Lesser known design opportunities — scholarships, hackathons and much more
While your inbox and news feed are always brimming with notifications of upcoming coding contests, blockchain hackathons, women-in-tech scholarships and other uncountable chances of making breakthroughs in the “tech” world, nobody really talks about nurturing the artist/designer in you by spamming emails or updating LinkedIn posts about design opportunities. While on the face of it, it might seem like there are hardly any design opportunities, which too is correct to a certain extent as the current tech world is too developer centered, this isn’t the exact case. The issue again is awareness.
And while a large number of scholarship track pages, communities, and cohorts run for increasing awareness about technical opportunities, there aren’t any such notable provisions for the design arena. This blog post is an effort to talk about some noteworthy design scholarships, challenges, hackathons, fellowships and even student ambassador programs for designers.
Most of these opportunities are annual in nature and thus the eligibility criteria, as well as the application deadlines, have been mentioned based on the general trends.
So, without much ado, here we begin with the list:
Adobe Design Circle Scholarship
One of the most remarkable opportunities of the lot, the Adobe Design Circle Scholarship is ideal for students who want to enter product design or experience design-related careers (e.g. digital, web, UX/UI, interaction design, or similar). Initiated with the intent of reaching untapped youth communities and fostering more diversity in the design industry, Adobe awards 10 annual college scholarships — up to $25,000 per year, for each year of the recipient’s undergraduate education (up to four years or $100,000). In addition to the scholarship funds, the winners are granted mentorship from the members of Adobe Design Circle.
My personal favorite part about the scholarship is the extensive and meticulous application process that entails:
- A personal written or video statement of approximately 500 words or up to three minutes in length.
- An estimate of your expected tuition and fee expenses.
- Two reference letters from non-family members who know you well — for example, a teacher, instructor, professor, employer/work supervisor, advisor to an extracurricular club, etc.
- High school and college/university transcripts.
- Portfolio of up to three examples of your design work.
The applications open around the month of February and applicants are notified of the results in early June.
Learn more about the Adobe Design Circle Scholarship here.
Being an applicant in 2022 and thus speaking from a personal standpoint, just applying for the Adobe Design Circle Scholarship proved to be a game-changer for me. It helped me realize the holistic perspective that comes into play while approaching professors for reference letters, designing the portfolio submissions and recording the personal statement. A tip would be to always go for a video statement over a written personal statement when given a choice between the two as it creates a better impact and helps the jury understand your passion for design through your voice and expressions.
Microsoft Design Challenge
Commenced with a vision to let students identify problems in certain areas, say, education, well-being, security and then leverage the power of human-centric design to create a high impact solution to those problems, this contest is one of the most premier design challenges in India providing the winners with internship opportunity at Microsoft.
The overall aim is to let product makers and thinkers envision empowering solutions not just for themselves but for society at large through empathy and a better understanding of human needs.
The opportunity is for students in pre-final and final year who are actively enrolled at an accredited educational institution in India. The registration closes in the first week of February and the submission window closes around the third week. The final winner announcement takes place in late April.
The final submission should be such that it must cover a detailed description of the proposed solution, scenarios depicting the use of the solution in the life of the user as well a final design with detailed flows and screens. Innovation, technical feasibility and a real chance of adoption are some favorable parameters in the solution.
Learn more about the Microsoft Design Challenge here.
Adobe Stock Artist Development Fund
A creative commission program established in 2021 by Adobe Stock as a testimony to their commitment to inclusion, The Artist Development Fund awards $7500 each to 40 global artists who self-identify with and expertly depict diverse communities within their work. Unlike the programs mentioned before, this one is not just for students and is open to anyone who is at least 18 years of age, identifies with the underrepresented communities listed on the website and is an Adobe Stock contributor.
The admission process works on a rolling basis. Just like Adobe Design Circle Scholarship, the application window is comprehensive in nature and asks questions about what piques your interest in the program, years of work experience in your creative skill set, the creative briefs you wish to apply for as well as your project proposal if selected. The overall selection criteria involve:
- Project alignment with the Advocates program mission
- Resonance of your story
- Aesthetic sensibility
- Technical ability
Apart from the monetary fund, selected artists get to take full advantage of promotional opportunities to share their work, voices, and personal stories with the Adobe community. They get a project production time of two months and have to deliver a certain number of video stock footage clips, still stock assets (photos, vectors, illustrations) or mixed stills and video stock footage clips.
Learn more about the Adobe Stock Artist Development Fund here.
Friends of Figma
Friends of Figma is a design-community-building initiative where you can join and lead city-specifc or on-campus groups to connect and meet with fellow Figma users. For those who are passionate about this powerful prototyping tool and want to propagate its usage in student communities, this is the ideal place to get started.
There are two levels to get involved in the program, i.e. either by applying as a Student Leader or as a Community Advocate.
Both of these positions require the students to take lead, passionately run Friends of Figma groups and actively host meetups or events for the community.
The major perks involve:
- Access to the Friends of Figma, Students brand kit.
- Figma Pro account for active groups.
- Private Slack channel for Student Leaders & Community Advocates worldwide to share best practices.
- Closer engagement with the Figma team and product through sneak peeks and beta programs.
- Cool swag!
Learn more about the Friends of Figma program here.
Sundance Ignite Fellowship
In order to identify and support 18 to 25-year-old emerging documentary and narrative filmmakers, the Sundance Institute partners with Adobe to sponsor the Sundance Ignite Fellowships to artists and give them the chance to develop their craft and careers. It is a competitive and year round artist development program that begins with a week-long lab orienting filmmakers to the fellowship and year ahead. For the rest of the year, fellows work with their mentors, enjoy eligibility for internships, receive additional creative and professional development opportunities, and attend the Sundance Film Festival. The fellows also receive a complimentary membership to Adobe Creative Cloud.
Learn more about the Sundance Ignite Fellowship here.
Outreachy
Now this one might come as a surprise for most readers. Outreachy, one of the most prestigious open-source program for providing internships to people subject to systemic bias in the technical industry pays a stipend of $7000 to the selected interns. However, what most people don’t know is that in every iteration, Outreachy always has a couple or more projects that are focused particularly on design, documentation as well as user experience. While majority of the Outreachy projects require the applicants to have some programming skills, a few of them are appropriately suited for designers and their analogues and require no coding skills.
The initial application for Outreachy opens in February as well as August and the internship period begins in May and December respectively.
Learn more about Outreachy here.
Needless to mention, Outreachy finds a common ground between open source and design which is rarely seen as the current OSS (Open Source Software) world as it is too developer centered.
However, certain organizations have well defined issues related to design and graphics and encourage designers and artists alike to contribute. It could be designing style guides and logos, carrying out UX research or creating concept art, there is a lot that can be done by designers in the open source space. Mozilla, Wikimedia, Fedora are few such organizations that have over time encouraged designers to work on their issues and establish a central ground between open source and design.
Other opportunities for designers (specifically game designers) could be participating in game jams. Game jams are hackathons where the developers have to build games from scratch in a limited time span and needless to say, they have a whopping prize money. Most game jams require participants to form teams and in some cases, each team must have members with designated roles such as developer/designer/2D or 3D artist and so on. Some extremely popular game jams include:
- Brackey’s Game Jam
- Global Game Jam
- Sogeti Green X Game Jam
- Ubisoft Game Jam
Similarly, people who design filters (AR effects) for Instagram, Facebook and Snapchat can take part in effect creation hackathons that specifically require the participants to have strong design skills. Meta hosts such AR/XR hackathons throughout the year. Snap AR Lensathon by Snapchat and Spark Worlds Contest by Meta are the AR filter creation contests that are currently active.
Design indeed extends far beyond just the way things look, it recognizes the need of humans and translates it into viable solutions. To end the blog, I would like to quote Paul Rand — “To design is to transform prose into poetry.”
Keeps designing, keep exploring!
