2026 live briefs

Six problems. No mystery client. No unpaid pitch for a brand we will not name.

Each 2026 brief is written in the shape a working studio actually uses: a challenge, a set of constraints, a deliverable list, and an audience who will either get it or will not. They are industry-style problems authored by 24G. They are not commissions from the organisations named as landscape references elsewhere on this site.

How to read a GenNext brief

A brief is not a moodboard. It is a contract. The challenge tells you the tension you are being paid — in our case, scored — to hold. The constraints tell you what you may not solve by throwing more pages at the PDF. The deliverables tell the jury what to open first. The audience tells you who has to understand the work without a walkthrough from you.

You may enter as many rounds as you can staff. You do not have to enter all six. Rankings accumulate. A team that answers four briefs well will usually outrank a team that answers one brief beautifully and disappears. Foundations briefs (from 31 January 2026) are shorter versions of the same shape; they are released to registered teams only.

Asset packs, mentor hours and the exact file specs land in the workspace when each round opens. What follows is the public text of the six Production briefs. Dates are GMT. Late work is not scored. See Judging for the five lenses, and Apply to unlock the portal.

Round 01 · 23 Feb – 8 Mar 2026 Visual Graphics Band A + Band B

Shelf Life — a library identity for people who do not think they use libraries.

The challenge

A municipal library service — call it the Civic Shelf — still does the unglamorous work of lending space, bandwidth, quiet, and books to anyone who walks in. Its current identity looks like a department of parks. Under-18s treat it as a building they were taken to, not a service they own. Your job is to give Civic Shelf a visual system that a fourteen-year-old would choose to wear, without making a sixty-year-old borrower feel ejected.

Constraints

This is a public service, not a streetwear drop. You may be sharp; you may not be exclusive.
The system must work in one colour plus paper, because branch printers are not calibrated to your deck.
No fictional app that "solves" libraries. The building still exists. The card still exists.
Do not lock the identity to a single Latin typeface so tight that a bilingual branch cannot survive it. Many of our teams work in more than one script; the system should too.
Band A (14–17): identity + two applications. Band B: identity + five applications including a digital masthead.

Deliverables

A one-page strategy note: who you are talking to, and what you refused to do.
A mark, a type pairing, a colour rule, and a layout module.
Applications: library card, street poster, tote or borrower sticker, social avatar, and (Band B) a homepage masthead at 1280 and 375 widths.
A PDF no longer than twelve pages. A folder of outlines or working files is welcome, not required.

Audience

Primary: people aged 12–18 who already live on their phones and do not self-describe as "readers". Secondary: parents, teachers, and the librarians who will have to keep the system alive after you leave. If the librarian cannot reproduce a poster without you, the system has failed craft and feasibility together.

Round 02 · 9 – 22 Mar 2026 Motion Design

After the Ice — a title sequence for a climate-fiction anthology.

The challenge

A new anthology series, After the Ice, collects six short films set in cities that have already adapted to a warmer world. It is not a disaster show and it is not a lecture. It is fiction about people who live with the weather as a given. You are designing the title sequence that plays before every episode, plus a six-second teaser that can live without sound on a transit screen.

Constraints

Main sequence: 25–40 seconds, 16:9, with a sound bed you have the right to use (original, licensed, or clearly fair-use texture). Band A may submit 15–25 seconds.
Teaser: six seconds, 9:16 and 16:9. It must read with captions off and sound off.
No stock glacier footage as a substitute for an idea. No melting-ice cliché unless you can make it new.
Type must be readable on a laptop and on a phone. If we cannot read the series title, craft fails regardless of the pictures.
Generative video, if used, must be declared and cannot be the entire sequence.

Deliverables

H.264 (or equivalent) of the main sequence and the teaser.
A still board of twelve frames with notes on pacing and type.
A credits list: who made what, which tools, which samples.

Audience

Viewers 16–30 who already watch short-form and will give you ten seconds of good faith. Festival programmers who have seen every melting-ice open of the last decade. If your sequence could be recut for a car advert, it has not answered this brief.

Round 03 · 23 Mar – 5 Apr 2026 Illustration

The Attention Harvest — an editorial series on how platforms farm focus.

The challenge

A long-read quarterly — call it Ledger — is publishing a cover story on attention as a harvested crop. The piece is reported, not op-ed: farm-labour metaphors, shift work, the quiet violence of a feed that never empties. You are the illustrator. You will not decorate the essay. You will argue with it in pictures.

Constraints

A cover plus three interior spots, or (Band A) a cover plus one spot. All must belong to one visual world.
The cover must work at 375 pixels wide and on a printed A4. If it dies when the headline is dropped on it, it is not a cover.
No uncredited collage of living artists. No "AI style of X".
You may use generative tools for texture or blocking if declared. The drawing decisions must be yours.
Text on the cover is set by the magazine. Provide a safe area, not a finished masthead unless you are also proposing one.

Deliverables

Print-ready images and web crops.
A 400-word illustrator's note: what you refused, what you quoted, what is observed from life.
Process: sketches or rejected directions. We score the path, not just the export.

Audience

Readers who already suspect they are being farmed and are tired of being shown a phone with a sad face on it. Art directors who have commissioned this subject five times. Give them a picture they have not already rejected.

Round 04 · 6 – 19 Apr 2026 Digital Product

Soft Landing — onboarding for a youth mental-health service.

The challenge

A youth mental-health charity — call it Harbour — runs chat, booked calls, and a small set of self-guided exercises. First-time users bounce. They are not bouncing because the brand is ugly. They bounce because the first five minutes feel like paperwork, or like a crisis they did not ask to name. Design the onboarding flow that gets a sixteen-year-old to a useful next step without forcing a diagnosis, an account they will regret, or a colour palette that shouts "wellness".

Constraints

You are not qualified to invent clinical advice. Do not. Signpost, do not treat.
The flow must work at 375px width, with large tap targets, and with captions or transcripts on any motion.
Assume a user who may share a phone, who may be interrupted, who may not want a push notification.
Account creation cannot be the first screen. A useful action must be possible before an email address.
Accessibility is scored. Contrast, focus order, and plain language are not extras.

Deliverables

A prototype (Figma or equivalent) covering first open → a completed next step. Band B includes an interrupted-session return.
A short research note: who you spoke to or whose published guidance you followed. Invented personas with no source will be marked down on insight.
One accessibility pass written as a list of decisions, not a badge.

Audience

A young person who is tired, possibly scared, and allergic to being marketed at. A case worker who will have to defend this flow in a safeguarding meeting. If your onboarding looks like a fintech sign-up, it has not met either of them.

Round 05 · 20 Apr – 3 May 2026 Storytelling / Film

First Listen — a campaign for a label that still cares who heard it first.

The challenge

An independent music label — call it Second Room — is about to release a compilation of first recordings: the take a musician made before they knew who they were going to be. Second Room wants a campaign that treats "first listen" as a privilege, not a metric. You will not be given a real catalogue. You will invent the compilation's world, then make a film and two companion pieces that could sit in a city, on a phone, and in a shop that still sells physical media.

Constraints

Hero film: 45–90 seconds (Band A: 30–60). Original or cleared audio only. Do not sync to a famous track you do not own.
Two companions: a print or spatial piece, and a social-native piece that is not just the film cropped.
No luxury-fashion visual language pasted onto musicians. No poverty tourism either.
The idea must survive without the film. If we mute it, does a poster still hold the thought?

Deliverables

The film, the two companions, and a one-page route: where this lives, who pays, who finds it.
A credits and rights list. Uncleared music is an automatic feasibility fail.

Audience

People 16–28 who still care about the first time they heard something, and the older heads who run the shops and radio slots Second Room actually needs. A jury that has seen a thousand "raw / authentic" montages. Give them a point of view, not a filter.

Round 06 · 4 – 17 May 2026 Experiential

Night Market 2.0 — make a civic night market readable to a first-time visitor.

The challenge

A city night market is thriving for the people who already know it and opaque for everyone else: tourists, new residents, wheelchair users, anyone who does not share the language on the stall cards. The brief is not to brand the market like a festival sponsor would. It is to design an encounter — wayfinding, lighting logic, a printed or digital stall map, a host ritual, a quiet route — that lets a first-time visitor participate without sanding the place into a food hall.

Constraints

Budget fiction: you have the equivalent of a modest civic grant, not a tech-company activation. Materials should be buildable by a city crew and stallholders.
The design must work after dark, in rain, and in at least two languages relevant to your chosen city. Name the city. Do not pretend it is nowhere.
Do not displace stallholders with an installation they did not ask for.
Digital layers are welcome. They cannot be the only way to understand the market. A phone battery is not infrastructure.
Band A may focus on a single street and a map. Band B must include a full-night journey and a staff/volunteer kit.

Deliverables

A site plan or journey map, night photography or well-lit renders, and a prototype of one physical artefact (sign, token, map, lantern, stamp).
A stallholder one-pager: what they have to do, what they do not.
An access note: surfaces, seating, quiet, and how a person who cannot see the hanging signs still finds a dumpling.

Audience

A visitor who has never been, a stallholder who has been every week for a decade, and a city officer who has to keep the fire lane clear. If only the visitor is happy, you have designed a tour, not a market.

What we are not asking

We are not asking you to pretend you have a global drinks client. We are not asking you to donate a campaign that a brand will later run. We are not asking for speculative work addressed to companies named on The Field. Those names appear there as landscape, not as 24G clients.

If a brief's fictional organisation resembles a real one, treat it as a studio exercise with a public-interest audience. Do not submit work that uses a real trademark you do not have permission to use. IP rules are in the Terms and the FAQ.

Questions about a live round go to your mentor channel first, then to briefs@24g.org. Clarifications that change a constraint are posted to every team, not just to the team that asked.

Unlock the 2026 workspace.

Registered teams receive asset packs, file specs, and a mentor channel. Registration closes 26 January 2026.

Apply to enter →