Design a social issues poster which addresses one or more or any combination of the following questions or ideas :

– Exploring new ideas for our energy future.

– Show ways we can mitigate the current crisis in the Gulf or how to help, prevent, or consider it anew.

– Interpret the disaster visually. The impact on humans, wildlife, cultures, economies.

– The poster can be about the response, the cause, the consequences or something you add to the larger global discussion on offshore drilling and the impact of burning oil for energy and production of petroleum based products — like plastic on the environment and the oceans.

– Something related to the national emergency in the Gulf of Mexico or a broader energy issues concept that you develop.

Please design a poster that is 28.5 x 21.5 inches vertical format.

Convert your final design to jpeg format and upload it to

http://www.flickr.com/groups/1402793@N25/

You will need a free flickr account to add the photo to the group. Please type your email address in the comments of your image.

Poster entry requirements:
– Previously unpublished artwork
– 28.5 x 21.5 inches vertical format poster
– File dimension 3225×4275 pixels
– File resolution 150 DPI
– File color space RGB
– File format JPG (not progressive)
– File size smaller than 4MB

Submissions will be accepted until 9:00 PM (EST time) June 23, 2010.

Be sure to name the entry file YOUR name like jack_smith1.jpeg or jones_design.jpeg NOT TEDxposter or poster.jpeg

If your poster is picked for display, we will contact you for a PDF version at full size. Please convert fonts to outlines on a copy of your original file before making it a PDF. This ensures reproduction of your specific typefaces.

Note: There is no fee to enter. There are no awards or prizes of any value for having work picked. Just a good feeling of accomplishment and we’ll show your poster at the conference. This is not a scientific poster.

This poster competition is for Maryland, DC, and Northern Virginia area designers and AIGA Baltimore and AIGA Washington DC members and AIGA New Orleans members and NOLA region designers. We’d love to have all of the U.S. enter or even the world but, we only have a few weeks before the conference so, we are limiting it to designers who work in the region plus New Orleans. Otherwise we would be swamped with too many entries to deal with. Normally design competitions take months to setup, months for people to enter, weeks for judging to happen. But this one is happening in just a few weeks with all volunteers. Thank you for understanding people of Moldova and Moose Jaw!

Confirmed Judges:

Ellen Lupton is the co-director of the graphic design MFA program at MICA in Baltimore and curator of contemporary design at the Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum in New York City

Aaris Sherin is a designer and associate professor of graphic design at St. John’s University in Queens, New York. Sherin’s writing and research focuses on the history of women in graphic design and is the author of SustainAble: A Handbook of Materials and Applications for Graphic Designers and Their Clients (Design Field Guide) from Rockport Press.

Scott Stowell is an award winning graphic designer from New York City where his studio, Open, does design and identity design work for a variety of clients in print and motion graphics. Scott lectures and writes about design and teaches at Yale University and the School of Visual Arts.

In 2008 Scott was awarded the Smithsonian’s National Design Award for Communication Design

Nancy Skolos is a partner with her husband Tom Wedell in their award winning design firm Skolos + Wedell. Posters designed by Nancy and Tom have won numerous awards and are in the collections of design museums world wide including MOMA and museums throughout Europe. A poster they designed was recently awarded a gold medal at the Polish Poster Biennial 2010. They both teach graphic design at the Rhode Island School of Design.

Competition concept, development, and organizer: Joseph Coates

Questions? email jmcoates@gmail.com