5 Design Contest Winners from 2011

Design contests are always a lot of fun. They tend to be challenging and interesting and really expand your creativity. This year there were a large number of design contests for professionals, amateurs and even children. Each one has given people the opportunity to show off what they are able to create, no matter what the genre.

These five pages show off the design winners for five different contests from last year. Their innovative, interesting and creative designs impressed judges from different contests and could lead to big things in the future.

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International Design Contest

This neat contest gave a varied list of genre possibilities and set out to find the best of the best from around the world. Possibly the most inspiring piece of the entire contest was the Best In Show, an essay in the form of a two part mailer that gives an intimate, beautiful talk on the anxiety of the future and the necessity of always moving forward no matter what. Open, honest and thoughtful, it definitely earned its place in the number one slot.

It was judged by Michael Osborne of Michael Osborne Design Inc., Clint Runge of Archrival and Richard Westendorf of Landor Associates.

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Poster Design Contest

This poster contest was a wonderful design challenge that was open to people all over the world. They ended up with a huge number of submissions, which were first cut down to seventy submissions in the final round. But that had to be cut down once again to just ten submissions, which judge Robynne Raye of Modern Dog Design Co said was the most difficult part of the entire process. In fact, she claimed that it was the hardest contest she has ever had to judge thanks to the huge number of amazing submissions.

From Spain to Israel, the ten winners brought creativity and innovation from every corner of the globe. You have to flip through them to get the real feel for how hard the contestants worked on their entries. So be sure to take a look.

Logo Design Contest

Logo design can be a more difficult category to judge for a contest, given the wide range of audiences such a piece may be aimed at. But this contest yielded some great results, both in minimalist and complex designs. Most of the winners were from around the USA, but there were two winners in the foreign admission category, from Canada and Croatia.

According to judge Von Glitschka of Glitschka Studios, there were both some amazing and some awful submissions in the contest. He had no problem narrowing it down to 30 entries, but then found it very hard to find the final ten. While he says they were all great, he has a special fondness for the Peace, Love, Desserts logo.

UK WorldSkills Contest

WordSkills London is a non-profit that is running the Have A Go campaign, which encourages a million people in the UK to try a new skill they did not possess before. This contest was for medals designed by children across the country. There were two winners, both of them13-year-olds, named Arash Manshadi and Shivani Kava, from Middlesex and London, respectively. There will be more than 200 medals made off of their designs. They were able to present them on stage to the runners-up and other winners of the actual WorldSkills challenge, as well as take a day trip to meet the people who will be responsible to making them.

Illinois State Fair Contest

The Illinois State Fair had a number of contests this year. One was a children’s contest for design in three categories: T-Shirt, Paper Session Cover and Banquet Program Cover. The winners were middle schoolers from Region 11 and Region 9, who will now have their work used in official merchandise for the state.

Conclusion

So ends the design contest year for 2011. But contests for 2012 are already opening for submissions, so if you are interested you should get searching for them. The exposure alone makes it worth the effort.