Anna Taylor
Assistant Features Editor
In its second year, the Homecoming T-shirt design competition, sponsored by the Alumni Association, has announced the winner for its contest.
Amy Maness, alumna from Murray, won this year’s design contest with a navy vintage Racer tee.
Entries were submitted in the summer and lasted until July 29. The submitted designs were voted for online by the public on the Alumni Association’s website, raceralumni.com. The top three choices by the public were then narrowed to one by the Alumni Affair office and Homecoming Committee.
To enter the contest, students, alumni, faculty and staff visited the website for the entry form. All entries had to follow the guidelines for consideration.
“It’s a drop box kind of form so you just submit your artwork,” Sabrina Mathis, associate director of Alumni Affairs, said. “(You can use) Publisher, Illustrator, different file types, JPEGs, however you can create it into a graphic and then we load them onto our site onto a separate page and we have the contest through that so we display all that are entered.”
Some of the guidelines included requiring the design to be created for a navy blue or white T-shirt, the designer could only use up to four ink colors and the Homecoming theme had to be incorporated in the design somehow. The designer was also required to include the words “Homecoming 2011” and a reference to Murray State.
An artist could submit up to two designs.
There were 15 entries submitted this year, Mathis said. Maness submitted two: one she described as vintage and the other modern.
“I heard about the T-shirt design competition last year and I missed the deadline but I decided this year that I wanted to give it a try because of the theme,” Maness said. “‘Once a Racer, Always a Racer,’ just sounds to me like a vintage tee and I really like vintage tees.”
Because of her winning design, Maness received a $100 gift certificate to the University Bookstore, a framed version of the T-shirt and T-shirts for her family.
“I just sat down one day and thought about what would look good and kind of designed it around the Dunker logo,” Maness said. “I remember the Dunker logo from when I was a kid back in the ‘80s. That was the athletic logo and it was amazing and I thought it would be a great look.”
Voting began on Aug. 1 and lasted one month. There were a total of 756 votes, making this year more successful than last year by nearly 100 votes. Each registered user was limited to voting once, Mathis said.
Alumni Affairs had the right to negotiate changes with the winning design for printing purposes, the guidelines stated.
“With Amy we asked her to modify it just a little bit,” Mathis said. “The bottom bar, when they printed would not read well on the shirt so she had to enlarge it a little bit.”
Last year was the first Homecoming T-shirt design competition. Out of the 12 entries, Michael Buckingham, alumnus, won with his design for the “Remember the Racers” theme.
The contest has improved this year with more entries, votes and publicity.
“We’re going to continue with the contest and see how it goes,” Mathis said. “Hopefully T-shirts will always stay popular. Everybody likes a shirt.”
Karol Hardison from the University Bookstore helped with placing the T-shirt orders and making sure the shirts are available for sale on Homecoming weekend.
The shirt will be available for sale at the University Bookstore, Tent City and the Homecoming football game while supplies last.
The shirts become available Oct. 3 for $9.99. For Racer Fest on Oct. 10, the first 100 students can get the shirt for $7.99 at the University Bookstore. To order a shirt early, visit shop.murraystate.edu and have it shipped directly to you.
Said Mathis on Maness’ winning design: “It’s different. It’s not a design that we have on campus in the bookstore already so it is unique. It fits the theme: ‘Once a Racer, Always a Racer.’”
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