I decided to use a little reverse psychology in today’s post. It seems like every graphic design blog talks about how to win design contests. I thought, “Why not focus on the exact opposite?” In today’s post, I will tell you 10 ways to lose a design contest, guaranteed. These tactics have been tried and tested by many designers and have a proven track record to work.



1. Enter Too Many Design Contests

So you are all pumped up and your adrenaline levels are at an all time high. Great! Sign up for at least 10 different design contests. Try to finish all of them at the same time. This will cause you to lose focus and you will be unable to devote sufficient time to any project.

2. Poor Time Management

Keep poor time management, while attempting multiple design contests. Doing so will frustrate you as the deadline approaches and you will likely make mistakes giving other designers the edge over you.



3. Quickly Skim Through the Design Brief

This has to be the number one reason why designers end up losing contests at MycroBurst.com! Reading and understanding the contest guidelines are not important, right? Ignore the Project Holder’s design requirements and concerns and you will always end up losing design contests.

4. Procrastinate, Procrastinate, Procrastinate

Putting things off till the last minute will ensure that you have a ton of work left to finish in the end. The sheer amount of work piled up will completely overwhelm you and make you give up.



5. Be Overconfident

Becoming overconfident is another guaranteed way to lose a design contest.  It gives you the freedom to make important design decisions on your own which the contest holder might not like.

6. Plagiarize Your Way Out

Look at clip art for inspiration. Steal from other designers. Copy designs pixel by pixel. Make a few slight modifications and then call it your own work. The worst that can happen is that you get sued for trademark infringement, and end up destroying your reputation as a graphic designer.



7. Don’t Scope Out the Competition

Analyzing highly-rated drafts submitted by fellow designers will only spark new ideas in your head, compelling you to seek a different direction in your next draft or improve on existing ones. This can potentially lead to a win, but we are talking about losing here so don’t do that.

8. Become Lazy

The great part about being lazy is that you don’t have to prove it to anyone. It will show in your work. Contest holders will easily recognize your careless mistakes and poor design ethics.  It will make it that much easier for them to ignore you.



9. Don’t Interact With Clients

Interacting with clients will only show that you actually care about the project and the client’s needs. Don’t communicate with them. Ignore their feedback. Do what you think is right. It’s your way or the highway.

10. What Comes In Your Head, Stays In Your Head

Don’t put your ideas on paper or create rough sketches. Keep it in your head and immediately begin working. This approach is doomed to failure. You will get distracted and forget something crucial that you may have remembered had you put it on paper. This mistake will always come back to haunt you in the end.

Well there you have it. Ten Guaranteed ways to lose a design contest.

Ok now coming to a more serious note – the purpose of this post is not to encourage designers to lose but point out exactly why they are NOT winning. There is no doubting the immense talent present in our community of designers. What we need, however, is to provide each and every designer with a sense of direction so that they don’t end up on the losing side. Hopefully today’s post will be one small step in that direction.

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11 users responded in " How to Lose a Design Contest in 10 Ways "

• Milli@Latest Gadgets Says:
  April 14th, 2011 at 11:20 pm

  I think poor time management is the worst of the lot. It can sink any designer no matter how good they are

• sourabh sharma Says:
  April 14th, 2011 at 11:22 pm

  I am guilty of procrastination and I must say I have paid for it at times. I keep it under control now

• Jenny Says:
  April 14th, 2011 at 11:23 pm

  Good post Keith! I am with you on the plagiarism issue. I hate it when designers copy my stuff and modify it to call their own. We need more posts like these counter this bad habit.

• sapna pandey Says:
  April 14th, 2011 at 11:29 pm

  Wow. Reading this post was like looking at myself in the mirror, only not. Very accurate points. I remember when I first got involved with design contests, I made the mistake of taking up 6 contests at once. That proved to be way too much and I ended up wasting my time! A tough lesson learned but a good one nonetheless. Now I dont take up anymore than 2 projects at any given time. Good Tips Keiths. Kudos.

• gourav Says:
  April 14th, 2011 at 11:30 pm

  nice post! catchy title

• Kathy Says:
  April 15th, 2011 at 12:23 am

  These are great general tips but can we get something that is a little more technical and specific. As in what can a designer do wrong when creating logos that can cost him the design contest. Thx.

• Keith J. Hamilton Says:
  April 15th, 2011 at 2:15 am

  Thanks for your comments guys

  @Kathy – I m glad you liked the post. Thank you for your input. Be sure to check out the MB blog over the coming weeks. We do have a few technical posts lined up, focusing specifically on logo designs. Please do check out the following two posts regarding Overused Logo Design Concepts and Vector vs Raster Images.

• sunil Says:
  June 7th, 2011 at 12:45 am

  man one of the coolest posts i’ve read and presented in a humorous way ….ha ha ha ha …….but really man thanks for this awesome post

• Atif Says:
  July 7th, 2011 at 5:46 am

  Excellent and a very useful Post.

• Ravi Gopallkrishnan Says:
  October 5th, 2011 at 3:01 am

  Great article. I agree with all the ten points. Thanks for publishing it

• crea8ivedesign Says:
  January 1st, 2012 at 8:04 am

  hi
  yes there is many reason for lost design contest 1st thing you have focus on client requirement and manage time as per contest deadline some time designer was working on own idea but when they saw other designs enteritis so they get confusion and mixup idea and other designer style, when you ll start work so full put intention of your design so i think its should be great result, i have 8 year experience and working for crea8ivedesign.com so we glag to work on both platform

  regards

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