About Screen Contests

Carrying on the Tradition!

For each new version of Inkscape, we traditionally invite all Inkscape artists to submit a proposal for the "About Screen". That's the image that you get to see when you click on "Help > About" in Inkscape to find more information about the version of the program installed on your device.

The About Screen demonstrates an artistic interpretation of what is possible to do with that version of the program.

After the contest submission period is closed, the Inkscape community will vote on the entries. Then the developers will select a winner from the top-voted submissions.

Latest Contest

The contest for the much-awaited Inkscape 1.0 has concluded and we're delighted about the number and quality of submissions and engagement from our community!

Artists had been asked to grab the current Beta version or a daily build of the latest code directly from the development pipeline for their operating system, and to show everyone what amazing things they and the new version of their favorite vector graphics editor are capable of creating.

To find out more about what's new in 1.0, take a peek at the release notes draft for 1.0!

Timeline (all times in UTC/GMT)

Submission Mon., October 7, 2019 – Sun., November 17, 2019 Community Voting Mon., November 18, 2019 – Sun., December 1, 2019 Final Voting Mon., December 2, 2019 – Sun., December 15, 2019 Winners announced Tues., December 17, 2019

There's a great variety of entries to see, with lots of cool ideas and neat tricks being used.

Visit the 1.0 About Screen Contest gallery to view the entries by all contestants!

How Does the Contest Work?

Rules

The canvas dimensions must be 750x625 px / 600x500 pt. Your image can bleed outside of the canvas, but anything outside of the canvas border will not be rendered. Your image must be licensed appropiately: 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 will require the SVG file to use for the about screen. 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). It must include the Inkscape logo (flat or 3D version at your discretion) and the following text "Inkscape", "1.0", "Draw Freely.", "www.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) Text must be converted to paths. It's a good idea to 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. We will need for you to post your SVG file online in the right contest gallery (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 1.0 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 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.

All decisions are final once the voting periods are finished.

Relevant Links

Inkscape 1.0beta - Get a pre-release build!

Inkscape master - 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 1.0 (Jan. 2006 to Sept. 2019) - 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.