Challenge Summary
Welcome to NASA Tournament Lab Magazine Page Design. For this contest we want to create a stunning and creative graphic to accompany a feature article on TopCoder in an industry trade magazine.
NASA, Harvard Business School, and TopCoder have established the NASA Tournament Lab (NTL), which enable the TopCoder community to compete amongst each other to create the most innovative, most efficient, and most optimized solutions for specific, real-world challenges being faced by NASA researchers.
The graphic you’re designing has to be very exciting, entertaining to the eye. This graphic will appear in a print magazine to promote the NASA Tournament Lab program as a “center of excellence” for all government departments to use for innovation. Be creative, be sharp, sky is the limit; we need your most brilliant ideas to flow and be placed on this design.
Requirements and Branding Guidelines
- The main idea is focused in the TopCoder community (or an individual member), competing to create efficient, innovative solutions for NASA or a government department.
- Here some appropriate terms you can use if you want to compliment your design: NASA Tournament Lab, Open Innovation, Center of Excellence, Platform, Competition, Challenge.
- You can use NASA Tournament Lab logo. See attached.
- You’re allowed to use any colors.
- You’re allowed to use stock imagery from istockphoto.com (see more details below).
- Avoid simple designs, not too traditional.
- Size: 9 x 12 inches, 300dpi.
Resources
- NASA Tournament Lab websites: http://www.nasa.gov/directorates/heo/ntl/ | http://community.topcoder.com/ntl/
- You can get some ideas from browsing magazines such as Government Computer News, Computerworld, Forbes and BusinessWeek; however the client provided a few possible approaches for inspiration:
- You can use interpretive imagery representing a coder competition or coder marathon experience, or even the NASA competition.
- Think about a post-deadline coder workspace, the classic screens awry, Post-it and Coke-can strewn workspace of an adrenaline fueled all night logic binge.
- Use some kind of hexadecimal representation of the project or the NASA competition or the coding life in a clever way.
- Think about using NASA or space imagery or images representing the medical kit challenge and turn them into a collage.
- Depicting a virtual facility with the idea of being able to “order” a solution (maybe like a fastfood restaurant or a shop where product is being taken off the shelf) would be great.
Target Audience
Government, Businesses, Professionals of technology and software field overall.
Judging Criteria
- Creativity and implementation of design.
- Quality of design.
Submission File
All requested contest requirements/screens as JPG or PNG files at 72dpi.
Source Files
All original source files of the submitted design at 300dpi. Files should be created in Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator or Inkscape and saved as layered PSD files, AI or EPS files.
Preview Image
Create a 1024x1024 JPG or PNG file in RGB color mode and place a screenshot from your submission within it.
Please read the challenge specification carefully and watch the forums for any questions or feedback concerning this challenge. It is important that you monitor any updates provided by the client or Studio Admins in the forums. Please post any questions you might have for the client in the forums.