Young Guns 16 has two deadlines. The first deadline is June 15, 2018. The final deadline is June 30, 2018. All entries received after the first deadline are subject to a $50.00 USD late fee.

Young Guns is an international competition open to all who qualify. Entrants must be professionals working in creative field(s) including but not limited to: graphic design, photography, illustration, advertising, art direction, environmental design, film, animation, motion graphics, interactive design, typography, architecture, copywriting, product design, package design, fashion design, furniture design, interior design, sound design or industrial design. That said, if your work does not fit within any of these categories, this does not necessarily mean that it isn't eligible!

Young Guns represents a who’s who of creative professionals who hit their stride in their early years and have gone on to greatly impact their industry. Past winners include graphic designers James Victore (YG1), Stefan Sagmeister (YG1) and Jessica Walsh (YG8); advertising creatives Rei Inamoto (YG4) and Menno Kluin (YG6); illustrators Christoph Niemann (YG2) and Deanne Cheuk (YG4); photographers Ryan McGuinness (YG2) and Jeremy Floto/Cassandra Warner, aka floto+warner (YG5); typographers Alex Trochut (YG6) and Gemma O’Brien (YG13); film directors The Daniels (YG14); animation artist Todd St. John (YG1), among many others.

We are working towards rebuilding our public archive of all 15 previous classes. In the meantime, you may view the winners of Young Guns 10–15 here.

Young Guns entrants must be 30 years of age or younger on the day entries open in order to be eligible. For Young Guns 16, this means you must be born after April 15, 1987. As long as you are 30 or younger on that date, you’ll be eligible — even if you turn 31 while the competition is open for entries.

Entrants will be required to submit proof of age in the form of a passport, driver's license or other government-issued ID.

Eligible Young Guns entrants must have a minimum of two years of professional experience (both fulltime and freelance work qualify).

Sorry, Young Guns is not open to students, unless you also have the aforementioned minimum work experience.

Certainly! Teams/partnerships/collectives of up to three people may enter as one unit, however each person must adhere to all other eligibility qualifications.

As long as you meet all other qualifications, you are welcome to enter again. That said, once you have successfully been named a Young Guns winner, you may not enter again. This includes members of past winning teams entering as solo creatives and vice versa.

Young Guns entrants must submit 6 professional and personal projects, with a minimum of three projects being professional, published work. Unpublished and client-rejected spec projects may be included as personal work.

Projects entered need not have been created in a particular year — entries will be judged as a collection of work. Submissions need not conform to any specific media categories; your entry may feature projects in one medium or several.

Each project you submit will require a description, plus a statement of your role in its creation.

No. Your Young Guns submission is also an exercise in self-curation. Take care in deciding which six projects best represent you and your talents.

No. Your Young Guns submission should demonstrate your track record of consistently creating phenomenal work. If you cannot confidently include six examples of your best work, perhaps you may need another year or two to reach Young Guns caliber.

Unfortunately once your entry has been submitted, invoiced and paid for, you cannot edit the projects within it.

Do note, however, that as long as you haven’t yet paid for your entry, you can save your entry progress and edit it as you see fit. This is perfect if you have some projects you definitely know you’ll submit;, but are being more mindful about the other projects. This will allow you to prepare those “definites” early on, then wait until the deadline approaches to make your final decisions. It certainly beats making a mad scramble to get every project together the night before the deadline!

Each project has a maximum of 5 uploads of jpegs, .mov, mp3, URL, or combination.

JPEG Dimensions:
The longest side of each image should be at least 800 pixels long.
The longest side of each image must be a maximum of 4800 pixels long.
Max File Size: 5MB
Colorspace: RGB

BROADCAST AND VIDEO SUBMISSIONS
Video submissions will only be accepted through online upload. DVDs will not be accepted.
Resolution: 1920 x 1080 is preferred and recommended Minimum resolution of 1280 x 720
Aspect Ratio: All videos must be submitted in 16x9 format 4x3 videos should be submitted with black pillars
Format: .mov or .mp4 H.264 compression with a maximum bit rate of 8196 kbps Audio compression must be AAC
File Size: No larger than 200MB

AUDIO SUBMISSIONS
Audio submissions will only be accepted through online upload.
Format: MP3
File Size: No larger than 200MB

Yes, but with a few caveats. First, you must be one of the principal creatives on the project. Secondly, you must also credit all others who contributed to the project. Entrants who are found to have exaggerated their role in a particular project may be disqualified.

TIP: If your professional work tends to be collaborative (ie you work for an advertising agency, and your campaigns have multiple creatives working on them), we recommend that you take advantage of the fact that Young Guns allows for up to three of your submitted projects to be personal work. These projects will help the judges see what you are capable of, outside of a collaborative effort.

$100.00 USD for One Club for Creativity Members
$150.00 USD for Non-Members

Additionally, past Young Guns winners are able to nominate potential Young Guns at the ADC/One Club Member rate.

Any submissions completed after June 15, 2018 will be subject to a $50.00 USD late fee. Get those entries in on time to avoid this fee!

All fees are non-refundable.

The Young Guns 16 Call for Entries period begins April 16, 2018 and ends June 30, 2018.

The Young Guns 16 Jury is composed of an international collection of past Young Guns winners and other accomplished creatives across a wide variety of disciplines.

PLEASE NOTE: All jury members collectively judge all disciplines.

View Our Jury

All Young Guns 16 winners will be notified in September 2018, in order for them to make any preparations to travel to New York to accept the award. The winners will be unveiled to the general public November 1, ahead of the Young Guns 16 Awards Ceremony and Party.

The Young Guns 16 Awards ceremony takes place on Wednesday, November 15 2018 at the famous Highline Ballroom in New York City. Winners will be honored at this event and presented with the coveted Young Guns Cube, a trophy that is redesigned each year making each class of Young Guns winners truly unique. Tickets for the party are available here.