We had a contest within our elementary school for a fun run t-shirt design. We prefaced the contest rules with the info that the design would be enhanced by a professional artist/parent. That way we were covered if the designs were too crudely drawn to be used as is. It worked out fine. The central design was the child's, but it was cleaned up a little by the parent who also added the necessary text. The student-artist was celebrated as our winning designer, and the parent/artist stayed in the background.
I think the idea of a design contest will only work for the older students (High School). Anything younger and you may not be thrilled with your final product.
We held a contest last year to select a new mascot. As far as the artwork, that was decided upon by the School Council and some staff input.
The way we held the contest (voting) was to have all staff members and all active PTO members shpw up for a vote. We used weighted voting. To do this each votee received 4 votes, one worth 7 points, one worth 5, one worth 3 and another worth 1. We setup raffle boxes for each submission. The rule is that you cannot put more than one vote in any given container. You don't have to use all of your votes if you do not want to. In the end we took the top 3 vote getters and then had the students vote democratically to decide on the new mascot.
This type of voting is pretty fair as it takes into account everyone's favorite choice, second favorite, etc.
We just did this with great success. We put the contest out to the High School students, gave them specific instructions about what we wanted. Then we choose the best 10 and let the elementary children vote. We now have our shirts, and they look great. We announced our winner and revealed our new shirts at a home football game. The young lady that won was so proud. Good Luck!
We would like to change our spiritwear design. It was suggested at a board meeting that we have a contest...Students would be asked to submit a drawing. I am not sure how we would run or judge this contest. Has anyone ever run a contest like this? Do you have any suggestions or tips? Please share the memo you sent out explaining the contest.