Proud of your graphic design awards? Great, pat yourself on the back and get back to work. There's always a good feeling that comes with winning awards. Wether it's recognition from your peers at some formal gala, or a gold star from your third grade teacher. Awards represent achievement, prestige, and of course give you some bragging rights. But when it comes to our business, do graphic design awards translate to better and more work? Now I realize that this is my own personal opinion. I didn't look up any studies, nor did I conduct any surveys. But if you ask me, I would have to say NO. Entering in graphic design competitions and winning graphic design awards don't really do anything for your graphic design business. Disagree? Have a story to prove me wrong? Leave your opinion in a comment below. Types of Graphic Design Awards There are a ton of graphic design competitions that offer a variety of graphic design awards. That's not what I want to talk about. I'm referring to the different "categories" of graphic design awards available to you. Graphic Design Awards For Students. There are probably more graphic design competitions aimed at students than there are aimed at professionals. And that's OK. In fact, graphic design students are the ones that can benefit the most form winning graphic design awards. They look great on resumes and could be the deciding factor in an employer choosing one young designer over another. Unfortunately graphic design awards won while you're a student have short life spans. They look good for the first few years of your career but after a while the loose their wow factor. It's kind of like the local theatre awards some Hollywood A Lister won before they made it big. They were great at the time, and may have helped them land their first acting part, but nobody cares about those awards now. Professional Graphic Design Awards If you do covet graphic design awards these are the ones to go after. I wont name any names here but there are some very prestigious graphic design competitions in our industry. Unfortunately most of these competitions require you to pay a fee in order to submit a piece of work. Some of those fees can be expensive. Without a guarantee that your piece will make it on the final ballot the price involved with these graphic design competitions is just too much for most graphic designers, especially those running their own business. Don't get me wrong. I fully understand why these graphic design competitions charge hundreds, sometimes thousands of dollars just to submit your work for consideration. If they didn't they would be flooded with thousands of submissions from every wannabe designer looking for a leg up. The problem however is that only those who can afford the entry fee are recognized. Meaning they may not necessarily be the best graphic designers, they are simply the ones with money to spend. Niche Graphic Design Awards. Niche graphic design awards are fun to win, but don't really mean much. A niche design award is usually offered by some industry or group to recognize achievement within their ranks. For example, a fire department my win an award for having the best department crest out of all fire departments in the state. Or a book publisher may offer an award for the best book cover design out of all the books they published in the past year. Most of the time it's your client that is the one being recognized and not you the designer. In the examples above, the fire department and the book author would win the award. However, by proxy you can claim some recognition for having designed the winning piece and have every right to brag about it any way you like. Graphic Design Inclusions. Not so much an award since there are no graphic design competitions involved. Inclusions is when your work is recognized in some compilation of work. This is when a logo you designed appears in a book of "Best Logo Designs" or if a website you built appears in a list of the "top 100 websit