Sessions.edu Design Competitions are sponsored
by leading New York-based companies and organizations.
The Spring competition sponsor is Mariska.com,
Mariska Hargitay's personal site dedicated to empowering and inspiring women of all ages.
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Competition winners gain a portfolio
piece second to none: the chance to design a
professionally-produced project that is used
by a leading company or organization. |
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Runners-up will have their work featured in
our online design competition gallery. |
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To sign up, complete the Mariska.com Competition Sign-Up form within the Competition
folder in the Student Center. |
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Have a question about the Sessions.edu
Design competitions? Email us at competition@sessions.edu. |
Below you'll find an introduction to the client, a summary
of the design brief, and contest rules.
About The Client
Marska.com was created by award-winning actress, Mariska Hargitay, to inspire women, give them a place to feel safe, and to share a little piece of herself with her fans. In her seven years playing Detective Oliva Benson on Law & Order: SVU, Mariska has become a role model for women of all ages, backgrounds, and lifestyles. Mariska.com is a site where women can go and not feel judged and where they are encouraged to be strong and fearless.
About The Project
Marsiska.com will soon be selling inspirational T-shirts and is looking for talented graphic designers to turn their ideas into a beautiful, empowering, and trendy product. The graphics on the T-shirt should emulate the same positive feeling of the Web site and should include one of the following words or phrases: "Fearless," "Fearlessness," "Inspire," "Inspired," or "Get on the love train." The T-shirt needs to be have some consistency with the identity established on Mariska.com, but shouldn't be cartoonish, jeuvenille, too commercial-looking or graphically busy. It should be soulful and meaninful, yet simple, clean, and crisp. should be something your little sister, your mother, and even your best friend would wear—everyone should want to wear it and be inspired every time they do.
Design Parameters
You will be designing graphics to be printed on the basic short and long-sleeve American Apparel T-shirts. Line art and swatches can be downloaded on the American Apparel site. Mariska.com will be producing the shirts in white, black, and one or more colors, so please create versions of your work indicated for white, black or a color, but know that the T-shirt color they eventually produce is subject to the client's ultimate decision. Designs can be made for the front, back, and/or sleeve of the T-shirt. Participants are welcome and encouraged to submit more than one design.
Designs can feature any images that you feel support the message, provided that the artwork is original or free; it cannot be clip-art, or images which would present copyright dififculty. Your use of images should be simple and iconic and function as a symbol.. It should reflect the words, the mood they are meant to inspire, and the people who will be wearing the shirts. And remember you do not need to use images in a literal or illustrative way; you can use any image as the basis for creating a more graphic, iconic, or abstract representation of it.
You have no directives for which colors you use in your design, but please limit to no more than a 3-color print job. If you are printing on a black or colored tee, then white counts as a color. Same with black, if you are printing on a black tee. There can be no gradients, no photographs, no tiny halftones. As for typefaces, you are free to go in any direction you like, but note that Mariska prefers crisp, clean, simple type, nothing too flowery or ornate.
Team Aspect
Because Mariska.com is looking to produce a series of T-shirts, not just one, this will be the very first Sessions Team Design Competition. If your work is chosen as a finalist, you will be put on a small team with other finalists and will be collaborating on revisions and the final series of designs. The winning team will also be putting your heads together to collaborate on a logo for the T-shirts using the brand name "XO, M" to be printed on the label.
After you register, you will receive more notes on the project within the course environment. Mariska.com will play a very hands-on role in this project and will be seeing all work submitted, not just finalists.
Technical Details
As usual, you submit jpegs for judging. For printing purposes, the easiest way to work is in Illustrator, though you can submit files at actual size in 300 dpi Photoshop files. For final printing, each color will have to be it's own layer/mask. For example, if you have the text in blue laid over a white cloud, the blue text needs to be its own layer, and the white cloud needs to be its own layer. (The edges can't overlap; the cloud underneath would not be filled in entirely. The letters would need to be "cut out" of the cloud. White that would be an ink on a tee should be indicated as well, and nothing should be merged onto a white background. For the first round before knowing which designs are being printed, we suggest you design in Illustrator or Photoshop without the cutting out. To learn more, here is a silkscreening tutorial for the basics. There are many more online if you do a Google search on how to silkscreen.
finalists
