About Screen Contests
Carrying on the Tradition!
Contest for Inkscape 1.1
The community voting for Inkscape 1.1 is running. We're in awe of all those fantastic submissions that artists have contributed to the contest!
If you'd like to try out the upcoming release yourself, grab the current Alpha version or a daily build of the latest code directly from the development pipeline for your operating system.
To find out more about what's new in 1.1, take a peek at the release notes draft for 1.1!
Timeline (all times in UTC/GMT)
| Submission | Sun., January 24, 2021 – Sun., February 21, 2021 |
| Community Voting | Mon., February 22, 2021 – Sun., February 28, 2021 |
| Final Voting | Mon., March 1, 2021 – Sun., March 7, 2021 |
| Winners announced | Tues., March 9, 2021 |
We hope to see a great variety of entries, with lots of cool ideas and neat tricks being used.
See all entries for the 1.1 About Screen Contest!
How Does the Contest Work?
Rules
- The canvas dimensions must be 750x625 px. Your image can bleed outside of the canvas, but anything outside of the canvas border will not be rendered. If you'd like to, you can use the provided template.
- Your image must be licensed appropriately: CC-BY-SA. Please include the license in the image's metadata (File → Document Properties: License tab: CC-Attribution-ShareAlike). Note: Your SVG file will be distributed with the Inkscape program, hence the need for the above requested licensing.
- It must be made in Inkscape only with no post-processing as we require the SVG file to use for the About screen. Save your work as 'Inkscape SVG' (default), so the editing information and layers will stay intact.
- It must load relatively fast since it will be rendered in real-time when someone views the About screen (the SVG's file size needs to be taken into consideration, too). You can reduce the file size by using File > Clean up document and by removing any elements that are not visible in the resulting image (e.g. raster images you traced, elements outside the page area). An exception to this is the original text, see 8.
- It must include the Inkscape logo (flat or 3D version at your discretion) and the following text "Inkscape", "1.1", "Draw Freely." (note the dot at the end!), "inkscape.org", and last but not least, your name, signature, or online handle (whichever you'd prefer).
- Any third-party materials you use must be properly attributed and their author must have allowed its use under the required license (CC-By-SA).
- Any text in your image must use a font with an open source license (OFL, GPL, Apache, MIT, PD/CC-0, CC-By-SA, ... e.g. from the Font Library or Google Fonts, or Inkscape's brand fonts). To make it easier for our volunteers to check your entry, please provide a web link to the source of your font or precise information about its license.
- Text must be converted to paths. Please include the original text in a hidden layer, so later editing is easily possible.
- Images must not contain raster graphics (i.e. pixel-based (bitmap) images like bmp, jpg or png; exceptions may be made for patterns and masks).
- There can be a maximum of two (2) entries submitted per community member.
- It must not contain anything inappropriate or otherwise offensive. We recommend avoiding things such as nudity, violence, and political or religious imagery. Material considered inappropriate or offensive will be disqualified at the development team's sole and final discretion.
- If you're unsure about a font license or whether any other element fulfills the requirements, you can ask us in the chat.
- We will need for you to post your SVG file online in the correct contest gallery on the inkscape.org website (see link above).
- Have fun!
Hint
If your image contains elements that work in Inkscape, but are not rendered correctly in browsers (old Inkscape-specific flowed text, mesh gradients, some blend modes and filters), you can export your SVG image as PNG, and upload that, in addition to your original SVG, with the "Choose visible image" button. This will make it show up as intended on the contest page, while still allowing to access the original SVG file.
Prize
Your art featured and credited as the About Screen for the 1.1 version of Inkscape!
Even if your entry does not win, it may still be used by the project for other occasions, like stickers to hand out at conferences, flyers, images for the website, tutorials, or even for in-between versions of the program when there's no official contest. Of course, each contest entry is going to stay visible in the website's gallery, as an example of what can be created using Inkscape.
Judging
Preliminary judging is done by the Inkscape community. The top 5 entries from the community vote (registered website users only, 1 vote per person) will then be turned over to the Inkscape developers for final judging. Please note that once turned over to the developers, after they have chosen the winner, they may have requests for modifications. We will then also need an adjusted version for the new "Welcome" (splash) screen, which is 700x220px.
All decisions are final once the voting periods are finished.
Relevant Links
Inkscape 1.1alpha - Get a pre-release build!
Inkscape development branch - Get the latest builds directly from the development pipeline.
Inkscape repository - Download the the latest developer version and build from source.
Draft release notes - These are VERY helpful to learn about what new features available to you.
Entries from previous About Screen Contests:
Inkscape Branding Resources (Logos, Fonts,...)
List of developers who contributed to 1.1 (Jan. 2006 to Jan. 2021) - Some people like to use this as an element of their artwork.
Bug tracker - Please report any bugs that you find. We want to fix as many as possible before the release!
Previous Winners
This gallery contains the winning pictures from previous contests, as well as some About Screens from our ancestor project Sodipodi. They are a piece of history, as well as inspiration for future contests.
