The Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles is giving students in grades 9 through 12 the opportunity to make some cash in the Take Action Against Distraction License Plate Design Contest.
It’s part of the DMV and AAA’s campaign to end distracted driving.
Students enrolled in a Virginia public, private, parochial or home school must create an image of distraction-free driving for a license plate. Then, they must write a short explanation of how their design depicts or encourages distraction-free driving.
Students have until December 15 to submit their design to the DMV’s website. Then, people will get to vote on their favorites.
Eight students will win $300 and a grand prize winner will get $1,000 for their design.
The grand prize winner will be announced in April 2018.
Here are the design guidelines:
- Designs must be created following one of the license plate templates provided. The size of a Virginia license plate is 6 x 12 inches; your design space is a 5.5” x 11.5” rectangle. The font, size, color, and placement of VIRGINIA cannot be altered.
- If using a computer program:
- Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator programs are preferred. Your final design must be submitted to the website as a .jpeg or .pdf.
- The use of spot colors is preferable over process color (CYMK). Your design can use up to three spot colors in addition to Pantone 286 blue and white, which is the license plate background color. Create a legend to display specific Pantone colors used in your design.
- Avoid thin lines less than 1/32 of an inch.
- You can design over the entire white background of the plate or just on the left or right sides of the plate. If covering the full background, the design color will need to be light enough to easily and clearly read the dark blue license plate number, month, and year label.
- The width of a design on the left or right margins of the plate cannot exceed 2 ½ inches from the edge of your design space.
- Avoid using letters or numbers in your design that may be confused with a license plate number.
- You may add one or two lines of text at the bottom of the license plate. The entire space across the bottom of the plate is available and not to exceed 1 ¼ inches in height from the bottom of your design space. The simpler, the better so the message can be read easily from a distance.
- Do not plagiarize. It is not legal to use designs or images that are copyrighted or trademarked, including images you may find in books, magazines, or on the Internet.
