This is for you out there who either are curious about design awards or have made a decision to enter but are looking for guidance on presenting your team's work to a jury.

If you are reading this unconvinced of the merit of entering a design awards program, please let us to take a moment to remind you of the incredible promotional benefit to your team and client if you win, the community connection built by putting your work in front of a jury of your peers, and how the very act of documenting your process and achievements engenders a sense of accomplishment and pride throughout your organization.

Your Mission: Hone Your Story, Connect with Your Jury

We've run the Core77 Design Awards for over a decade and have found that the most important part of our job is assembling the best design juries possible. We recruit from leading creative professionals across a broad range of experience and backgrounds. They review entries online and meet virtually to debate. We ensure that every qualified entry gets in front of them. Your job is to seize that opportunity and engage them in your project's story.

1. Jurors are unlikely to be reviewing entries while in an elevator but you should act like they are; you have limited time to hook them. Begin with a succinct project overview (500 words or less) to introduce the jury to your concept, its design features and how it fits both the market and end-user. Do that and you'll have framed the context for what follows. If you believe your entry would benefit from further explanation use the "project details" field to delve deeper, describing your process, perspective, and the project's comprehensive journey. This narrative should not exceed 1500 words, focusing on the innovative and impactful aspects of your work.

2. Seeing is Believing - We cannot overstate the importance of imagery in an entry. It is vital for conveying your project's aesthetic and functional qualities. Show details of the realized project. Show it in context. If a user interacts with it, show the chief modes of operation. Give a complete sense of the work but edit your final collection of images with an eye toward removing repetitive, or potentially confusing, imagery. At their best, images go beyond documentation and express the spirit of the project. Submit project images in JPEG, GIF, or PNG formats, bigger is better, but for ease of uploading, limit your images to the neighborhood of 3000 pixels wide (or tall) and 15MB per file.

3. The end results of a design project might be too complex for images and words alone to communicate. If your entry's story would benefit from it, use supplemental materials like project PDFs, videos, and external links to present a fuller picture of your project, creating a more dynamic presentation of your achievement. In considering how much and what to share with the jury you should seek to balance depth and brevity. Consider how each piece illuminates, or possibly muddles, your key points. Keep PDFs under 15MB and 30 pages, videos short (under 2 minutes and 30 seconds) and in mp4 format, and use external links to provide more context or background information.

4. Carefully consider the Category or Categories for your entry — a well-chosen category significantly enhances the relevance and appeal of your submission. Review the category definitions thoroughly to ensure your project is positioned to capture the jury's interest in the most fitting context. Enter your project into as many categories as are relevant - good projects and presentations often bring home multiple accolades. The Core77 Design Aawards honors both professional and student work in all its categories. If you did your project at school be certain to make a student entry. On the professional side we honor only work that has been released, published or otherwise realized. However concept work whose purpose is "cultural commentary, intervention, or exploration" has a home in our Speculative Design category.

5. Entering an awards program is an expression of pride in work - the work put in, the work that came out. So it is important, and beneficial, to acknowledge the collaborative effort behind your project. Include the project team, as well as the client or surrounding portions of your operation in gathering materials and names for credit. In our case, use the Team Credits section to list and breakout individuals and groups as you see fit. This not only highlights the collective talent behind the project but also enriches the submission's narrative by showcasing the depth of collaboration and expertise involved.

Don't be intimidated, the work is done and the story has written itself, you just need to collect your materials and contributors and get it in front of the jury. That is enough to get you in the running. Take our advice and work your story into a tight, compelling narrative — you'll honor your team and make a case for the jury to as well.

Core77 Design Awards regular deadline is March 5, 2024.