Album Art Contest

Dave Leigh suggested I start an album art contest for each round of SpinTunes. The contest would basically run on the same schedule as the music contest. When the songwriting challenge is posted, the songwriters AND the artists would get to work & have the same deadline. After the deadline I would post all the album covers here, and while the judges are reviewing the songs...everyone else can vote on what cover we should use.

When the judges deadline has past, the album cover with the most votes would be used for that rounds album. You can also have covers for individual songs. So if a band likes a cover that didn't win, they can ask me to upload that cover for their individual song.

This idea was floated around before the start of the first contest (I forget who thought of it), but I decided not to move forward with it at that time. I had a lot going on, and wanted to use most of my focus to make the songwriting contest work. Now that I have 5 rounds of competition under my belt I think it would be nice to try this idea.

I'm going to need a little help with this part of the contest. I know musicians...and a few places to go to find musicians. I do not know many graphic designers...or where to go to find people interested in stuff like this. So for this to work I'm going to need a little help going out & finding those people. Spreading the word in communities that might be interested is key. Dave suggested a site called Deviantart, so hopefully one of you reading this is a member there? It would be great to get people from that site involved.

I can't offer a prize other than bragging rights, and having the winners art used as an album cover. That means the winner will be credited on the album & I'll link to a personal website if they wish. I really think it would be great to run these contests together & bring even more creative people together.

There will be no limit to how many people can enter, but there will be some requirements.

1. The cover needs to be submitted as a file BandCamp will be ok with.

"350 x 350 pixels minimum (bigger is better)
.jpg, .gif or .png, 4MB max"

2. No nudity or bad language. I won't make a list of words to avoid, but I'm sure you can keep it clean.

3. Submit only artwork you have created on your own & have full creative control over...no copyrighted or trademarked images.

4. You must include the title of the challenge prominently on the cover.

5. I really don't want dozens of people I don't know sending me to various websites I'm not familiar with, and I also don't want to download a bunch of strange attachments. So I decided to limit the sites you are allowed to use to submit your images. I picked 3 I feel comfortable with, and those are: Flickr, DailyBooth & TwitPic. So you'll need to upload your pictures to one of those sites & link me to them in an e-mail (NO shortened URL's). Make sure that they have a Creative Commons license so it can be linked to & downloaded.

We will attempt to start this new contest when the round 3 challenge is announced on October 31st.