What is Faces of Design?

Faces of Design is a career and information site for designers. We are international in nature, and support designers of all disciplines – graphic, fashion, industrial, product design, etc.

Our goal is to help designers, particularly emerging talents, to gain recognition and to develop their careers. To this end, we offer designers the opportunity to present themselves and their portfolios on Faces of Design for free. We also provide useful and inspirational information, e.g. on design competitions. For the same reason, we have now launched the Faces of Design Awards.

Why did you launch the Faces of Design Awards?

Basically, we feel that there are many talented designers out there that don’t yet get the visibility and recognition they deserve.

In particular, we felt that there was a need for an interdisciplinary design competition that was truly international, offered exposure to a high profile panel and other design leaders worldwide, but was still accessible to emerging designers. Although there are of course already major design competitions out there, their entry fees can often be prohibitive for designers that are still building their brands and careers.

To address this, we have introduced the Faces of Design Awards 2010.

What are the benefits of taking part?

Winning the Faces of Design Awards offers a number of benefits, including:

• Exposure to an international panel of highly reputable judges;

• Visibility to over 1,000 design leaders and influencers worldwide. This includes exposure to more than 300 manufacturers, design studios and galleries; as well as to the international design press, design associations and institutions;

• Meeting with the companies you would most like to work with as an employee or contractor. For the three best participants overall, we will do our best to secure meetings with the companies they are the most interested in, using our extensive network of contacts.

For more information on the benefits of taking part, please see the competition description.

Who can take part?

The Faces of Design Award are open to individual designers, design studios, in-house design departments, individual design students and student groups. The design competition is international in nature, and open to representatives of any design discipline.

Do I have to submit my profile and portfolio straightaway upon registration?

No, you have until December 15th to work on both your profile and portfolio. However, we do recommend that you start creating both your profile and portfolio early on, as this will give you the chance to familiarise yourself with the process, and rather fine-tune your submission along the way, instead of running into a last-minute rush.

How does the process for judging submissions work?

Submissions are reviewed in two rounds, based on the quality of the designs shown, and on the quality of the designers’ self-presentation overall.

We believe that being a talented designer is not enough: to really shine and develop their career, designers also should to be able to present themselves in a way that is professional, and accessible to a wider audience, including manufacturers, galleries, the press, etc.

Click here for more details on the evaluation criteria.

How did you choose the panel members?

Our goal was that the composition of our panel should reflect the essence of the Faces of Design Awards: diverse, international and highly recognized. Our panel members have been chosen with these criteria in mind. For details of their respective profiles, please see the page on our panel members.

How do I find out if I won?

We will contact shortlisted candidates from the first competition round on December 21, 2009, and we will notify the overall winners in the week commencing January 25th, 2009.

Will I get a job or contract out of this?

Obviously, we cannot guarantee this; however, winning a major design competition and gaining wide-ranging international exposure should help! Moreover, for the top three participants overall, we will do our best to personally arrange direct meetings with the organizations they would most like to work with, drawing on our extensive network of contacts.

What if I am interested in working with a company that is not on your list?

Let us know! For the three overall winners, we will do our best to arrange meetings with whatever organization they would like to work with. In the meantime, if you feel that we are missing someone important, just drop us a line at awards@facesofdesign.com, and we may well add them to the list!

Why does it cost money to participate?

We would very much like to offer the competition for free; unfortunately, organizing the Faces of Design Awards takes a lot of time and effort. Essentially, we are doing the work, so you don’t have to, which means that we have to at least cover our costs.

However, we are trying to keep the cost of participation as low as possible. If you are on a tight budget, we recommend registering before October 31, 2009, to take advantage of our early-bird discount!

If you are highly talented, but cannot even afford the early-bird fee of €20 (students) / €40 (regular participants), we also offer a limited number of Award Grants.

Please see here for further details on entry fees and the Award Grants.

What should I do if I can't afford the participation fee?

Please see above for information on our Award Grants. However, please note that we can only offer this option if it isn’t abused by participants – if we find we are being swamped with fake applications, we will have to withdraw this option.

Will I retain all the rights to the work that I submit?

Yes. All copyrights, etc. remain with the participants and their clients. You will only grant us certain rights to publish and promote your work here on Faces of Design, and in marketing communications. This enables us to offer our free online portfolio service, and the Faces of Design Awards; it’s also necessary so that we can promote your work to potential clients and employers.

Please click here for detailed information on Awards rules and our Terms and Conditions.

What is the competition’s timeline?

Registration to the Faces of Design Awards 2010 opens on October 1st, 2009; the submission deadline is December 15th, 2009.

Early bird registration discounts are available from October 1st, 2009 to October 31st, 2009.

Shortlisted candidates will receive the invitation to participate in Round 2 of the competition on December 21st, and need to submit their entries for Round 2 by January 10th, 2010.

Winners will be informed in the week commencing January 25th, 2009, and the publication date of the winners’ profiles is scheduled for February 2010.

How can I maximise my chances of winning the competition?

On the competition pages, you can find an overview of the evaluation criteria. Essentially, these consist of the quality of the design work submitted, and the quality with which you present your work.

For more detailed advice, we recommend early registration to the competition, so that you can join the participants’ Group on Faces of Design. This will provide you with additional opportunities to clarify any questions you may have; you will also gain an overview of who else is participating.

What happens if I don't win?

All participants benefit from their presence on Faces of Design, and the attention the Faces of Awards generate. Although the winners chosen for publication will enjoy the strongest visibility with potential clients and employers, we will naturally also promote all other participants and their profiles.

To ensure you make the most of this opportunity, we recommend that you take full advantage of the opportunities for self-presentation our free profile and portfolio features offer you. You should also make sure you tag all of your work with appropriate keywords, as this makes it easier for clients and employers to find, and contact, you.

What kind of information should I include in my profile?

The profile provides a template that already makes suggestions about key pieces of information you may want to share about yourself.

How can I best present my portfolio?

Your profile and portfolio essentially provide a narrative of who you are, and what your professional skills are. Bearing this in mind, you may want to consider the following:

• Quality over quantity: we recommend showcasing work in your portfolio that reflects all of the different skills and experiences you highlight on your profile. At the same time, don’t sacrifice quality just to show how many different things you can do. If in doubt, focus on fewer, more recent work, that fully reflects your current skills;

• A clear structure: we recommend that you number any images you upload in the order you would like to present them on Faces of Design. If you present a significant amount of work, or a lot of detail (such as images of the same product from different perspectives, initial sketches, etc.), we also recommend using the Folder function to group relevant content;

• Clear labels: make sure individual images, and Folders, are clearly identifiable by their names;

• Tags : clearly tag all images and Folders with relevant keywords. These make it easier for potential clients and employers to find and contact you;

• Availability: on Faces of Design, you can choose how widely your work should be accessible to others – Public, which lets anyone see your work; Outer Circle, i.e. other members of Faces of Design that you would consider as acquaintances or professional contacts; Inner Circle, i.e. other members of Faces of Design that you consider close friends or colleagues. The more available your work is, the easier it is obviously for others to find you, and to realize that they would like to work with you.

I only have a print portfolio. How do I get this on to Faces of Design?

Ideally, we would recommend that you create your portfolio on Faces of Design using digitized images that you directly upload onto the site. However, if you are merely setting up an account, and don’t plan on competing in the Faces of Design Awards, you could still upload scans of individual pages of your print portfolio as separate images. If you do so, take care to number the images in the correct order before uploading them, so that your online portfolio retains the same structure as your print portfolio.

Do you support videos/animation as part of the portfolio?

Unfortunately, we do not currently support videos and other types of animation in the portfolio; however, we will add this functionality in the future.

What happens if I miss the submission deadline?

Unfortunately, we will not be able to consider late submissions. However, you can of course still use the free profile and portfolio features on Faces of Design, to benefit from the international attention and visibility the Faces of Design Awards generate.

I have an important question, but you haven't answered it yet?

First of all, we recommend registering for the Faces of Design Awards 2010; this will automatically grant you access to the participants’ Group, where you get to clarify additional questions in direct dialogue with the Faces of Design team. Simply click here to register now.

Alternatively, you can email us at awards@facesofdesign.com, and we will get back to you as soon as we can.

Click here to return to the main page of the competition.