We released the first part of our big announcement earlier in the week on our Designer Facebook page. Part one of the announcement was that designers will now be able to receive donations from project holders!

Project Holders can now give designers donations to show how much they appreciate their hard work.  We wanted to be sure even if you don’t win a project, there is away you can be awarded!

Please note:  Soliciting project holders for donations will result in losing any donation you may have received.

Part two of the announcement is a big part!  We are introducing the Super Designer program.

What is a Super Designer?

A Super Designer is a MycroBurst designer who wins 12 or more contests in a 3 month period.  To award them for their hard work and efforts, their payment processing fee will be cut in half!

Instead of the typical 10% fee, Super Designers will only be subject to a 5% payment processing fee of their winnings!

How can a designer become a Super Designer?

Participation in projects is the key!  Four times a year, MycroBurst will count how many wins each designer has.  To become a Super Designer, a designer must win a total of 12 contests in a designated 3 month period.  Their payment processing fee will be reduced to 5% for the next 3 months.  See below for an example.

To keep the Super Designer status, they must maintain 12 wins over the following 3 months.  Super Designers must have no copyright/trademark violations.  MycroBurst will evaluate each designer to see if they’ve made it into the Super Designer status.

.When will I see the 5% reduction?

After you’ve successfully won 12 projects in a 3 month period, during the following 3 months you will be a Super Designer.  This is when your payment processing fee will be reduced.

Here’s another example:
If from January through March a designer has won 12 projects, for April through June they will have the Super Designer status and have a reduced payment processing fee.  At the end of June, the last 3 months will be reviewed again.  If they have won another 12 projects, the cycle will continue.
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We’re excited for this announcement and hope all of you are too!

MycroBurst will individually notify each designer that has reached Super Designer status.  They will enjoy the Super Designer status for the first quarter, which includes the months of January, February and March!  This will take effect for projects won in the month of January, 2012.  Thus, the first payment cycle that will be effected is that of January 20th.

Check out the Super Designer page at MycroBurst for more information!
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Have questions?  Contact us!  You can reach us via phone at (877) 525-5646 or via email at support@MycroBurst.com.
As always, don’t forget to join on us Facebook & Twitter!  MycroBurst Facebook, MycroBurst Designer Facebook, MycroBurst Twitter!

Did you receive many quality and intriguing design concepts at your MycroBurst design project?  Not sure which to choose?  Could you use more than one of the designs?  Do you know that you’re going to need more than just one design?  We’ve got a solution for you!

Back in October we posted that Project Holders at MycroBurst can select additional winners to their project, once it commences. We’ve brought that to the next level.

Project Holders can now notate that they will be picking more than one winner, before their project is over!

As you may have seen on our site, here are a few brief guidelines for selecting additional winners:
- Notating early that you will be selecting more than one design will save you time during the finalization process and motivate designers!
- We recommend that you pay the same prize amount (or higher) as your project’s prize amount to additional winners.
- After you’ve finalized your project, you will select the additional designs you want.  Each additional designer will be contacted.  The designers must consent to releasing the designs at the prize amount offered.  Once they do, the file sending process will begin.

Let’s take a closer look at what each step will look like.

Here’s how it works:

When a project holder logs in to their account and is goes to their “My Projects” section.  They’ll notice the new addition of the “Add Winner(s)” to the right of each active project.

Once a Project Holder decides that they want more than one winner for their active project, they will click “Add Winner(s).”  It will bring them to the “Winners Information” area.  This is the area that Project Holders will tell MycroBurst how many additional winners they want and how much they will be awarding each.  This is also the billing area.

Once at the project page, you’ll notice the “Winners?” field number has changed.  This shows designers how many winners (including the project winner) the particular Project Holder will be choosing!

If one was to click on the “Winners?” field, it will bring up the pop-up below.  This will show what a Project Holder will be paying to each additional winner chosen.  Please note, this includes all winners.  Winner #1 will be the winner of the entire project, the rest will be the additional winners.

Once a Project Holder is ready to finalize their project, the process is simple.  After going finalizing the winner of the contest, the Project Holder will be brought to the screen below.  To choose additional winners, there are two links to follow to do so.

The Project Holder will then see the remaining designs and get to choose which they want to award as their additional winners.

Project Holders please note:  The order in which you choose your additional winners, is the same as the order in which you awarded additional prize money.  For example, when you click on the “Winners?” and see the order – The first design you select as a winner here will receive the award for Winner #2 shown in the previous pop-up.

Every time you check a box, you will receive a pop-up confirming the prize amount that the designer will receive.  If you wish to not award that designer, simply uncheck the check box.  You will also be brought to the Winners Information screen to finalize the additional winners.
This is the last time you can change your winning drafts.

And that’s it!  The Project Holder has now finalized 4 designs!

A brief note about the file transfer process:
- Designers will be notated through our messaging system and email that a Project Holder has indicated they want to choose them as an additional winner.  The designer has the right to decline or accept this offer.  If they choose to decline, the Project Holder can choose another winner or get a refund.
Attention Designers:  If you decide you do not want to accept an additional winning offer, you must contact support via email, live chat or phone asap.
- Final transfer process for the ultimate contest winner will begin immediately.  Once MycroBurst receives confirmation from the additional winning designers that they accept the Project Holder’s offer, then file transfer will begin.

At times, this can get confusing and we understand.  Feel free to give us a call at (877) 525-5646 or send us an email at support@mycroburst.com with any questions or concerns!

Ensuring clarity in what your business does will result in lasting success.  Many entrepreneurs and business owners believe that being a jack of all trades will make your business successful.  Unfortunately, it’s just the opposite.

Here are a few question to ask yourself, to be sure that you’re on the right track.

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What are the focus and specialty of your business?

For some, this might be an easy question to answer.  For others, you may not know where to start.  What is the purpose of your business?  What service, career field or goods are you focusing on?

I recently read an article at OpenViewPartners.com that told a story about a restaurant with an unclear focus.  They decided they wanted to serve all types of food that they could.

Let’s look a little closer at this as an example.  You’re opening a restaurant, what’s your focus?  Are you going to be sit-down or take-out?  What style of dining — formal or casual?  What is your food focus – pizza, Chinese or Mexican?  Not only does this help to give your business focus, it also avoids confusion among your prospective clientele.

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When it comes to the specialty of your business, think of what your business excels at specifically. Let’s use a general contractor as an example.  Yes, a general contractor can do a whole lot of different tasks – they’re very talented in that way!  However, if you ask said general contractor what their specialty is, I bet they can give you an answer.

Similar to the restaurant answer, you need to establish your company’s specialty.  This will help to separate you from competition and not overcrowd your business.  Say you’re specialty is kitchen remodeling.  When someone needs a kitchen remodel, they’ll know which contractor to call.  It will also help to grow a fan base and the more business you do, the more you will be seen as an expert in that certain area.

Having a clean focus and/or specialty allows your business to be visual and searchable.  When someone looks online or in the yellow pages for a kitchen remodeler, guess who’s going to come up in results?  You, from there you can begin to build your brand in your area.  This is also a great way to get referrals!

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Who are you targeting?

This can be a tough one to answer … at times.  Everyone has a target audience, defining it can be the tricky part.

Unfortunately, what your business offers not necessarily define your audience – for example if you’re a hair salon, you don’t want to target just anyone with hair.  You need to be more specific.  How do you expect your marketing to be effective if you don’t even know who you are targeting?

We’ll continue with the hair salon for an example.  Hair dressers, similar to general contractors, have a specialty – one type of service they are exceptional at.  Clarifying this specialty will aid in targeting future clientele.  Are you using your stylists’ abilities to help bring in your target customers?  If your salon focuses on a more modern, new wave of hair fashion, chances are you aren’t going to be targeting the 55 and older community.

With a clear target audience, you will be able to work your marketing strategies more effectively.

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These are only a few tips of many, to ensure you have a clarity in your market.  Having an unclear business perspective, one with contradicting goals, can make it hard for you to concentrate on what’s important — your customers.  Your customers are the livelihood of your business.

Keeping a clear business focus will avoid customer confusion and have new customers seeking your business.

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Did you know?  We’re on Facebook & Twitter!  Check us out!

When going through various design contests, we often come across design drafts that appear either too small or too large than other submissions.  Some designers are unaware of what the right size of a logo design should be; others are confused about the correct file format.

Today I thought that I would educate our designers on design standards that need to be followed when participating in design contests at MycroBurst.

Design Submission Standards

When submitting designs, designers need to make sure that their designs measure up to MycroBurst standards.  Here are a few brief, but important things that designers need to take care of:

1. Correct Design Size

Your design draft size should be 186 x 135 pixels or (width/height ratio of 3.1:2.25) in 150 DPI in PNG format having maximum size of 2 MB.

2. Use Pantone Color Standard

Pantone colors give the client flexibility to convert their design to RGB or CMYK when needed.

3. Avoid Using Adobe Photoshop

Create your design in Adobe Illustrator, FreeHand or CorelDraw only.  Adobe Photoshop is exclusively recommended for web templates and not for logo design.

4. No Clipart or 3^rd Party Stock Images

Do not use clipart, content and images from a 3^rd party source.  Create original artwork instead.

5. Avoid Using Watermark & Raster Background

Do not add watermarks across your design and avoid adding images in the background.

6. No Free Graphic Symbols

Even if you paid for special software, you cannot claim free symbols as your original work.  Using these will lead to legal consequences.

7. Avoid Overused & Derivative Concepts

Do not copy ideas from other designers and portray them as your own.  Even if you make a few changes, these are still copied designs.  Avoid using overused design concepts, these makes your designs look common and cheap.  Both of these instances are highly discouraged.



We can’t enforce these rules enough. For more information regarding the dos and don’ts of graphic designing, visit our Designer’s Education page.  This page specifically caters to all possible graphic design concerns. You can also read the FAQs in the Designer Help section for common questions.

Have a specific design concern you want to know more about?  Is there a certain rule you would like more information on?  Leave us a message here and we will publish a detail post regarding it soon.

MycroBurst recently held a contest to help ProudToBeAPennStater.com raise money for RAINN.org – the nation’s leading anti-sexual violence campaign.  So far Proud To Be a Penn Stater raised over $390,000 for RAINN.org!  Their goal is $500,000 and we hope to help them reach that!

You can view the entire contest here.  Our amazing design community submitted over 230 designs!  It was tremendously hard to narrow them down!

We were able to decided on the top 6 designs, but now we need your help. We would like you to choose the winning t-shirt design from our contest!  The winning t-shirt will be for sale shortly thereafter and all proceeds will be donated to RAINN.org on behalf of ProudToBeAPennStater.com.
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Please vote for your favorite t-shirt design below (click each image to view it larger)!  Hurry, voting closes this Friday the 18th at 3pm!

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