HEPEX logo competition: reveal your inner artist!

contributed by Shaun Harrigan and Louise Arnal

We need your help! HEPEX (Hydrologic Ensemble Prediction EXperiment) needs a shiny new logo* and we think there is untapped artistic talent bursting to be free within the community, so we are running an online competition seeking the “next top logo”.

Established in 2004, the HEPEX mission is to demonstrate the added value of hydrological ensemble predictions for emergency management and water resources sectors to make decisions that have important consequences for the economy, public health and safety.

HEPEX is looking towards the next decade: better communication with the wider scientific community, practitioners and decision makers, as well as the public, has been identified as a key theme. We think this competition provides the perfect opportunity to engage the community to help us refresh the HEPEX online platform.

Competition guidelines and details

• The logo* should reflect the essence of HEPEX
• It will be used across all HEPEX online platforms (e.g., website, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn)
• It should be colour-blind friendly
• Entries can be a polished vector graphics file or an image of a hand-drawn sketch (which can be made into professional logo based on the original design)
• The word “HEPEX” doesn’t necessarily have to be written within the logo
• Final logo copyright must be open by creative commons licence
• Up to 3 entries per person
• Deadline: Thursday 31 May 2018

Submit sketches, images, and vector graphics files by email to: blog@hepex.org

Voting, selection, and prize!

• A vote will take place online and HEPEX-ers far and wide will be invited to vote for their favourite design (voting will close 1 week after deadline)
• The top 3 logos with the most votes will go through for final judging by the HEPEX Chairs
• The winner’s prize is the knowledge that their beautiful design will be the new face of HEPEX, and they will also receive a mug with their winning HEPEX logo printed (nice!)

Technical hint

If you do not have the expensive Adobe Illustrator programme, there are free and open source alternatives, e.g. GIMP image editor with many tutorials on YouTube.

What do we mean by a logo?

*A ‘logo‘: “a small graphic design that can be worked into a website banner or a letterhead; or printed on a button, sticker, a tshirt, etc.”  It doesn’t need to have a particular shape, e.g square, rectangular, circular – whatever you like!