It’s an exciting time, the 2021 NKBA Excellence in Design Awards are open and all those beautiful entries from our talented designers are starting to flood in. But wait, stop. To avoid disappointment, we need you to read this before you click submit. There have been some changes this year, a new set of standards and an upgrade to our process that you need to know about. Whether you are an old hat of the awards programme or a new designer entering for the first time – please read on.

Monday 12 April at 5 pm

On Monday 12 April at 5 pm entries to the 2021 NKBA Excellence in Design Awards close. This is the final time and date for entries to come in. There can be no last-minute edits, changes, or emails. Whatever you submit via our awards system will be your final entry that the judges will see. We cannot upload additions or photos manually to your entry.

It’s our advice to give yourself time to get things right. If you submit any day prior to Monday 12 April, we are happy to answer questions, help you to add details that were missed, and help you with uploading images and plans to our awards platform. If you ring us on Monday 12 April at 4 pm and ask for support – unfortunately, we will not be able to assist due to a program upgrade that makes it impossible.

Label Files Correctly

If a file isn’t labelled correctly it might not make it to the judge’s pack and the file will not be included in your entry. Please read and re-read the labelling requirements. As you can imagine, we get thousands of images for hundreds of incredible projects and we can’t get it wrong. If it’s not clear who the file belongs to and to which project, it will not be included.

Naming of Projects

If you are entering more than one project, try to give the projects individual names. It makes it difficult for media, admin, and our social media team if the names are too similar.

Ideas for names: use the Street or last name of the client, get creative, and name your project after its aesthetic or a material used.

Read the Judging Criteria

Please take a good look at the judging criteria. The NKBA awards are very transparent with a points system utilised to limit objectivity. Read the criteria carefully.

Enter the awards here: https://awards.nkba.org.nz