How to Become a Finalist: Inspired by Linux T-shirt Design Contest

I’m inspried by a variety of things, both small and large: a really good cup of coffee, great art, contribution, reading the Sunday New York Times, sitting in the Linux kernel panel session at LinuxCon. But this year in particular, I’m more inpsired than ever by what is happening because of Linux. The Raspberry Pi is putting computing power in anyone’s hands; the Cadillac Cue is illustrating just the tip of the iceberg of what Linux is doing for car infotainment systems; and Google, Facebook and Amazon all continue to push the limits on how we connect as a global culture thanks to Linux. This year, too, Linux is playing a major role in how we define the open cloud and is bringing more attention to why we need to fight for openness in cloud computing.

All of these reasons and more are why we created a theme for this year’s Linux Foundation T-shirt contest, “Inspired by Linux.” My colleague Libby Clark last week shared a video that gives me goosebumps and that we can already see by the submissions coming in are inspiring people to design this year’s T-shirt. To provide even more inspiration and direction on how to become a finalist, I thought I’d share last year’s finalists. I hope this helps designers understand the basic elements we’re lookging for when choosing the top 5-7 for community vote: artistic quality, originality, creativity, simplicity in design, and adherence to the contest theme. Enjoy the slideshow, and we look forward to reviewing your design. And, to this year’s two winners-to-be, we’ll see you at LinuxCon and CloudOpen!