We've been receiving a lot of design submissions lately, and our excellent tradeskill approvers have been working hard to review your designs and get them back to you as soon as they can.

Here are a few things that our approvers have noticed that could use some clarification to help improve the approval process.

1) Conditional Light Sources

When describing how your item reacts to light, please keep in mind that the light sources must be described conditionally. This is because the light source that you're referring to might not always be there.

Your descriptions should always describe the item. Do not describe anything external to the item, such as light sources.

Think about using terms like "when struck by any available light" or "when any light source catches it just right". This allows you to maintain the feel of your description, but ensures that your design will be logically described when viewed in a variety of conditions.

2) Subjective Terminology

When describing your item, keep in mind that many different people can potentially view it, each with different opinions on beauty, ugliness, fear, etc. Therefore, describing something as "a beautiful bookcase" is insufficient, as each viewer of that item is not guaranteed to find it beautiful.

Instead, your descriptions should again describe the item. It should not describe what someone might think of that item when viewing it. Take care to explain what it is that makes your item beautiful, in your mind, so that the viewer is able to draw his or her own conclusions.

Basically, don't attempt to force your opinion on the viewers of your descriptions.

3) "It's" vs "Its"

This is the most common design mistake we see. "It's" is always a contraction for "it is" or "it has". When writing your descriptions with this word, mentally expand it out as you reread your sentence to make sure that it fits. If it doesn't, then use "its" instead.

Penned by my hand on the 1st of Naturalis, in the year 625 AD.