Weekly Updates & Estimated Challenge Calendar

📆 Calendar	🗂️ Files	🖥️ Launches	💵 Tech & Payments
upcoming challenge timelines	file request deadlines and file prep updates	recent product & assortment launches	tech updates & upcoming payments

🎅  Our Holiday Challenges are open! Submit your designs here.

Thanks for stopping by to read the projected Current Estimated Challenge Calendar for the next two months! Please note that this schedule is subject to change. We update this page every Friday. 

Challenge Calendar 

Challenges are made up of (i) a Submission Period, during which artists submit designs, (ii) a Critique Period, a minimum of 24-hours of dedicated time for giving and incorporating peer feedback, (iii) a Voting Period during which Minted artists and customers cast their votes on submissions, followed by Minted's voting analysis & editorial review — analysis and review tends to take longer for Art and Partner Challenges, and (iv) Winners Announcements and File Requests. Below are current Challenge states.  

Notes on the calendar:

• [Updated 2/26] We are still determining whether we will run a Birth Announcement Challenge this year or not. If we run a Birth Announcement Challenge, we aim to open it later this year, after our annual Holiday Card Challenges.

Add Challenges to Your Calendar >>    Submit to Challenges >>    Vote on Submissions >

Happening in the Community Forums

With dedicated categories for your artistic medium, geographical region, and interests, the new Community Forums makes it easy to tap into the Minted community, so you can develop as an artist. Below, we highlight just some of what's happening in the Forums this week.

• [New 6/4] Upcoming call with Minted’s co-CEOs: Join us on Thursday, June 24, at 11 am PT for a call with Mariam Naficy (our Founder, Co-CEO and Chairman) and Melissa Kim (our Co-Founder and Co-CEO)! Register at this Zoom link to join and submit any questions you might have for Mariam and Melissa.
• [New 5/28] Community Platform Testing Volunteers: We are looking for volunteers to help us test out and give us feedback regarding online community platforms. If you'd like to volunteer, please fill out this form.
• [Updated 4/19] We've completed the update to remove non-anonymous voting for all Challenges, starting with our Holiday Challenges. At Minted, we believe that great design and art should rise to the top based on merit alone. We strive to remove all other forms of bias from our design crowdsourcing platform. As you may recall from our diversity, equity, and inclusion initiative announced in December, we committed to remove non-anonymous voting in 2021. Learn more about the changes in this forums thread.

Files

Top-rated winners and Editors' Picks receive a request for final Adobe Illustrator files (fine art is accepted in other formats). Requests are typically sent within a week after each winners announcement, with the exception of Holiday challenges where requests are sent before winners are announced. This gives our Production team time to prepare the holiday assortment to launch before our big reveal in the fall. Below are final file submission deadlines. 

Baby Shower Challenge	File requests sent! Files were due Thursday, May 27.
Drawings Challenge	File requests sent! Files were due Thursday, May 27.
Birthday Greeting Card                 Challenge	File requests sent! Files were due Wednesday, May 26.
Greeting Card Challenges    - Love & Friendship    – Everyday Occasions    – Childrens Birthday & New Baby	A majority of file requests have been sent.   Remaining file requests will be sent on Monday, June 21.

Launches

Below we've listed recent or upcoming launches of designs from Challenges. Keep in mind that late or incompletely submitted files, the need to acquire licenses for non-Minted fonts, investigation of clip art usage, and technical difficulties can cause delays in the launch of specific designs.

Graduation Announcements	Launched!
Wedding Invitations	Launched!    *We will be marketing new "mini collections" of designs     every 2 weeks throughout the spring/summer.
West Elm x Minted Art	Minted Pieces: In Progress (91%)   West Elm Pieces: Complete!*    *These pieces have "launched" to minted.com, but are hidden on our   site. West Elm pieces will launch to westelm.com in July. See note   below for more details.
Drawings	In Progress (83% launched)    *We will be marketing new "mini collections" of designs      every 2 weeks throughout the spring/summer.
Baby Shower Invitations	In Progress (94% launched)    *We will be marketing new "mini collections" of designs      throughout the spring/summer. Because of this, designs     may not be displayed on/at the top of category pages     immediately after launch.

Notes on Launches:

• [New 4/23] Pieces that are only launching to West Elm will launch on westelm.com in July. Pieces in this assortment will "launch" to minted.com first, but be hidden on our site. Artists will receive an email from Minted that your design has launched, but it will not be available on minted.com.

Tech Updates & Payments Schedule

All payments are processed through Payoneer. Commission Payments are paid monthly — with the exception of some sales made through partners, which are paid quarterly. Prize payments are typically sent every two weeks, at the end of the week, for all files received and reviewed by our team before that date. 

Latest Round of Prize Payments Sent:

June 11

See our commission payment schedule here. 

Tech Updates:

• [New 6/18] Category page placement bug: Some category pages are currently affected by a bug that doesn’t allow our Merchandising team to adjust the placement of designs. Our team is aware of the issue and actively working on a fix. We expect this issue to be fixed by early next week.
• [New 4/19] We've completed our planned 2021 update to the voting process to remove all non-anonymous voting from Minted. Learn more about why we made this change in this Forums thread.
• [New 1/28] Our team is aware of an issue with Instant Images not displaying recently launched Art pieces. Our team is investigating this, and we will update artists when this is resolved.

Self-Launch:

• Stationery
  
  • "Unknown Error" - Make sure your design is using fonts from our Minted Font List and that you're using our Self-Launch templates. If you are not using any non-Minted fonts, but are still experiencing issues, please email [e-mail]
• Art
  • Launching and fixing any bugs related to winning pieces is priority over launching self launch work. Please email [e-mail] to let us know if your piece has not processed after an extended period of time so that we can help move it forward. 
• Fabric
  
  • [New 6/18] Self-launch fabric issue fixed: Self-launch fabric projects were previously blocked from launching due to a data issue. This has been fixed by our team, and self-launch fabric projects should now be able to launch without issues.

Office Hours

We host special office hours for specific topics here — for example, a chat specifically to answer holiday challenge questions. You can submit, even anonymously, ongoing feedback to Minted on our policies and processes for the broader team to our feedback form.