How to Get Exposed

Honest advice for entering the Student Awards

March 11, 2021

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Madison Rogers, Mary Utley, PONDEROSA, Advertising - Series, 2019 Students Award winner. 


Tricks for entering your Student Awards work.

At Applied Arts, we’re all about transparency. While we can’t guarantee a win, we want to give you the best opportunity to get your work in a position to nab that award. So below we’ve bared it all collected some award-winner tips to help you prep your work for judging, and the secrets to making our system work for you.

Here’s how our judging works:

  • It’s all done online.
  • Each juror independently reviews hundreds of entries and gives each entry one total score.
  • The score is based on three criteria only: Creative merit (i.e. the concept) Technical Excellence (i.e. the execution), and Suitability for end use in the category (i.e. appropriate to the category).
  • We have no win quotas: a category may have many winners, or none at all.
  • Every entry with an average above the cut-off is a winner and is published.

The best way to prep your work for judging:

  • For jurors, more is not better. Keep your files and images to a minimum.
  • A multi-page PDF is better than multiple JPG files to open.
  • Concentrate on giving jurors the full picture “at a quick glance”. When applicable: zoom in on important small print or details, and show the piece in context (“as seen by the audience”).
  • Include a very brief description with your files only where requested, or when needed for clarity (if explaining the concept or class assignment would help “get it”).
  • Keep this description simple, as brief as possible (max 50 words, or 10-second video), and avoid extra graphics.
  • Ensure the title of your entry is in English, and indicates your project type whenever your images or the category are not obvious at first glance.

The secret of how to get multiple wins:

  • Enter your very best piece in more than one category.
  • Enter more than one piece.

And, don’t be afraid to enter group projects! Like the sweet KITKAT RE-BRANDING, which was a winner in the Entire Design Program category for Anh Dien, Jeongmin Kim, and Soyoung Parkfrom from Seneca College!


And if you have any questions, or need help, we’ve got you covered!

Final Deadline for Entry: May 21, 2021

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