A friend retweeted some tips for screenwriters to help them stand out in the hiring process for tv shows. It got me thinking about #architectural awards season and how some advice from someone who has been both on a jury and on a submittal team might be useful 1/

Most submittals are all digital now but that doesn't mean you should just throw all your images up there randomly. Jurors are viewing A LOT of entries (hundreds and hundreds) and they can all blur together pretty quickly. Never, ever start your entry images with a drawing 2/

Always start with your best overview/scene setting photo so they can quickly get a sense of your project. Second photo should also be a banger, then follow that up w/ a floor plan WITH SCALE AND ORIENTATION. Don't leave those out. Don't assume they know where your project is. 3/

Think of diagrams like visual captions for your project. They help explain your thought process for the design and illuminate the choices you made. Use them to your advantage but limit them around 3. 4/

When organizing your photographs it really helps to put them in the same order you might use if you physically walked through the building-- macro to micro. Don't start with details, start big and then go small. 5/

While we are at it -- invest in great photography. Consider it a basic project cost. You may take lovely photographs, but they will never be as good as those by a professional architectural photographer. Mediocre photographs will not hold a juror's attention. 6/

Make that project description accessible and clear. If you don't have a marketing person make someone who is NOT an architect read your text. If they cannot understand what you are trying to get across go back and rewrite that text. Not all jurors are academics. 7/

Sandwich the drawings in the middle, between the photographs. Best to end on a nice photo, but often juries may not make it through all of your images. Make sure the most important ones are up front. 8/

Don't put your long descriptive text OVER images so the text is illegible. Juries HATE that. Everyone hates that. It is not clever or design-savy. Its the opposite of that. 9/

Finally, triple check for typos, errors, paragraphs that are missing their last lines, simple things that might, just might knock you out. 10/