The One Club Opens Call for Global Young Guns 23
The One Club for Creativity has opened the call for entries for Young Guns 23, the leading global competition to celebrate international creative professionals age 30 or younger.
Young Guns is the industry’s only global, cross-disciplinary, portfolio-based awards competition that identifies and celebrates today’s vanguard of young creatives. The program is open to creatives ages 30 and under who have been working for at least two years, full-time or freelance. Eligible entrants can submit a combination of professional and personal work.
The online entry system is open, with the reduced-fee early deadline of August 14, 2025, regular deadline August 28, 2025, and final deadline September 18, 2025. Winners will be announced in December.
Program branding and design of the Young Guns Cube award itself are reimagined each year by a past Young Gun winner. This year’s YG23 branding was created by Khyati Trehan (YG19), a talented graphic designer and 3D visual artist originally from New Delhi and now based in New York.
“The YG23 visual identity draws from what all winners share: a restless, hands-on spirit that keeps them moving and pushes them past the obvious,” she said. “It’s a telltale sign that they’re going places, and the branding channels that momentum.”
The wordmark is simply letterforms posing as wheels, and the mark is modular: snapping into a tight square of four or stretching into a line when needed.
The key visual is rooted in a design school assignment Trehan loved: cutting squares out of animation keyframes strips and rearranging them in an 8 by 8 grid to create compositions that had visual rhythm.
“I revisited that exercise and ‘vibe coded’ a tool that turned the animations into ASCII art,” she said. “The identity comes together to feel hands-on — think quick DIY flyers — as if I grabbed the first stack of coloured paper from the stationery shop and dove straight into making."
The renowned competitions regularly attract entries from upwards of 45 countries, with more than half coming from outside the US. Winners will be selected by a jury made up of past Young Guns winners and other creative leaders, to be announced shortly.
Levine/Leavitt, a long-time YG partner, will once again offer its Artists-in-Residence Award in which the artist rep firm provides one YG winner with a full year of artist and career management representation.
Also continuing this year is the Levine/Leavitt Young Guns Assistance Program, open to illustrators and photographers who qualify for YG23 but may not have the means to enter with ease. Successful applicants receive free entry into the competition courtesy of Levine/Leavitt.
All Young Guns winners receive a unique version of the iconic Young Guns Cube, designed exclusively for this year’s incoming class, and have their permanent profile page added to the Young Guns website.
Winners also receive a complimentary one-year One Club for Creativity membership, permanent membership in the Young Guns network, a chance to be featured in Young Guns events and an assortment of career-boosting opportunities from Young Guns sponsors.
Past Young Guns include rising stars who went on to become leaders in their chosen fields, including Oscar-winning film director duo DANIELS (Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert) (YG14), “Top Gun Maverick” director Joseph Kosinski (YG4); graphic designers James Victore (YG1), Stefan Sagmeister (YG1), Natasha Jen (YG4) and Jessica Walsh (YG8); artist/designer Rich Tu (YG8); ad creatives Rei Inamoto (YG4) and Menno Kluin (YG6); illustrators Christoph Niemann (YG2) and Deanne Cheuk (YG4); fashion designer Kerby Jean-Raymond (YG14); artist/filmmaker Calmatic (YG16); director/photographer India Sleem (YG17); photographer Ryan McGuinness (YG2); typographers Alex Trochut (YG6) and Gemma O’Brien (YG13); animation artist Todd St. John (YG1), and others.
