YCN launches brand new Professional Awards with glittering Call for Entries campaign by Craig Ward.
Emerging creatives around the world are invited to share the best of their work as part of a brand new professional award programme from YCN, launched in international partnership with Soho House.
Since 2001 YCN has been operating an international award programme for creative students. YCN is now seeking to elevate and recognise outstanding talent rising up within the industry.
Open to creative professionals to have graduated within the last 8 years, the new YCN Professional Awards invite the submission of a portfolio showing four projects into categories for Design & Communication, Illustration and Animation. Portfolios must include client work, and postgraduate students are also welcome to enter. The deadline for doing so is March 28th 2013.
All portfolios will be considered by an inspring international jury, undergoing two rounds of online consideration followed by jury days hosted in Soho House London and New York. The 80 strong multi-disciplinary group combines established and newer names; including Creative Review editor Patrick Burgoyne, Sagmeister & Walsh’s Jessica Walsh and Blink founder James Studholme. Up to 30 winners will be identified overall.
YCN has internationally partnered with Soho House to host the jury days followed by launch events for a new YCN Annual. This hard-backed publication, to be Art Directed this year by Matt Willey, will showcase all Award winners alongside other notable submissions and be distributed across the creative industries. Winners will also be showcased online at the YCN website and invited to speak at industry facing events and screenings at Soho House venues internationally.
“We believe that well organised Award programmes have a valuable role to play in sharing brilliant new creative work and publicly recognising those behind it”, comments YCN Founder Nick Defty.
“We have set out to design something far-reaching and accessible that will give recognition to some of the most exciting talent coming through. Our partnership with Soho House will enable us to further celebrate this talent in beautiful spaces around the world”.
This year’s Call for Entries campaign, and a glittering interactive physical award, have been designed in collaboration with New York based typographer Craig Ward. Combining striking type with imagery of the award itself the campaign invites creatives around the world to ‘Shake it Up’.
“I photographed a tonne of falling glitter which is rather difficult to focus on!”, tells Craig. ”I built the type out from there. The most important thing I wanted to capture was the energy and excitement of rising up as a creative”.
The Awards cost £40 to enter and all those who do will become Super Members of YCN with colourful benefits for a year. “We want to make sure that everyone that enters gets great value from doing so” says Nick.
Entries are invited online by March 28th 2013. Full details can be found at ycn.org/awards
ABOUT YCN
Established in 2001, YCN is a member based organisation dedicated to empowering and celebrating creative talent internationally. YCN is free to join, and anyone can do so at ycn.org. YCN’s members are drawn to the worlds of design, advertising, illustration, animation and all creative business in-between.
ABOUT SOHO HOUSE
Soho House was founded in London, in 1995, as a private members’ club for those in film, media and creative industries. The group has since expanded to include Houses across Europe and North America.
ABOUT CRAIG WARD
Craig Ward is a British Designer and Art Director today working in New York. Known primarily for his delightfully innovative and experimental typography, Craig is a former ADC Young Gun winner and recipient of the TDC’s Certificate of Typographic Excellence.
ABOUT MATT WILLEY
Matt graduated from Central St Martins in 1997, before joining the internationally acclaimed studio Frost Design, later becoming Creative Director. In 2005 he co-founded Studio8 Design with Zoë Bather. Matt is co-founder of Port Magazine which launched in February 2011.
For interview and image requests, or for any further information, please contact YCN Project Director Zoë Barrett on +44 (0)20 7033 2140 / zb@ycn.org
