’ve seen many contests with really detailed descriptions. And one criterion is colours. The client sometime demands exact colours. And for sure more than 95% of designers submit designs with the colours asked. But of course there are very few people who try to submit a design, which doesn’t really match the requirements. I saw some contests with many participants and in the end the design with slightly different colours won it. It actually shocked me and now I know why he won the money. So you have to remember that the colours customer asks are not Always the colours he needs.

Don’t make anything someone has already made.

You look though submissions and see one really cool looking concept or graphic. You like it and you might think you could increase your winning chance by making something similar or even copying it but that’s not true! Someone has already done that design so why would the contest holder choose your design instead of the original designer? And one quite important thing about this is that copying someone’s design is usually not acceptable by the customers and they mostly reject your submittion immediately without looking at it. So you have always be original.

I Hope you found this post useful for you