Design competition/cooperation to raise funds for Anarchist Bookfairs and other grassroots projects in Canada

Hello group,

My name is Rob, and for a couple of years I've been part of a collective with several other IWW members in Edmonton AB called thoughtcrime ink. thoughtcrimeink.com now raises significant money and gives other support to mid-size and beginning Anarchist Bookfairs in Canada. Recently we also launched a books section on our site, and are providing "infoshops in a box" at cost for folks who live in smaller centers in North America.

We're trying to take thoughtcrime ink to the next level, and thus we are launching our first t-shirt design co-operation/competition. If this goes well, we may make this a regular thing.

To the winners (selected by the thoughtcrime ink community and us), we are giving $100 for each winning design, plus a hefty zine-like royalty $1 per shirt sold. We're going to print up to four designs this time around. All other profit from the shirts goes directly to raising money (we've always been a volunteer-based collective and don't take a cut of this at all) for Anarchist Bookfairs and other similar/worthy grassroots projects in Canada.

You can read lots more about the contest here:
http://www.thoughtcrimeink.com/design

Or read more about us: http://www.thoughtcrimeink.com/about

The main thing we're looking for in the submissions is original design (ie. not copied and just added to a shirt - if you just want stuff from the Spunk graphics library slapper onto a t-shirt, there's easier ways of going about that). Feel free to collaborate with others, however.

To enter the cooperation/competition, create the graphics for a t-shirt (also keep in mind design placement, colour of t-shirt and our printing limitations which are described on the main contest page). Create an account on thoughtcrime ink (it's how others will give you feedback, express amazement etc.) and send the scanned (or computer-made) design in with the form:

http://www.thoughtcrimeink.com/core.php/design/senddesign

We realize that many of you are quite busy with organizing, being radical and working-class scholars, etc., but art/craft/design are also a crucial part of radical movements. If you don't feel up that your skills are up to submitting a design, please:

1) pass along this announcement to artistically and politically minded friends and comrades,

2) feel free to collaborate with an artist on an idea, or

3) create an account on thoughtcrime ink, which will let you score submitted designs. This gives us important feedback for selecting the winners! (We expect most designs to roll in a few weeks from now, so we'll be doing a second callout once we make the scoring section live.)

If you have any questions about us or the competition, please email us at design@thoughtcrimeink.com or just reply to me in the discussion board here.

Thanks so much for your support everybody. We're giving anarchist and radical communities the heads up on this first, because we know there are some amazing artists among you, and we want to establish a high political and artistic standard with the first entries.

PS we're trying to make the contest as techno-barrier-free as possible so if you have anticipate any difficulties with using a computer to do anything for this, please email us and we'll see what we can do.

Solidarity,

R o B
for thoughtcrime ink
http://www.thoughtcrimeink.com