In 2 short weeks, ChoiceShirts and I will be taking to the road and participating in SXSW Interactive 08 in Austin, Texas. For those of you unfamiliar with SXSW, it’s a conference previously dominated by it’s music and film components, but in recent years has been taken storm by thousands of web geeks, social networking fiends, and most importantly for us, some of the worlds best graphic designers.

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Another component of SXSW that is generally well known is the volume of really great tees that are exchanged between various brands and their fans. Geeks LOVE t-shirts. You can check out some of last year’s favorites in this flickr pool we found, published by Smith Magazine.

Wouldn’t it be cool to see your design featured among the best SXSW tees photo pool for next year? We thought so, too!

How to participate:

We’re admittedly crunched on time, so you have to act fast. Here’s the scoop:

• We need all submissions by 6pm EST, Monday March 3rd. That gives us just enough time to pick a design and get it printed to take on the road with us.
• Shirts should be funny, appeal to geeks and designers, and utilize the ChoiceShirts/Choice100 logo. Because SXSW is in Texas, we’re looking for Texas themes as well. Think cowboy hats, cacti (thats plural for cactus, right?), tumbleweed…you get the picture.
• You can download an asset pack that includes our logo in vector art, as well as the fonts you need. Please mind the license, these assets are just for sharing between us.
• Be sure to review our “no rules” post to find out what kinds of designs we can print. We’re flexible, its really just a size limit (15″x19″). We can print vector or raster images in full color!

We’re going to pick our favorite design to represent the Choice100, print up 100 of them and take them with us to Austin to give out to other awesome designers from around the world to show them what kind of artists we’re looking to recruit. We’ll also be taking pictures of people we give them to and adding them to a flickr pool so you can see people wearing your shirt!

You’ll get one of these exclusive tees for yourself, as well, along with $100 cash as a thank you for your hard work. And of course, you’re going to be one of the first people we come to once we fully launch the Choice100 program in just a couple of months! Plus, what’s cooler than knowing that your favorite graphic designer hero is wearing your shirt! If you do have a design-idol that is attending SXSW, and we meet them, we’ll do our best to snap a photo of them and your tee, and share that with you.

In the event that you win AND you’re already attending SXSW, we’ll take you out to dinner one night as well, since we love nothing more than to talk shop and hang out with cool people. That’s why we’re going to SXSW in the first place!

To submit:

Email your vector art (along with a jpg thumbnail, to help us review quicker) to submit@thechoice100.com with the subject “SXSW Submission”. Be sure to include your contact info so we can get back to you if we pick you design!

Remember, you’ve only got until Monday, March 3rd to get them in.

Real quick, one more time:

• Design a SXSW shirt that includes Texas themes and the ChoiceShirts logo by March 3rd.
• You get a free shirt with your design, $100 cash, and we print 100 copies of your design to hand out at SXSW, and a chance of having your shirt among the ranks of “coolest t-shirts at SXSW”. Nothing beats that kind of street cred!