Fedora Design Bounty: Design the FUDCon Tempe 2011 T-Shirt!

The Fedora Design Team Bi-weekly Bounty is a (practically :)) bi-weekly blog post where we’ll outline a quick-and-easy design project that needs doing for the Fedora Community, outlining all the tools, files, and other resources you’ll need to complete the project.

If you’re a designer and are interested in getting involved in the free and open source community, this is a good opportunity to get your feet wet!

Your mission

The next FUDCon, or Fedora Users and Developers Conference, will be held in January and take place in Tempe, Arizona. At this event, hundreds of free software users and developers from all over the world will gather in Tempe to learn, discuss, hack and socialize.

FUDCons are held a few times a year in different regions of the world and for every conference, T-shirts are made for the attendees to wear. Generally, we like to keep some consistency for the designs across FUDCons, but also want to reflect something about each location. Of course, we try to design them in such a way that FUDCon visitors will be proud to wear them and spread the Fedora love wherever they go. :)

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to design the official FUDCon Tempe T-shirt!

Your ninja kit

Here are some tips and resources you to get started.

Helpful Materials

• A basic T-shirt template (courtesy of Nicu Buculei), so you can start sketching within a nice template right away!

• Comfortaa is the font we usually use for text on the T-shirts. If you’re using Fedora, run ‘yum install aajohan-comfortaa-fonts’ to get it. Otherwise, click here to download it.

• Logos – the Fedora, FUDCon and other logos will be sent to you after you’ve taken on this Bounty.

Helpful Tools

• Inkscape – a vector graphics editor, which you can use to work with the T-shirt template.
• Scribus – desktop publishing software, helpful for you to prepare your final design for printing.
• MyPaint (optional) – a great tool for sketching and painting.

You can install these on Fedora using ‘yum install inkscape scribus mypaint’ or by searching for them in PackageKit. If you are not using Fedora, you can get them here: download Inkscape, download Scribus, download MyPaint.

Helpful Resources

• To find inspiration and guidance for your T-shirt design, have a look at the previous FUDCon designs and other Fedora T-shirts. As said before, using something location-specific might be fun, though be careful to avoid stereotypes. Also, you can browse through online T-shirt stores like Threadless or BustedTees for other great ideas!
• A basic tutorial on using Inkscape to create a T-shirt design – this has the basics – but I hope your design will be even better than the example in the tutorial!
• The Fedora Design Team: please drop by #fedora-design on irc.freenode.net for any assistance! Join our chat on the web here. Or join and drop an email to our mailing list. Feel free to ask around – I’m Schendje on IRC and Máirín Duffy, our Design Team Lead, is mizmo.

What’s in it for you?

Okay, okay, we get it. You’re a designer or a T-shirt connoisseur, and you’ve got things to do – why would you bother helping out with this? Let’s do a quick run-down of what’s in it for you:

• If you don’t already have it, you’ll get membership into the Fedora Design Team, which includes Fedora voting privileges and hosting space for Fedora-related projects.
• For your personal portfolio you’ll have a screen-printed T-shirt that will be distributed to and worn by hundreds of FUDCon attendees!
• We’ll mail you your very own screen-printed T-shirt based on your design – that’s right, if someone on the street asks you “Where did you get that shirt??!?” you can respond, “Oh, it’s from my own personal line. I designed it!”
• You’ll build skills in using Inkscape and Scribus – these are excellent free & open source tools that are worth learning because you can use them for just about any design project in the future and they are free forever. You’ll also build skills in addressing general layout challenges, and preparing designs for professional screen-printing.
• You’ll be sent a thank you card by our very own Máirín Duffy, a full-color copy of your design, and some Fedora swag in thanks for your help!
• You’ll gain experience in contributing to a free/open source project.
• Bragging rights as a free/open source project design ninja & more importantly a Fedora Design Team Bi-weekly Bounty designer!

You’re completely raring to go and totally psyched, right? Sweet! So where to start?

Ninja by Hector Gomez from openclipart.org – Public Domain.

The Rules

• There are also a few guidelines for the T-shirt. In theory you can use any color for the base, however white has not worked great in the past. The last few FUDCon designs have used black, though blue might also be nice. That way, the Fedora logo only needs two colors instead of three. Generally, try to keep the amount of different colors in your design as low as possible.
• You’ll need a Fedora account to submit your work. Don’t worry, it’s not hard to get, you can sign up for it here, quickly and painlessly: Create a Fedora account. Once you’ve created your account, log in to sign the contributor license agreement (this gives us permission to use your work!)
• If you are interested in taking this bounty on please make a comment to this blog post below. The first person to claim it in the comments will have exactly 48 hours to give it a shot, at the end of which the bounty will be opened up for someone else (you can try to re-claim it if you want.) All status changes will be announced in the comments.
• You must provide source files for your work. This is so we can make any necessary edits or provide translations for the document, create a reusable template out of your awesome deign, or just generally learn from how your design works. If you’re working with Inkscape and Scribus, this means we need the Inkscape SVG file(s), the Scribus SLA file(s), and any other graphics you may be incorporating into it. If you use any graphics you didn’t create yourself, you’ll need to keep track of where you got them from and the license and let use know.
• You’ll need to abide by the Fedora brand guidelines – but please don’t let this stifle any awesome creative and innovative ideas you might have – just check in with your Fedora design team compatriots first. :D More information and pointers to resources on our branding guidelines is available on the Fedora wiki.
• When you’re ready to submit your work, send it to Máirín! Again, if you need any help, feel free to jump on IRC and talk to us, or email the Design Team mailing list!

Good luck!

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