ADC Young Guns honors the vanguard of creative professionals who let loose their imaginations, shattering conventions and breaking boundaries with a dash of brilliance and personal flair.
ADC Young Guns is a global, cross-disciplinary portfolio competition that identifies today’s vanguard of young creative professionals. 30 or under? Been working for 2 years? If you have one or more design partners, and all of you qualify according to the rules, you can enter as a team.
Enter your portfolio. Get recognized.
Objective
Work that spans the following creative disciplines are accepted:
- graphic design
- photography
- illustration
- advertising and art direction
- environmental design
- film
- animation & video
- interactive design
- object design and typography
Prizes
Every fall, a new class of ADC Young Guns is unveiled. Winners are showcased in an exhibition at ADC Gallery (see photos of the ADC Young Guns 7 exhibition and opening party here) and receive the iconic ADC Young Guns Cube. Their best work is printed in a limited edition volume published exclusively for ADC by Moleskine®.
Winning work is added to ADC’s permanent collection online and each winner receives a one-year CUBE membership in the organization. In addition, all 50 winners receive an assortment of career-boosting benefits from ADC Young Guns sponsors.
Throughout the year, the exhibition travels digitally to various international venues. Back in New York, select ADC Young Guns are invited to participate at speaker events at the ADC Gallery, and at the Apple Store in SoHo, where an ongoing speaker series is held.
Rules
- Entrants must be professionals working in the field(s) of graphic design, photography, illustration, advertising and art direction, environmental design, film, animation & video, interactive design, object design and typography.
- Entrants must be 30 years of age or younger when the entry site opens each year, and must have been working professionally for at least 2 years (both full-time and freelance work qualify). A proof of age in the form of a Passport, State ID or drivers license is required from all entrants.
- If you are a student with two years of the working life under your belt, you are also eligible to enter. Previous ADC Young Guns entrants ARE eligible to enter, but past ADC Young Guns winners are NOT eligible to enter subsequent cycles of the competition.
- Submit 6-10 pieces of professional and personal work. A maximum of half of your pieces submitted can be personal work. The rest must be professional, published work. Unpublished and client-rejected spec work counts as personal work.
How to enter?
Before beginning the submission process, please register your Young Guns 8 login information. Once you’re registered you can submit your entries.
We also suggest you review the rules and entry instructions before creating your entries.
Entry fee
The fee for regular entries is US $135. Early Bird entrants (entrants that submitted the entries before 15 April 2010) get $25 off entry total.
