The Words for Winners series demonstrates what it takes to become a successful designer on 99designs. An important rule, designers have discovered, is choosing the right contest.
After choosing the right contest, designers must begin thinking strategically. Words for Winners: 5 Contest Winning Strategies is the HEART of the series, so bookmark this page!
Winning Strategies – Starting with the Basics
The basic strategies are pretty straightforward but 50% of designers miss their chance to win by not following these basic rules.
Read the brief… again
The brief is the beginning and the end, the alpha and the omega of any design contest. It’s crucial to read the brief before you start designing and whenever you’re stuck. Why? Because it’s a blueprint for what the client needs or wants.
Be a good detective
Some clients don’t incorporate a lot of information into their briefs. It’s your job to research their industry and competition by using resources like Google. This will give you insight beyond what the brief provided, so use it to your advantage.
Read public comments
Public comments are pure gold – this is where clients comment on the design submissions they like or dislike. Read them immediately after studying the brief.
Explain your submissions
Never submit a design without a SOLID description of your main idea and design decisions. Although good design should be self-explanatory, sometimes clients need a mental push. Being an effective communicator will also tell the client he/she is dealing with someone professional and approachable.
Be polite
No explanation necessary.
Strategy #1 – Claim the Territory
This technique works the best in open design contests but works in blind contests too.
The objective is to be the first designer to enter the contest and get a high rating for one of your designs (4 or 5 stars). Since you are first and you are good, the client gets psychologically attached to your design and uses it as a measuring instrument for all designs in the contest. This dramatically increases your chances of winning.
Being first is sometimes more important than being better. That’s why you need to enter contests early.
If the contest is open, other designers will inevitably try to copy your work or give it a new spin, in hopes of getting good ratings too. This works in your favor — seeing copycats of your design only reinforces the client’s decision to stick with the original design you’ve created. After all, if they’re copying you, they’re confirming the quality of your work.
Claim the territory and never worry about copycats — report them to 99designs.
Strategy #2 – Differentiate
Break the trend of similar or copycat designs with a completely fresh approach. It works only in open (non-blind) design contests because you have to see what other designers are doing.
The idea is to enter the contest after the first 10-15 entries, so you get a clear picture of how designers think and what the client prefers. In most cases, you will see one or two original designs rated well and a bunch of copycats with lower ratings.
Differentiation is about making yourself seen. You have to be bold, daring and positive.
Your next step is somewhat challenging but often very rewarding – you need to be bold and deliberately ignore certain parts of the brief in order to produce designs which truly stand out.
For example, if everybody is doing a letter-based logo, try making one which looks like an emblem. If everybody is sticking to cold colors, try combining them with with warm ones, even though the brief doesn’t say so. If everybody is being very serious, try throwing in some fun.
The client needs a fresh take on his project so it’s important to be original and add value to the contest. However, be careful that you don’t ignore the brief entirely so that you aren’t rated low or eliminated. Walk on the edge of the brief but don’t fall outside of it.
Strategy #3 – Rapid Prototyping
Have you spent hours designing an entry for a contest, only to understand you were completely off-target and that you have no idea what the client is actually looking for?
This is where rapid prototyping comes in. Basically, it’s a product-design philosophy which says you shouldn’t spend too much time on product details at the beginning, but instead focus on building a quick test version, or several test versions. You use these test versions to get initial feedback from clients, then improve based on the feedback you get.
These designs are all different and took less than hour to develop. They won’t win a perfectionist award but they will show which style the client prefers.
The key benefit of this approach is increased effectiveness – you quickly see what works and what doesn’t, instead of spending a lot of time polishing something which might not work at all.
Here is how to apply this in practice:
- Create three to four “test” designs for a contest, each being very different in style. Remember, you shouldn’t polish too much because you’re doing this to “test” the client’s taste
- Submit all designs at once and see which one gets most favorable feedback
- Polish and improve based on what you hear
If you are a medium-level designer, this strategy should result in one or two of your designs being rated very well. After that, you know exactly what you need to do and you just saved yourself hours of work.
Strategy #4 – Resist Perfection
Being able to design something solid and get it in front of client’s eyes quickly is much better than being able to design something fantastic which takes days. Unfortunately, most clients won’t notice subtle gradients, elegant bevels, drop shadows and delicate transparencies – instead, they look at the design from the bird’s eye view, deliberating whether it’s something which works for them or not.
“Done is better than perfect” is a popular adage among top performers. We agree.
For example, how many times have you seen a design of poor technical and aesthetic quality get a pretty good rating? I see it every day and though this never ceases to surprise me, I completely understand why it happens. Simply put, clients do not have designer’s eyes; what we find important and crucial, they often find trivial and irrelevant. Compare this to books – while styling and grammar are important, they are just a decoration to the story. If the story isn’t working for us, there is no amount of decoration that is going to fix it.
You should be aware of this in your designs. Most clients do not care about decoration, nor should you. Submit your designs early, get feedback early, win. You can always polish later.
Strategy #5 – Quit When You Need To
This is one of the most important winning techniques and the hardest to learn.
All of our lives we hear that quitting is for losers. If we were superheroes, this would be totally right. But we’re not – we need to quit certain situations and actions in order to survive.
Quitting doesn’t mean losing – you’re just taking a different route to victory.
But why is quitting so important for design contests?
Imagine this scenario – you’re in a contest that started out poorly for you. You decide to fight it and manage to get three or four star ratings after hours and hours of work. There are other designers who are doing better than you but you don’t want to quit, especially now that you have good ratings. So you focus all of your energy on this contest trying to win it, only to end up disappointed, seeing somebody else got the prize with half the effort.
Total time invested: 20 hours. Total win: 0
Now imagine a different story. You’re in a contest that started out poorly for you but you decided to quit it immediately and enter two new contests. One of these contests went poorly for you but you won the other one with virtually no effort.
Total time invested: 20 hours. Total wins: 1
I hope I’m getting my point across – if the contest isn’t working out in your favor, quit it immediately. There’s nothing to gain by trying to prove yourself to clients or other designers out there because design contests are not about being persistent, they are about being capable to deliver what the client wants to see.
Quit often, and without regrets. You’ll be happy you did.
Coming Up
What’s your client to contests ratio? Do you know how to make use of 1-to-1 invoicing?
Don’t miss the next part of the Words for Winners series where we’ll explore ways to use 99designs to build a thriving design business.
Hi Peter! Nice Blog! Really helpful to many designers.
An awesome post:)
All these are viable when the client actually interacts and communicates with the designer(s). That kind of event is so rare these days 99designs, so rare that you actually need an online forceps to get it … :)
And, let’s face it…in most of the cases, as clients are being so drawn by the KISS…(the so called “philosophy”) that they end up with a retrograde and obsolete interlocking swooshes…
Anyway, good thoughts, but that’s for real life and this is also good to remember.
;)
thanks this good idea or strategy….nice tips..
nice post
Sooo honest post,step by step.bravo!!! excellent.Bravo Petar,Pozdrav
Great tips Peter!
those are real gems, especialy Strategy #5 !
thanx Peter on another great post ;) cheers!
Yes, we rarely consider quitting as an option, but it always is – and a perfectly legitimate one :)
I like this tips! Thanks for sharing.
Cool.. Great Tips… helpfull
thank you so much, Peter!
Very nice Great tips Peter!
Indeed…
This is so amazing!!..I feel like am in another level now…..keep ‘em good tips flowing and thanks for sharing
Thank you, it’s really great to hear that :)
wow amazing nice info and tips.. thanks peter
great tips, thanks
A question every designer asked but never got answered finally your blog post answered those question. Thanks Man.
Only rule on 99designs contests is “There is no rule” :D I have won contests where ch don’t gives feedback for 5 days and declares winner, but also in contest where I was assured by ch that I will win, and then he drops from contest. Until I see golden frame around my work nothing’s over :D
‘Quit often, and without regrets. You’ll be happy you did.’ An excellent maxim that all designers should remember.
As an addendum to the “above maxim” designers should act collectively in quitting contests where the modus operandi of the contest holder is zero or minimum feedback/interaction with designers.
Absolutely – a lack of communication from contest holder is always a major warning sign.
Thanks for pointing this out.
Hi, Peter
Your Blog Posts are the best! I rarely read 99Blog until… I read your postings :)) Could you please post detailed winning strategies focusing on webdesign contest? I will check your post feed everyday!
Thanks for the cool posts Peter!
Hi Liquo. Welcome to our designer blog, that’s great to hear. :) We will make sure to include website tips, so make sure to check us out daily. Also, feel free to make suggestions on designer resources you’d love to see more of. Cheers!
Thanks for the reply Allison!
I always want to improve my workflow of making website design. From understanding the brief to uploading the final psd layout. Perhaps we need to interview website/user interface designer, and maybe the designer can share his design process?!
So at the end of the interview we can learn to maximize productivity, learn to finish layouts in short time but still maintain the quality of the final design. Faster workflow + Good Quality design = more projects to enter.
:3
Thanks for the feedback, you are reading our minds! We will have more website posts such as the one you explained. I will be sure to reach out to you when they are created. :)
Hi Liquo,
thank you so much for the comment, it’s great to hear that my writing is so helpful to you.
Also, sorry for a bit late reply – I see Allison took care of that and that website articles are already being prepared :)
All tips are very good, thank you very much
the nice tips…. great!
This is good strategy , Thanks
Claim the territory and never worry about copycats — report them to 99designs (insert joke here)
99% of the time the answer was: the reported entry was demmed aceptable….
Walk on the edge of the brief but don’t fall outside of it. Awesome!
I want to ask some case,
If we have higher rating, but no comment or appreciation from CH.
What should we do next?
Great article… coming from someone who doesnt think much on the strategy portion of submitting designs for the contests. I particularly like the early entry advice. Thinking back I have seen this play out in watched and participating contests.
thanks for the advice!
great stuff.. so helpful to most designers :)
simply great!
Thanks for the awesome tips.
thanks nice post
tarun vashihst
http://websociety.in/
9599922880
Thanks ;) Very useful and a great reminder for some things.
fine. great article.. already i’m following 2 strategies out of 5. and thanks for other 3..:)
Awesome Pixelmate! Just imagine how far you will go by adding 3 more ;)
Amazing strategies. I love strat #3 and #5. I often mess up a lot even when dealing with direct clients. This has been a eye-opener for me. Bless you Peter.
Thanks, it’s really great to hear that :)
awesome tips!!!!
Thanks,
thanx buddy…very nnyc blog..:)