How to Win an ADC Award, According to Past Winners, Judges, & The ADC Team
WORKING NOT WORKING
We want you to bet on yourself and we’re here to help. While the ADC Awards are highly competitive, winning one can quickly take your creative career to the next level. So we spoke with past winners, a current judge, and the ADC team to gather helpful tips for entering your work and best positioning yourself to win some cube-shaped hardware in the process. The deadline for entry is January 31, 2020.
Working Not Working is partnering with the One Club for Creativity for this year’s ADC 99th Annual Awards to help introduce the ADC Freelancer of the Year Award. We’ve sent out WNW-exclusive 20% discount codes (via the WNW weekly newsletter) to enter as a Freelancer or Small Studio. Be sure to enter that code when creating your ADC account. It’ll drop the cost of applying by $20-30 per entry that you submit. (Not a WNW Member? Sign up here to join the community.)
There are a ton of categories specialized for exactly the kind of work you do—like Drone/Aerial Photography, Movie Trailer Advertising, and Sustainable/Eco-Friendly Packaging Design. Head here for the full category list that the ADC Awards has to offer. And get to know the ADC Awards Jury, featuring WNW Members like Will Bryant, David Lee, Kwame Taylor-Hayford, Joyce N. Ho, Ike Ediani, Julie Glassberg. Michael Greenberg, Jon Contino, Lauren Hom, and Marta Cerda Alimbau.
Now, we invite you to hear from freelance and smaller studio winners Kevin Cantrell (Gold Cube and Best of Discipline for Typography in 2018), Rudi Kobza (Gold Cube for Packaging in 2019), Yuko Shimizu (Silver Cube for Illustration in 2019), and Ryan Swanson (Silver Cube for Spatial Design in 2019), as well as an ADC Awards judge (Kate Elazegui, NYTimes Opinion Desk Design Director) and the ADC team.
Kevin Cantrell (Typographer)
Kate Elazegui (NYTimes Design Director)
Rudi Kobza (Kobza and The Hungry Eyes)
Yuko Shimizu (Illustrator)
Ryan Swanson (The Urban Conga)
Why Past Winners Have Entered the ADC Awards…
Rudi Kobza (Gold Cube for Packaging in 2019): The ADC is globally a brand for outstanding creativity and quality. Values our agency fully embraces.
Kevin Cantrell (Gold Cube and Best of Discipline for Typography in 2018): It might be partially ego, but despite being a Young Gun, I still wanted to get in the annual. I had only entered 2-3 times prior. Once they adjusted their pricing tiers to be more advantageous for small studios like mine, I thought it could be a better ROI. Additionally, the ADC also adjusted the jury to be category-specific. So rather than having a photographer judge my type-centric entries, they actually had lettering and type specialists. I loved that adjustment.
Ryan Swanson (Silver Cube for Spatial Design in 2019): I had been following the ADC Awards for the past few years and really enjoyed and appreciated the work that was represented. Last year they started the Spatial Design category which we felt best fit our work. Specifically coming from an architecture and urban design perspective, we felt that this award would open us to new avenues within the creative industry that we had not yet really explored. We didn't really know what exactly would come out of submitting, but we knew it would at the very least get our work looked at by the talented jury ADC had put together and win or lose help get our name and work out into different creative markets and in front of different people.
Yuko Shimizu (Silver Cube for Illustration in 2019): I decided to allocate a budget because it was my dream to win a cube, and it didn’t seem like an impossible dream after all.
…And Why You Should Enter Too
The ADC Awards Team: You first need the courage and confidence to enter. “Sometimes we hear creatives say ‘Ah, I don't have a chance against names like so-and-so or that super studio!’ You do! This is because our juries are first and foremost looking for craftsmanship and attention to detail, and this can be attained by even the smallest studio. Just be sure to present your work in a way that lets the craft shine.
Kate Elazegui (NYTimes Opinion Desk Design Director & Publication Design Juror): Good design does not come from a big budget.
How Past Winners Decided Which Projects to Submit
Kevin Cantrell: I decided based on gut and what had performed well in other annuals.
Ryan Swanson: We submitted two different projects in four different categories. We selected projects that best fit the categories we were interested in applying for. We chose these categories based on the relationship they had to our practice, and for us the Spatial Design category was the best option for our practice at the time. We also wanted to choose two projects that best represented the diversity of our work. We were honored to win 3 Merit awards and 1 Silver award in these four categories at last years ADC awards.
Yuko Shimizu: I submitted three: all got in, one won a cube. I focused only on extensive projects that involved multiple illustrations and looked good in design, so they were a complete package.
Rudi Kobza: This year we fully focused on our design work for Bieder & Maier Coffee. We believed that this visual identity works globally and it worked out.
What This Awards Judge Likes to See (And Prefers Not to)
Kate Elazegui (Publication Design Juror): Likes: Intelligence — form follows function (design where the form allows for greater clarity and impact) Dislikes: Overindulgence of design trends.
How to Decide Which Categories to Submit in
The ADC Awards Team: Take a good look at your entry and try to decide whether it's stronger in its full glory or in its individual elements. For instance, if you believe that the lettering in one of your poster designs is what really elevates the piece, you might consider submitting it into a category under the Typography discipline rather than in a poster category under the Brand/Communication Design discipline. Conversely, a niche discipline brings niche judges — that typography jury might judge your poster with more scrutiny than a jury that is judging the poster's overall aesthetic.
Take heart if you're still worried that you made a wrong decision. The jury has the power to move an entry into what they feel is a more appropriate category within their discipline. We can't tell you how many times a judge has said something along the lines of "I'd give this a Bronze Cube where it is, but if we move it to this category, it's definitely a Silver or even a Gold."
What Past Winners Found Most Daunting in Entering their Work
Kevin Cantrell: It was daunting never having won prior and having some of my best work not even get the lowest tiered award. In addition, the past prices were just so high I rarely entered. Now, the biggest reason I sometimes don’t enter award shows is I’m just so busy with work; moreover, I now have 5 kids!
Ryan Swanson: For a small firm, it is always daunting to commit money to an award show, but ADC does a great job of implementing a tiered pricing system that helps balance the cost. Especially when you know you are competing against extremely large design studios working with massive budgets and submitting multiple projects, it can potentially feel like a waste of money. But we really just saw it as a great opportunity to share our work through the ADC Awards platform, and as a way for us to market the work our practice does.
“The jury has the power to move an entry into what they feel is a more appropriate category within their discipline. We can’t tell you how many times a judge has said something along the lines of ‘I’d give this a Bronze Cube where it is, but if we move it to this category, it’s definitely a Silver or even a Gold.’”
The Art of Submitting Work to the ADC Awards
The ADC Awards Team: Attention to detail isn't limited to your work; be sure to carefully craft your entry description. Try as we might, the work doesn't always speak for itself, and this is a perfect opportunity to explain your project so that the jury completely understands its context.
If you're entering a category that allows for physical work to be submitted, it's always good to take advantage of that option — judges love the tactile sensation of picking up your entries! And if you happen to be in the New York area, you can always skip any courier fees and simply hand-deliver your physical entries to our office. We'd love to meet you in person!
What Applicants Can Do to Make Entering Stress-Free
Kevin Cantrell: I don’t know if it’s possible to enter any award show stress free. No one enters an award show without the hope of winning. You enter because you feel you have a shot at winning and at the same time dread not getting in. I’ve won multiple awards in every annual now, and I get less than 20% of submitted entries accepted. The biggest way to avoid stress is to manage your expectations. View it as part of your business expense. If it happens to get in, then great. If it doesn’t, it’s just part of your budgeted marketing expenses that may or may not pay off but sometimes do.
Ryan Swanson: Just take your time when choosing the category you are submitting for. There are so many different categories and you really want to make sure you are choosing the one a) that best fits with your project and b) that, if you win, really represents the work that your studio does.
Rudi Kobza: Focus on great work and superiority. Simple as that.
The ADC Awards Team: Remember that we are here to help! If you ever have any questions, concerns or doubts about which categories your entries would be best represented in, or something else, please don’t hesitate to reach out to the ADC Awards team at adcawards@oneclub.org. We've seen a lot over the years, and we might be able to give our opinion on specific pieces.
“Manage your expectations. View it as part of your business expense. If it happens to get in, then great. If it doesn’t, it’s just part of your budgeted marketing expenses that may or may not pay off but sometimes do.”
The Rewards of Winning an ADC Award
Kevin Cantrell: There is something about the perception of being represented by prestigious annuals that reflects well on your overall work, especially if you consistently achieve excellence and are recognized for it.
In the book Flow it mentions that the primary reason to engage in competition is for self-improvement. If you are improving, and able to receive feedback that validates the improvement, you are able to experience a state of flow which provides its own sense of joy. I think for me entering and winning awards has provided a barometer to continually improve my craft. To me that has value. If it’s just about winning an award of beating someone, it has little long-term value.
Rudi Kobza: After having won 3 Cannes lions in 2001 and 2002 this was definitely another highlight in my advertising career. Kobza and the hungry eyes (KTHE) as the creative agency and Bieder & Maier as a young coffee brand got a lot of media echo as a result of this win. We love New York, we love ADC, we love to win.
Ryan Swanson: The award's prestige helped us connect with certain clients and begin to break into different creative markets which opened us to new opportunities. The award and event also helped us gain connections and confidence that eventually helped us start an office in Brooklyn at the end of 2019. We had been pondering it for a while and winning this award helped give us the push we needed.