Mt. Dew Design Contest
I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to enter and win a national label design contest from Mt. Dew! The challenge was to create a new design for the normal Mt. Dew product. Voting was done through Facebook over the period of a couple weeks. My design came out ranked #1 based on the chart from their Facebook page where the voting took place (there was no official prize for being first at this point).
Previously, fans and drinkers of Mt. Dew were given the opportunity to join a group call Dewmocracy. These people were able to taste test 3 new Mt. Dew flavors and then split into different groups based on which one they liked. These groups were called flavor nations.
Once voting for the design contest was complete, each of the flavor nations were able to choose any designer from the top 10 people. The top 10 also received a 17" Mac Book Pro Laptop! I was chosen to create the design for Mt. Dew's new flavor Distortion. I was excited because after I tried all 3 of the new flavors, this was by far my favorite.
Once we were chosen, the next phase of the challenge began. Each of the chosen designers participated in live chat sessions with members from their flavor nations as well as designers from Mt. Dew. We took all the suggestions and feedback from the contest winning design, and applied it to our flavor and flavor descriptor (mine was 'lime blasted dew'). It was quite a challenge coming up with something that most everyone would like as there was a very wide audience. A couple more things that made designing the label very challenging were having to create it completely in a vector format, and designing for the printing limitations that go along with printing on an aluminum can.
Cans hit store shelves April 19th! They also feature a small label indicating the designers of each flavor along with instructions on how to vote for your favorite (Distortion of course... ) The flavor with the most votes will become a permanent part of the Mt. Dew product line!
Along with the prize money each of the top 3 designers received (officially it was payment for the new label design), Mt. Dew was nice enough to fly us all in to New York and put us up in the W Hotel for a couple days. They also went out of their way to work with me on scheduling and acquiring plane tickets for my wife to join me. We were able to extend our stay a little and see all the sights! Mt. Dew was a great company to work for and I hope I am able to do more for them in the future. It was already my drink of choice before the contest and now I love it even more!
My story was featured in the Edmond Living section of The Daily Oklahoman, Edmond Outlook Magazine, The Edmond Sun, and aired on News 9 at 10 p.m. on April 26th!
