Trading Art Cards

Creating and signing a commercial trading card is a life goal for many artists, illustrators and designers in the graphics domain as it signifies “making it”.  If you design an artwork for a trading card, the trading card containing your artwork and your name, would most likely be reproduced in thousands and spread around the World, and has a chance of becoming a highly collectible item sought after by collectors and connoisseurs, to be permanently kept, saved, loved, protected, showcased and exhibited within private collections and in museums, eternalizing your artwork and your name.

That’s why Museo del Design decided to create “Trading Art Cards” in collaboration with A’ Design Awards. Our aim is to make the name and designs of A’ Design Award Winners eternal; to help your name and design spread, to honor outstandingly creative artists, prominent designers and excellent architects such as yourself by featuring your works in Museo del Design’s “Trading Art Cards” which will be available for sale within the design museum shop, and will further be available online and would further be sent to prominent press members as well as other award-winning designers.

If you decide to send us your artwork, the following are likely to happen:

1. We will first check for the fully filled and signed Trading Art Card License. If your license is not present or incorrect, we will contact you. If your license is fully filled and signed, we will proceed with review.
2. If your license is correct and valid, your card will be inspected and reviewed by the Museo del Design’s Art Directors. If you send us a physical card, during the review process, your card will be digitally scanned at 4800 DPI resolution and its 45.7-megapixel high-resolution images will be taken with a professional macro lens using a high-fidelity wide color gamut digital camera in order to inspect your card details as well as to create a proper digital image. If you had sent to us your card digitally, such as by uploading your artwork, then we will verify the image for its technical properties such as its resolution and sharpness. Using details as seen in the digital image and on the card itself, a decision will be made to whether to accept or reject the card as part of our collection and as part of our exhibition.
3. If your physical card is rejected for collection, we will inform you with our deepest regrets, and if you had sent us a physical card, we will send your physical card back to the address you noted in the license you had provided earlier, if your license does not include a full address, we will send your card back to the address you send it from, as is noted in the envelope, and if there is no address available, we will, at our sole discretion, decide to whether discard the card, keep the card or give the card away. If your digital submission is rejected, we will inform you all the same, however you should know that we would keep a digital data of your submission in our archives.
4. If your physical card is accepted, we will officially own that particular physical copy of the card that you had sent to us, we will keep the physical card and your physical card becomes our physical property, and our new card, as designed by you, will be assigned a creative rating and status. We will also send you the professional raw digital image files we created from your physical card. For both the digital and physical submissions, you keep the copyrights to your artwork and you are going to be always credited as the creator of the card, and you keep any related intellectual properties regarding the artwork you have on the card, and if you so desire, you can reproduce your artwork and profit from your artwork further such as by using the artwork in the card for making t-shirts, posters or any other derivative work; your copyrights remain with you; you keep your intellectual property right. However, any physical card you had sent to us is ours. We would further have a special license that you had filled and sent to us, that allows us to use your artwork, to make modifications to your artwork, as well as to create derivative works from your artwork, within the context of Trading Art Cards, such as for promoting or advertising the Trading Art Cards and the Museo del Design, as well as eventual inclusion in exhibitions and books, please kindly read and refer to the detailed license before sending your cards.
5. Originals of all accepted cards will be placed in UV-protective enclosures and acid-free containers and will be physically exhibited at Museo del Design as part of a special design installation, until when and if the cards are sold or given away to a third party as part of the Trading Art Card program, however each physically accepted card will be exhibited for at least one year in the design museum, without any limit on how long we may exhibit your cards. We may also occasionally exhibit digitally submitted cards in the museum as well. We will also send you, a special package that contains your certificate of acceptance and we will also send you two copies of artists’ proof of each variant Trading Art Card that we have created using your artwork (please note that, we will decide at our sole discretion, what would be considered a variant card and what would not be considered a variant card within this context), placed in protective enclosures. If your physical or digital card is accepted, you will further be granted 88 Prestige Tokens plus you will be paid, albeit symbolically yet officially, 8 euros, as part of your card inclusion, any payment would be made to the banking details as noted in your Trading Art Card License.
6. We understand and agree the payment amount is symbolic, and we have to include this amount and pay you this amount in any case, as in certain legislations a monetary amount must be indicated and a payment should follow up, to make such licenses legal and valid, and it does not come close to the amount we would emotionally value of your work; and from another perspective, we want to remind you that, with this initiative, one further aim of the Museo del Design and its Trading Art Card program is to support the design museum financially, and to potentially have a product that we could offer to design museum shop visitors. While Museo del Design do not pay royalties for the works accepted as part of Trading Art Card program, we remind you that you keep the copyrights and intellectual property rights, and therefore you can create derivative products from your own works as you see fit, this is indeed important as other trading card games and collectible card games would most likely prohibit you from using your artwork once you sell it to them, while in the case of Museo del Design’s Trading Art Cards, you will be able to use your art work for your own benefit. We are looking forward to create a Trading Art Card from your work, to exhibit your work in the design museum as well as to send you sample cards and your certificate of acceptance and participation together with the symbolic yet official payment for your license.

Good to Know

1. You will be happy to learn that you do not need to create new works and you may send us your existing works, provided that you are able to provide us with the proper license we need.
2. You may send us images and visuals of your A’ Design Award Winner designs, products, projects, works, and we would consider them for eventual inclusion in the “Trading Art Cards” program.
3. Your artwork does not need to be an actual work of art; it could also be design or representations, for example, you may send us blueprints, renderings or photographs of an industrial design, architectural project and of course, it could be illustrations, drawings and paintings as well as artistic photographs.
4. Your self-portraits as well as bust portrait photographs as a designer, artists, architect may further be considered an artwork within the context of Trading Art Cards program, as we would also like to feature you, yourself as a card, however in this case, you need to ensure that you have all the rights to the photographs, drawings or illustrations that you would submit to us for review. The same principle applies to photographs of your products and projects; you may have copyrights to your work and designs but your photographer would have copyrights to the photographs of your work, please consult with your legal department before submitting any third-party photographs of yourself and your works.
5. Whatever you submit, be it an artwork, a photograph, a rendering or illustration, you should be able to provide us with a valid license for the entirety of the work; this is generally only possible if you are the original creator and copyright holder of all items and details as seen and contained within your work; unless you have an explicit license to do so, you may not feature or send any third-party intellectual properties within your work, including but not limited to royalty free images you may have used within your works, and of course any logo placements would not be legally allowed.
6. You should further know that the digital version of your artwork (either the ones we have scanned, photographed or the ones you had uploaded) may be altered in color and be subject to processes or algorithms to derive and create “Final Art” as well as “Alternative Art”, this could happen intentionally as well as accidentally; sometimes, Museo del Design may create derivative “Alternative Art” works such as due to trimming, cutting or color correcting, applying relief or embossing, applying metallic foil, and sometimes the printing process itself as well as the materials used, such as the paper on which the artwork is printed on, as the paints used, the printing technique and coatings applied, including but not limited to holographic foils, shiny, opaque or soft touch surfaces may result in artwork variations. We may frame your artwork within the card “Framed Artwork” or we may extend the artwork to the entirety of the card “Full Art”.

Technical Details

1. The final size of commercially available Trading Art Cards, as print and cut, will always be 63 mm x 88 mm, to these numbers we need to add first + 2.5 mm safety margin within and then + 2.5 mm bleed margin in the outside, for both width and height, therefore the full-art artworks should be at least 68 mm x 93 mm.
2. If you submit a physical or digital artwork that is exactly 63 mm x 88 mm in size or smaller, we would scale up the digital version of your work to make it slightly larger as we would need to have additional 2.5 mm + 2.5 mm = 5 mm margins from all sides to cut the paper borderless. On the other hand, if you submit an artwork that is significantly larger than 68 mm x 93 mm in size, then we would need to make the digital version of your artwork smaller; we would scale it down, trim or crop the digital artwork such that it would fit the canvas correctly and properly.

How to Submit

We would like to note that participation to the “Trading Arts Cards” program is solely by invitation only, and we only accept works from A’ Design Award laureates for consideration.

Please use the following URL to enter your work, if you decide to take part, you will find detailed participation guidelines and instructions here:
How to Submit Your Awarded Design or New Artwork for “Trading Art Cards” program:

1. LEARN MORE:
   
   Please use the following URL to learn more.
   https://competition.adesignaward.com/custom-competition.php?ID=1008 (You are already viewing this)
   
   
2. ENTER YOUR WORK:
   
   You may start uploading your work from your Control Panel from Upload Designs function. Make sure you are logged-in.
   https://competition.adesignaward.com/uploaddesigns.php
   
   But don’t fill the design details as usual, all the text must be super concise and very short, everything must be shortened.
   
   
1. DESIGN/PROJECT NAME
1. For the Design Name, please type in the Name of Artwork, without indicating its function or technique or any other details, must be very precise, private name.
   
   
2. PRIMARY FUNCTION
1. For Primary Function, use one word, up to two words, and indicate what type of work it is, here are many examples: Architectural Project, Drawing, Painting, Illustration, Photography, Industrial Design, Furniture Design, Jewelry Design, note that these are not specifics; technique and medium are not mentioned, just what the work is, very precisely, in one or two words, not three words, should be very short.
   
   
3. UNIQUE PROPERTIES / PROJECT EXPLANATION
1. For UNIQUE PROPERTIES / PROJECT DESCRIPTION section, you may explain the work as usual. This information will not appear in the card but maybe used as metadata.
   
   
4. COMPETITION & CATEGORY
1. Choose Category 1008, that is “Museo del Design Trading Art Cards”.
   
   
5. INSPIRATION
1. For INSPIRATION section, use a precise and refined summary from 128 to 160 characters (there should be about 340 to 372 characters left), that may be included as “Flavor Text” in standard version of the cards.
   
   
6. PRODUCTION OR REALIZATION TECHNOLOGY (AND MATERIALS)
1. Here, you should type technique and medium used, very precise, using maximum three (3) words, for example, here are some examples: Oil on Canvas, Mahogany Woodwork, Stainless Steel.
   
   
7. SPECIFICATIONS / DIMENSIONS / PACKAGE / TECHNICAL PROPERTIES
1. Here, the data should be again typed in very specifically, following the styling guidelines:
1. For 2D Artwork, type Height (Unit of Measure) × Width (Unit of Measure), for example 12 mm × 25 mm, When and if a measure exceeds 100 mm, use the correct scale; for example, instead of 1800 mm x 1750 mm, use 180 cm × 175 cm, keep up to 3 digits, maximum up to 2 digits of precision; instead of 18.345 m, type 18.35 m (round up when rounding for 2 digits precision).
2. For 3D Artwork, type Height (Unit of Measure) × Width (Unit of Measure) × Depth (Unit of Measure). For example: 124 mm × 78 mm × 12 mm
3. Do not type weight.
4. Do not type details such W, D, L such as to indicate Width, Depth, Length, or X, Y, Z likewise shall not be noted, the consensus is to type, without any letters the dimensions using Height (Unit of Measure) × Width (Unit of Measure) × Depth (Unit of Measure) data, again another example: 364 cm × 112 cm × 78 cm. Here 364 cm would be height, 112 cm would be width and 78 cm would be depth.
5. Note that instead of Latin ASCII letter x, we use the proper special character that is the multiplication sign (×) In Unicode multiplication sign is encoded as U+00D7 and represented in HTML by the named character entity × . You may want to copy paste multiplication sign character (×) to place in between dimensions. Furthermore, again in between dimensions, there is always single blank space character ( ). Between dimensions and unit of measure, there is a blank space character ( ).
   
   
8. TEAM MEMBERS:
1. Your name goes here. Here, you should type in a single entity name; so you can of course type your own name or type your company name, and it must be short and abbreviated if it is too long. You may use a maximum of 3 words, even if your name is longer; you must make it shorter. You can only use 1 single line. You cannot type in multiple lines. This data could be 1 single person name, or your company or group name, could also be your brand name but you cannot put more than 1 entity name. If you did the group as 2 people group, then you put your group name, or you simply do not partake in the card considering the fact that you cannot sign the license on behalf of other parties. For example, the name “Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni” would be too long, you can type shortened “Michelangelo di Lodovico” or just Michelangelo. Likewise, the actual name “Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci” would have been too long, and you should have typed instead, shortened version Leonardo da Vinci.
   
   
9. TAGS / KEYWORDS
1. You may fill this section as usual, will be useful as metadata for the online exhibition and showcase.
   
   
10. OPERATION / FLOW / INTERACTION
1. You may fill this section as usual, will be useful as metadata for the online exhibition and showcase.
   
   
11. PROJECT DURATION AND LOCATION, only year data must be entered, and it should be entered in a very specific way, using the following method:
1. If your work was completed within a given year, just type the 4 digit year of completion only, do not type month or day, just type year, always four digits, for example: 2021.
2. If the work took more than one year to complete, first type 4 digit year of start, followed by a single blank space ( ), then type or copy “Em dash” character (—), again followed by a single blank space ( ) then type the four year digit when the work was concluded. For example: 1999 — 2021.
3. The em dash is encoded in Unicode as U+2014 (decimal 8212) and represented in HTML by the named character entity —
4. Afterwards, once you entered the year you should, place a dot (.) character and then a single blank space ( ). The dot you use must be western dot (.) character, copy paste this character if your keyboard is not western.
5. Once you have typed the YEAR, you should type in City followed by “Comma” (,) followed by a single blank space ( ), followed by Country or Region name, for example: Houston, Texas or Como, Italy.
6. The final data should look like one of the following examples: 2001. Houston, Texas or for example 1999 — 2021. Como, Italy.
   
   
12. RESEARCH ABSTRACT
1. For this section, if your work is a painting or sculpture or any sort of design depicting a non-abstract, such as for example if you draw a person, or if the work is a photograph of a person, if you made a sculpture of a person, then the name of that person or entity or object as the SUBJECT of the work shall be noted. For example, if you submitted your own portrait photo, then you should type your Name Surname, to this section.
   
   
13. THE CREATIVE / RESEARCH CHALLENGE
1. You may fill this section as usual, will be useful as metadata for the online exhibition and showcase.
   
   
14. EXTERNAL LINK
1. You may fill this section as usual, will be useful as metadata for the online exhibition and showcase.
   
   
15. VIDEO LINK
1. You may fill this section as usual, will be useful as metadata for the online exhibition and showcase.
   
   
16. PUBLIC LINK
1. You may fill this section as usual, will be useful as metadata for the online exhibition and showcase.
   
   
17. IMAGE/PHOTO CREDITS
1. In this section, you should type the name of person or entity, such as illustrator, visualization company or photographer that created the visual representation of the work or took the photo of the representative image for the work. If this person or entity, is you, you would provide a single “Trading Art Card” license. If this person is not you, this person should also provide us with the “Trading Art Card License”.
   
   
18. IP / PATENTS / COPYRIGHTS
1. You may fill this section as usual, will be useful as metadata for the online exhibition and showcase.
   
   
19. CLICK SAVE AND CONTINUE.
    
    
    
3. UPLOAD IMAGE
   
   
1. Main Image: Your artwork should be 3600 Pixels x 3600 Pixels in size 72 DPI Resolution JPEG, preferably making use of the whole canvas, without borders. Providing us such file would let us have an image that is equivalent to 983 DPI for 93 mm artwork, that’s good for high quality printing. Upload this as main image.
   
   
2. If you decide to send us a physical version of your artwork, then first take a photo of your work on white background, crop the photograph to 3600 Pixels x 3600 Pixels 72 DPI Image, and then upload the photo as the main image.
   
   
3. Optional Image #1: You may upload “Alternative Art” or detail as optional image.
   
   
4. Optional Images #2 to #4: These are not required, but you can submit your work from different perspectives or show different details if you so desire.
   
   
5. CLICK SAVE AND CONTINUE.
   
   
   
4. NOMINATION
   
   
1. You must complete your submission by nomination, nomination to this program is free of charge but reserved for A’ Design Award laureates. To nominate click “NOMINATE DESIGN” button, that you will find under the nomination tab.
   
   
2. If you cannot find the “NOMINATE DESIGN” button, visit the following URL
   https://competition.adesignaward.com/nominateadesign.php
   
   You will see a list of designs that you could nominate, click “Nominate” and then click “NOMINATE DESIGN” button. Category should be “Museo del Design Trading Art Cards” Cat. 1008.
   
   
3. Nomination is complete. You may verify if that’s the case by visiting the following URL:
   https://competition.adesignaward.com/nominateadesign.php
   If your design is nominated, the text will appear in Green.
   
   
   
5. REVIEW
   
   
1. After Nomination, generate and download your “Trading Art Card Preview” from the following URL:
   https://competition.adesignaward.com/trading-art-card-previews.php
   
   You will see a list of your designs that you had nominated for Trading Art Card special category, click on a design to download a preview card. This is not the “Final Art” as we may manually improve it however it is more or less a good indication of how your text, image and data would be displayed.
   
   
2. If your preview looks incorrect, go to My Designs – Hidden Cabinet page, and update your design, such as by “Modify Details” or “Update Images” links. You can find the My Designs – Hidden Cabinet page from the following URL: https://competition.adesignaward.com/hiddencabinet.php
   
   
3. If your preview looks correct, proceed, otherwise repeat the “Trading Art Card Preview” and information update procedures as many times as needed, until when you feel satisfied yourself about how your card looks.
   
   
   
6. TRADING ART CARD LICENSE
   
   
1. Generate and download your “Trading Art Card License” from the following URL:
   https://competition.adesignaward.com/trading-art-card-licenses.php
   Your design must be already nominated.
   
   
2. Print and fill the generated “Trading Art Card License” (this is different from our standard license) and send this printed, filled and signed license to us physically by post to the address below:
   A' Design Awards, Via Leone Leoni 32, 22100, Como, Italy.
   
   
3. Scan and save the filled Trading Art Card License as a PDF file first, and then upload your License as PDF document attachment to your design. Attaching a document to your design entry is easy. Go to My Designs – Hidden Cabinet page to see all your uploaded designs:
   https://competition.adesignaward.com/hiddencabinet.php
   
   Find the design you just uploaded, and click on “Update Documents” link.
   
   
4. Select the filled, signed and scanned license document and upload it.

That’s it. Once you complete these steps, we will review your submission and update you about acceptance or rejection status.