7 Tips for Art Call Success: Getting Your Design Noticed & Selected

So you’ve read the brief for an Art Call, and you’re itching to jump in and start designing – but wait! Not quite so fast! There are some key details that you need to pay attention to before you put pencil to paper! 

Here are 7 of our tried and true tips when designing for an Art Call:

1. READ THE BRIEF CAREFULLY!
   We can not stress this enough, take the time to carefully read the brief. A quick tip is to take out a pen and paper and write down important details as you are reading that you want to keep in mind while you’re designing.

   
   2. THEME: 
   Make sure that your submission aligns with the theme of the Art Call. You need to understand and respect the brand you are submitting to, which means submitting work that aligns with their specified theme, work that aligns with their visual style, and work that is tailor made for them to consider, not just something that you have created previously with an abstract reference to the art call. 

3. COLOR PALETTE:
Art Calls often include guidance on color palette.  Submissions that don’t take that color palette guidance into consideration are rarely going to be considered. In our art calls, we’ve seen some beautiful patterns that most likely won’t be selected because specified color palette requests are ignored.
Tips for color:
Use at least one of the prescribed colors in your palette or similar tones.
Visualize your design on the product you are designing for, how would it look in a real life setting? Would the colors of your design look like it was from the art call collection?

4. OLD WORK VS NEW WORK:
You are more than welcome to submit artwork that you have previously created for an Art Call. However, you will want to make sure that it is artwork that is available for a licensing or a buyout and that you take the time to ensure it has a color palette that coordinates with what the brand has requested and meets the criteria of the Art Call.

5.SHARING YOUR DESIGN
Often times it’s stated within an Art Call if the company wants you to keep your design exclusive or not. If it’s a non-exclusive that means your welcome to upload your design to places such as Spoonflower and most of the time you are also welcome to go ahead and share your design on your website, social media, etc. If it is exclusive, you will often need to keep it private until you know the results.

6. FILE REQUIREMENTS
Does the Art Call include specific details on final file specifications for your submission? These details are incredibly important! If you do not submit the correct file type your submission will not be included for consideration in the art call. It is a good idea not to start designing until you know all the specifications of the final file type required (eg: colour profile, DPI, file format etc). Many submissions don’t even require you to have your motifs in a repeat to submit – so make sure you read carefully to save yourself a lot of time!

7. SPACE:
We are not taking about scale when we talk about space. Please take into consideration how much “white space” or “empty space” you have in your design. If you are designing for a product with a smaller surface area you will want to take that into consideration. A design with a lot of white space or empty space won’t work as well for a small product, eg: baby clothes, as it would on a larger product such as wallpaper.

In an art call, details matter. 

So, now that you’ve made sure you’ve read the brief through once, twice and even three times, it’s time to grab your pencil and dive into designing!

Join us!