T-Shirt Design Contest!

I’ve decided that I want to have Becoming a Data Scientist t-shirts to sell and to give out to podcast guests and contest winners, but I am not a graphic designer, so I need some help! So I’m going to have a t-shirt design contest!

Here are the rules/guidelines for entry:

1. Create a design that prominently says “Becoming a Data Scientist” and can be easily scaled to fit in on the front or back of a t-shirt. If you create a design for the back, also create a small “pocket sized” text or design for the front of the shirt. But I don’t have a preference – front or back of shirt designs are both fine!

If it can be incorporated into the design without looking too cluttered, you can also add “Podcast and Learning Club” and/or “@becomingdatasci”, but that is not a requirement.

The design can be just text, text with an image, more abstract, use your imagination! As long as “Becoming a Data Scientist” is clearly readable, your design will be considered. Obviously, vulgar designs will not be considered, and I’ll also remove them (or anything spammy) from the comments on this post.

Please don’t use more than 2 colors in your design itself, as more can be cost-prohibitive. The background color can be a different 3rd color.

Here is a site with some guidance for preparing a design for t-shirts: https://gomedia.com/zine/tutorials/pro-tips-preparing-artwork-t-shirt-printing/
(Note – I don’t expect the design to be complex or super-artistic, and a text-only design could be created in a simple text or image editor!)

You can even use an online shirt design program like CustomInk, as long as the design can be extracted for use at another printing site (I’m not sure what the rules or capabilities of most of those t-shirt design websites are).

2. Please submit 2 files: your design itself (in a format that can be read on multiple platforms, like a PDF), large enough that it can be zoomed in to “life size”, and then also a smaller image of your design as you imagine it on a shirt – choose a shirt color and location for your design and create a little “shirt preview” image I can share with readers for the vote (this one doesn’t have to be zoomable to full size – the largest size I’d post it at is about 500×500). Please let me know if you have any questions or suggestions about this!

You can submit the files by posting a comment below. Don’t put your email in the text of the comment, I’ll be able to see it behind the scenes from the form. Make sure to include your name (it can be just your first name if you want) as you want it shared along with your design if you get selected for the voting round, along with the links to the 2 files and any link you want to point people to – your blog, your portfolio, your twitter account, etc.

UPDATE 12/5/2016: It looks like I made the turnaround time short (I’d like to have at least 10 designs before the voting), and I know some people may have great ideas but not great graphic design skills, so I’m making 2 changes:

• It doesn’t need to be a “print-ready” design. If you sketch it out and your design wins, I’ll get a graphic designer to help turn it into a file to send to the t-shirt printer
• The deadline is now extended to the end of the calendar year (see below)

Thank you to those of you who have entered already!!

Here’s how the contest will go:

I’ll accept entries until 11:59pm Saturday, December 31, 2016. Over the next week, depending on how many entries there are, I’ll narrow down the selection to maybe 5-10 choices. I’ll create a blog post with the t-shirt images and names of the designers, with a way to vote on your favorite, and advertise it on @becomingdatasci to get as many votes as possible.

The top 3 vote-winners will win:

• A t-shirt
• A data science related book of their choice up to $60
• Will be featured in a “finalists” blog post with their design, a little blurb about them, and a link to their website
• A tweet with their design and a link to their site on my @becomingdatasci twitter account.

From the finalists, I’ll choose my favorite to be printed. The final winner will also get:

• 2-3 extra t-shirts with their design to give out to friends
• Name credited as designer wherever the t-shirt is sold
• Additional tweets with their design announced as the winner, with a link to their site, on @becomingdatasci.
• A shout-out on the Becoming a Data Scientist podcast

Please let me know if there’s anything I forgot to detail here or if you have any questions! I look forward to seeing the submitted designs!!

Update: I should probably mention that any proceeds from sales of the shirts will go to support the maintenance and creation of more content at this site BecomingADataScientist.com, the podcast, the Data Science Learning Club, DataSciGuide, and my other data science sites and social media accounts. I’ll be posting a Patreon campaign soon to raise money to hire help to keep these sites updated, and money I earn from selling t-shirts will go toward that as well.