2013 Bike Winter Mascot/Sticker Design competition- submissions through Sept 7 midnight.

Hiya folks,

It's time to crank on the sticker design for the coming 2013 Bike Winter cycling season . . . typically we start with a little open brainstorming, and see if we can get any new folks to come out of the woodwork and offer up drafting or design skills to make the ideas reality.

Our target date for sticker distribution is the big 15th Anniversary Chicago Critical Mass on Friday September 28th.

The deadline for submission for sticker proposals will be Friday September 7 2012, with voting taking place the week afterwards.

Lookee here for past stickers/mascots/slogans:

http://bikewinter.org/stickergallery

Go ahead and discuss away, but if you'd like to cut to the chase and design a sticker proposal, here are some considerations that will need to be taken into account:

1)These stickers eat up a sizable chunk of our hard-earned funds, and their main purpose is to be seen and read easily so that they can fulfill their function as advocacy tools- thus:

a) Proposed designs need to clearly, prominently, and legibly, at a glance, even in low light conditions, say Bike Winter 2013 (Not Chicago Bike Winter! we have other cities that we like to support with these). Bike Winter is two separate words.

b) Need to clearly, prominently, and legibly, at a glance, even in low light conditions, say bikewinter.org. (hint- the URL is too small on practically every initial submission).

2) Size is 1.5"X 4.25".
Can be oriented horizontally or vertically-- see sticker gallery for examples

3) Should not violate copyrights or contain elements used without permission.

4) In keeping with tradition stickers may feature a 'new' mascot and a slogan that ideally would be a corny play on words, but this is not a requirement. In keeping with tradition designs/themes should also not resemble past years' stickers but present a new look for the coming season.

5) Proposals need to be submitted in final, production-ready form by Friday September 7 2012, either by posting to the sticker/mascot thread in thechainlink.org bikewinter group, or as an attachment sent to sent to stickers@bikewinter.org. Please try to reduce your image file to under 500k in size before posting to the bikewinter list.

6) Submissions not meeting 1 through 3 above will not be included in the voting.
Voting will take place via SurveyMonkey and will be conducted under the supervision of the Bike Winter leadership.

7) The winner will be determined by a tally of votes on Friday September 14; by submitting a design the creator hands off ownership to the Bike Winter effort and its volunteers for use in promoting the Bike Winter effort; creators agree that they will assist promptly if their design is chosen in any minor changes needed to assure visibility, compatibility with the printer's requirements, etc., and/or authorize others to make said changes.

8) Designs submitted in the past may be resubmitted with necessary updates, but must be submitted by the original artist

Questions/comments/complaints/ideas/proposals/submissions below!

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Permalink Reply by ciarliera on September 6, 2012 at 8:29am

I don't think that any of the submissions conform. But I am rather new to the graphic design world so I'm not 100% on what the requirements mean... I originally had my submission at 4.25" x 1.5" exactly measured out in GIMP. But then I saw that all of the other submissions were larger than that so I made mine larger as well...

h' said:

Are all the submissions conforming to the 4.25 X 1.5" dimension?

The cutting process tends to be not 100% perfect, so I'd be very careful with any bleed and be sure to keep the margins wide enough to allow for cutting variances.

Permalink Reply by Andrew Bedno on September 6, 2012 at 9:45am

1. Inches are never validly displayed nor configurable in a paint program, unless target DPI is also set or considered. Simply multiplying up (given 200 DPI for example) to something like 850x300 (which most of them are in the ballpark of) gives a reasonable canvas and resolution.

2. Mine for one ("Ermahgerd!"), I presumed could be re-sized as needed before printing without considering aspect ratio, so exact dimensions don't matter.
But yes, one should keep text in from edges to allow a generous cut margin.

3. Kristy, my biggest concern for yours is it's foggy. Does it actually look like that on your screen? I'd suspect we're seeing a drastically reduced version, or you've intentionally applied a blur filter, or are saving as JPG with very low "Q" factor (sometimes shown as a percent, best in the 3-7 range {ie. 97-93% quality}). So much is lost in printing, it's important to start with best possible.

Hope any of that's helpful.

Permalink Reply by Jaik S. on September 6, 2012 at 9:58am

I was also thinking about doing a polar bear on a bicycle....I don't know if I'll get around to it. I've got a bit of code to finish. Maybe someone else will take the initiative with it?

Here's the image, but I've put the .pspimage in a dropbox folder if you'd like to grab it.

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/r027hpaabwmwpv1/VX-Q-f-er0

Permalink Reply by igz on September 6, 2012 at 10:01am

its snot too cold out. concept by katie paffhouse.

Permalink Reply by ciarliera on September 6, 2012 at 11:40am

haha

igz said:

its snot too cold out. concept by katie paffhouse.

Permalink Reply by Dan Korn on September 6, 2012 at 7:30pm

One meme to rule them all!

Permalink Reply by ciarliera on September 6, 2012 at 8:13pm

Okay, thanks for the feedback everyone! I've made some changes... look any better?

Permalink Reply by Jason Greenberg on September 6, 2012 at 11:30pm

Hey All, after feedback/request here is an adjusted version of the Narwhal sticker: with a larger sized tagline ("Nar-ly weather rules") and the Narwhal is moved to the right (her horn is now poking thru the "B") to make more space at the margins for the cutting issue.

And for research geeks here is why the Narwhal makes an awesome Bike Winter Mascot:

The narwhal, or narwhale, Monodon monoceros, is a medium-sized toothed whale that lives year-round in the Arctic. One of two living species of whale in the Monodontidae family, along with the beluga whale, narwhal males are distinguished by a long, straight, helical tusk, actually an elongated upper left canine. Found primarily in Canadian Arctic and Greenlandic waters, rarely south of 65°N latitude, the narwhal is a uniquely specialized Arctic predator. In the winter, it feeds on benthic prey, mostly flatfish, at depths of up to 1500 m under dense pack ice.^[3]

2013 Bike Winter Mascot/Sticker Design competition- submissions through Sept 7 midnight.

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