The Price of Success.
These days, it seems like every week there’s a new Design award to enter – D&AD, Cannes Lions, Graphis, Red Dot, Design Week Awards, Design Week Benchmark Awards, ADC, Eurobest… The list goes on.
However, as a young designer keen to enter a number of these competitions, I continually struggle with the huge fees that are usually attached. When I was a student, competitions such as D&AD were good value to enter. Even this year the fee is just £12 for students at a member University and £17 for those at non-member Universities – a pricing structure that clearly reflects the fact that students aren’t exactly overflowing in cash. However, this concessionary rate disappears straight after graduation despite the fact that some of these awards are still specifically targeting young designers.
The problem was brought to my attention once again this week through a Twitter ad for the ADC Young Guns Award, a variation of the ADC for those aged below 30 and with a minimum of two years in the industry. Considering it’s targeting a young market, I’d have imagined the entry fee would reflect this but sadly not – it came in at a staggering $135. Their campaign slogan proudly declares ‘Validate your Ego’ though it seems more like ‘Validate your Bank Balance’ to me.
I find it difficult to see how many young designers can really stretch to this level of financial outlay considering their wages – particularly in a recessionary climate. In my opinion, the cost of entry for the Young Guns competition is nothing short of elitist. It may sound like a Communist ideal but if they really were keen to promote the best in up and coming Art and Design, I feel they should significantly reduce the entry fee to allow for a greater scope of competitors. Additionally, I feel that global awards which offer self-initiated categories should have a concessionary rate for individual (non-business) entries as well as young designers.
Thankfully, two awards challenging past conventions have emerged in the past few months. First up is the Grafik Design Awards, run by Grafik magazine. They recently offered a ‘Best Newcomer’ category for young Designers with a bargain entry fee of £20. The awards aimed to be “genuinely top quality, accessible (easy and affordable to enter) and most importantly, talent-driven”. The shorltist for this has been announced, with the awards night taking place at the end of the month.
Secondly, the Working Class Awards (currently in its judging stages) has been set up as an anti-award, allowing free entry to all in protest against high competition fees. The team behind the scheme say that ‘many of the best people don’t enter awards because they can’t afford to and we want to change this. We feel it is important to allow access to every designer, which is why entry is free!’.
In a similar way to the campaign against free pitching in the 1990’s, I hope that these models help aid a new wave of young designers to achieve recognition without the price tag which is usually attached.
