The network for creativity
Join 1.25M professional creatives like you
Connect with clients, get discovered, and run your business 100% commission-free
Creatives on Contra have earned over $150M and we are just getting started
Back to feedPost
At CRITER.AI, we’re building AI that helps migrants avoid expensive legal mistakes and visa bans by auditing Australian visa applications against immigration law. We’ve been getting a healthy amount of investor interest, but there was one recurring piece of feedback: our pitch deck was lackluster.
Fair enough. As a lawyer, my creativity usually goes into finding the legal issue everyone else missed, not deciding which shade of blue says “invest now.”
So we set out to change that. We chose Contra over its competitors because the caliber of people looked considerably stronger.
When I posted our request for a pitch-deck redesign, I expected a few people to reach out with quotes. As of today, we have had 303 applicants.
For a bootstrapped business, working through that volume was simply impossible. So we created a challenge:
“Here is my pitch deck. Pick the slide you think needs the most work, and show me what you can do.”
What followed was fascinating.
101 applicants (around 1/3) never replied. Of those who did, around 10% simply reiterated what they had already said. One person replied that, with 250 applicants, they were not going to bother trying. lol.
Several asked whether the test would be paid. 12 sent a quote for the work to be paid first, after which I could decide whether to go further.
Less than 25% of the applications were obviously AI-generated. We are by no means AI-phobic, but the Claude watermark was perhaps a little too much. You know who you are dude!
2 people had trouble opening the Google file we sent. I’m still not entirely sure why.
7 people were so impressed by the work they did that they watermarked it, labelled it “draft,” or otherwise made it impossible to download for further review.
12 people reached out through LinkedIn rather than the app; a further 18 emailed; and 1 person even called me.
18 people not only sent an example slide; they also signed up for our free immigration-advice beta test.
From 303 applicants, we narrowed the field to 15 people who were simply too good to ignore.
Every one of those candidates took the time to understand what we were trying to do, what CRITER.AI is about, and spoke to us as people rather than as another job listing. Two spotted mistakes in the pitch deck that we would not have noticed without them. Another created a 3-minute Loom presentation explaining the changes they made and why they mattered. Most went beyond the requested single slide. One applicant redesigned the entire pitch deck and sent it watermark-free.
It was a difficult decision, but the person we chose had just that little bit more talent than an exceptionally strong group. They not only showed that they understood what we wanted and impressed us with the slide they redesigned; they also suggested another slide we had never considered relevant, then created it using information we had not even provided.
They took our AI immigration-law business and made our pitch deck speak to investors on a human level.
Can't wait to come back to resign our website, social media and other design work.
The part worth sitting with is the 101 who never replied. A brief that says "pick a slide and show me" isn't asking for free work. It's asking whether someone will look closely enough to have an opinion. That's the whole job. Anyone unwilling to do it once wasn't going to do it...
Lovely and impressive!
All the best for your next round man. Cheers! 🥂
The network for creativity
Join 1.25M professional creatives like you
Connect with clients, get discovered, and run your business 100% commission-free
Creatives on Contra have earned over $150M and we are just getting started
Trending
retrofuturism
Share your favorite designs from the past exploring the distant future. Or your own take on the aesthetic 🚀
halftone
Dots. Texture. Grain. Let's see your designs using the halftone technique.
Midjourney
Creatives are showing off what they're making with Midjourney.
colorgrade
Video editors sound off: How do you enhance the mood of your video in color grading?
Challenges
View all
Related posts
Project Showcase: Brand Identity Design for Burger Lover 🍔🎨
As a designer working with small businesses, I recently led the visual identity design for Burger Lover, a fast-casual restaurant looking to establish a distinct, memorable presence in a competitive market.
My focus was on translating the brand’s core personality into a clean, cohesive visual system that bridges the gap between digital marketing and physical packaging.
Key Design Deliverables
Logo & Visual Identity: Crafted a modern, scale able mark built for high legibility on everything from app icons to storefront signage.
Packaging & Touch points: Designed branded takeout boxes, custom burger wraps, and sticker seals engineered to create an elevated unboxing experience.
Color Palette & Typography: Paired appetite-stimulating primary tones with strong display typography to establish instant visual recognition.
Social & Marketing Assets: Developed structured templates to ensure consistent visual hierarchy across digital channels.
I’d love to get feedback from fellow designers! How do you feel about the packaging layout and visual balance? Any insights on the typographic hierarchy would be greatly appreciated.
Sick 🔥
«AI could never»
Not trying to start a debate, just enjoying the small stuff, a cursor click.
Pause this animation on any frame: no melting text, no weird half-frames guessing what comes next, just a clean, simple motion doing exactly what it's supposed to do.
Small details like these are usually the first thing that gives away AI-generated work, and the first thing worth getting right.
Love this!
Many coffee bars in today’s fast-paced world are driven by speed and efficiency.
GHAZAL wanted to contrast that, creating a space centred around contemplation without taking away from the everyday ritual of coffee.
A place to linger, and perhaps arrive at some life-altering confession.
This became the heart of GHAZAL: a coffee bar redesigned as a sanctuary. We had one problem: How does something rooted in stillness get heard through the noise?
Rather than adding to the noise, GHAZAL had the opportunity to distinguish itself through restraint, subtlety and intimate messaging.
From this idea, I developed a character for the brand: a timeless, mystic poet, passing subtle, cheeky and romantic one-liners, as if trapped and trying to pass a secret through the walls.
A voice that could carry the character of GHAZAL across every expression of the brand, rooted in contemplation, presence, authenticity, eloquence and hospitality.
Following are some examples of product taglines, billboard messaging and a brand manifesto, each narrated through the voice and identity I developed for the brand.
A living poem, breathed into existence through every detail.
Yours, truly.
Lovely work!