WINNING DESIGN: March 2011 "Need a cool Education Conference Tshirt" by iMoot
(competition hosted by http://99designs.com)
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WINNING DESIGN: February/March 2011 Raizcorp "I am an Entrepreneur" competition
Interpreting entrepreneurship with passion
Published: 7 March 2011
Raizcorp and Springleap joined forces recently to create an opportunity for young designers to showcase their creative talents and essentially, win R10 000. But if you were thinking a winning entry could be comprised of a quickly scribbled drawing to stand a chance of winning the cash, you were wrong.
By Nikita Gomes
Raizcorp, a company that prides itself on being at the forefront of entrepreneurship, teamed up with Springleap.com to host the ‘I am an Entrepreneur’ T-shirt design competition. As a crowdsourcing t-shirt design and online retailer which provides artists and designers with the opportunity to create innovative t-shirts, posters and canvas designs worldwide, Springleap.com was able to pull the designers together with the brief, ‘entrepreneurship’.
I attended the exhibition where the winner was to be announced and we were given a chance to view the designs, including the three finalist’s designs. The interpretations of ‘entrepreneurship’ were varied and diverse. Many included the ‘light bulb’ symbol that represents developing ideas and how important this is in being an entrepreneur. Some were witty, and the design that best incorporated a dry sense of humour was my favourite. It showed a remake of the Johnny Walker symbol, with the ‘walking man’ looking more business-like, accompanied by the clever slogan: “keep working”. This design was by South African runner up, Grant Shepley.
[Linda from Raizcorp presenting the winning envelope to Rondine]
Allon Raiz, CEO of Raizcorp, explained that the designs displayed at the exhibition were the ones that they could best “understand”. The audience laughed, knowingly, as if they had all struggled to understand an artist’s work previously.
[Rondine in front of her design (left)]
Before the winner was announced, a number of people in the audience were called up and asked to explain which pieces they thought were the best designs and why. Everyone had varying views on what they thought were great designs, but each person always mentioned one particular design, which was the winning design at the end of the day, titled “Passion = Results”, created by Johannesburg designer, Rondine Carstens. What was most interesting for me was that her design was not as ‘arty’ or as elaborate as the others, but its concept was very clear. From a room full of entrepreneurs, this was the outright winner.
[Eran Eyal, Co-Founder of Springleap.com saying a few words and explaining what Springleap.com is all about]
A bucket of passion poured into the word ‘results’ made up the design of the winner’s t-shirt, and this spoke directly to the entrepreneurs in the room. This made me realise that if entrepreneurs all have one thing in common, it has to be that they all believe that in order to be successful, they have to be passionate about what they do. No matter how beautiful or witty the other designs were, they did not quite shout out ‘entrepreneurship’ as much as ‘Passion = Results’ did.
[Allon Raiz, CEO of Raizcorp, saying a few words to end a perfect evening]
Well done to [Carstens] for the winning design, as well as to Raizcorp and Springleap for holding a competition that reflected the power of the art and design industry in delivering a message as well as portraying entrepreneurship in a different light to the ‘suit and briefcase’ that most people associate with being business-minded.
