Northern Design Competition 2010

The Northern Design Competition was developed to raise the profile of design talent in the North, by highlighting opportunities to employers and students. It is a competition that rewards talented students across the north of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland for their work in the creative arts.

After finishing degrees in the North many graduates move south to the Capital in search of work in the creative industries. These awards act a mechanism to promote the aptitude of northern students at all levels of post 16 education and seek to demonstrate the value of the northern design industry. The awards started just five years ago and since then the Northern Design Competition has expanded at an astonishing rate. The 2009 competition welcomed some 3000 entries, all of which were of an exceptionally high standard.

Use this website to find out more about the competition. Read about the categories you can enter and what is expected from your entry. Take some time to find out about the judges and the evaluation process before glancing through the archive section to find out about previous winners. The rules pages have information on how to format your work for entry. 

Awards, Categories and Prizes

The Northern Design Competition boasts several key categories and a number of special prizes.

There are five short-listed finalists from each of the main categories who will be invited to attend the special awards evening where they will receive their prize.

The categories span the full spectrum of creative arts and entries are welcomed from students in full-time post-16 (further) education and full-time higher education.

Entries from students aged 16-18 will automatically be entered into the Young Northern Designer Award. The Maurice Miller Design Champion will be awarded to the overall competition winner. The Thompson Real World Prize is selected from all of the short-listed finalists.

The main categories include Architectural Design, Fashion Design, Film & Animation, Graphic Design, Illustration, Interactive Media, Photography and Product Design. In each of these categories there will be a £1,000 cash prize for the winner. Second prize winners in each category will receive £100 and third prize will receive £50. The overall competition winner will receive a further £2,000

If you are aged 16-18 your entry will automatically be entered into the Young Northern Designer award. Five finalists from across all of the competition categories will be invited to the awards evening where the winner will be announced. The Young Northern Designer will recieve a £500 cash prize and £250 for their school, college or university. The two runners up will receive a prize of £250 each and £100 for their school, college or university.

The winner of the Thompson Real World Prize will receive £100.

To find out more about each of the categories and prizes, please use the links for each category.

Rules

Conditions of entry: The Northern Design Competition is open to all students in pre-16 education and further or higher education studying at a school, college or university which is based in Scotland, Wales, Northern England or Northern Ireland. Entries are welcomed from students who have a permanent residence outside of these areas as long as their education institution is located in one of the UK entry zones. For full details of the UK entry zones and to check eligibility for entry, please click here. Entries will not be accepted if your place of study is outside the UK entry zones specified on this website. Please check before you register.

The deadline for submitting entries is Friday 23rd April 2010 no entries will be considered after this date.

You must register your details through the official entry form before you can submit your entry. Entries will not be accepted by any other means.

Information provided on the entry forms and through submissions will form the basis for information which will be posted on the Northern Design Competition website for short listed and winning entries.

You can submit a maximum of three entries in each of the categories but each entry must constitute three separate projects and should bear no relation to each other.

You can enter the same piece of work into different categories as long at the project is relevant to the brief outlined for each category that the work is entered into.

Each entry must be accompanied by a rationale (a written submission) which describes the entrants work and underpins the brief that was given when they started the project. Entrants that take time to produce a thorough and grammatically correct rationale will be awarded additional marks for professional conduct.

The judges reserve the right to re-categorise entries if they consider another category to be more suitable.

Entries from students aged 16-18 years on the closing date of the competition will automatically be entered into the Young Northern Designer Award.

We accept no responsibility for loss or damage to materials submitted.

The judges’ decisions are final and no correspondence will be entered into.

The intellectual property rights in any entry to the Northern Design Competition (including, without limitation, patents and rights to inventions; copyright and related rights; moral rights; trade marks; registered and unregistered design rights; database rights; rights in confidential information) remain the property of the entrant. By submitting an entry, the entrant grants permission for the University to reproduce their entry royalty-free for use in publicity and other promotional activities by the University and its partners, including without limitation in publications and online media. The entrant will be identified and credited as appropriate.

Leeds Metropolitan University reserves the right to update the conditions of entry and competition rules at any time.

How to enter: Please ensure you have read and fulfilled all of the conditions of entry.

Make sure you have written and spell checked your rationale to accompany each entry submission. Please see the category pages for further details.

Please follow the submission criteria for each category. Submitted files should not exceed 50MB. When using JPEG’s please ensure they are in RGB format and at a high enough resolution to be judged properly. All PDF entries must not exceed four pages. Each page should be no bigger than A2 in size.

In the case of Film & Animation please supply URL links to online videos hosted by YouTube for example. Also, website entries must be hosted online. Entrants are reminded that PDF presentations with screen shots and supporting information are also welcomed for website, video and electronic games entries. PDF’s can also be supplied for submissions in the Digital Media category in addition to full media entries when applicable or relevant.