Ok, so our 2008 Search Engine College t-shirts were somewhat, um… uninspiring. I blame the fact that I had only two hours to get a design in to our printing company in order to get the order filled before SMX Sydney.

Unfortunately, it showed. The free tees weren’t exactly jumping off the booth counter at the conference. Apart from the design being *yawn* boring, part of the problem was that conference attendees are either industry vets or skilled SEO staff who felt that wearing a “class of 2008″ t-shirt might make them seem like industry newbies.

Now I’ve seen lots of witty and irreverent conference tshirt designs around the place and I know we can do better.  So this is where you guys come in. We are looking for some inspirational designs for our 2009 Search Engine College t-shirt. You can suggest a design within the comments of this blog and I’ll set up a poll for readers to vote for the winner some time next month.

The person behind the winning design will be announced on this blog and receive enrollment in a Certification Pathway of their choice at Search Engine College, plus a t-shirt sporting their design [plus a pass to SMX Sydney if they happen to be based in Oz – see below].

The winning design will be printed on our t-shirts scheduled for distribution to all attendees at SMX Sydney 2009. Any leftover shirts will be issued to students who graduate from our Certification Pathways in 2009.

Grab the blank tshirt front / back and the SEC logo and go play.

Competition rules are as follows:

1) Your design or slogan should be suggested within the comments of this blog. You can link to a design on your own site or simply suggest a slogan in your comment.

2) Designs need to work on a white tshirt and should be no more than 2 colors.

3) The SEC logo and/or URL should appear somewhere in the design (on the back is fine)

4) Keep it clean. Unfortunately, some conference attendees and some of our students, may be offended by the use of curse words. If you need to curse, use an asterisk to censor your design somewhat. (Grrrr, I know I know).

5) Apart from the restriction of 4) your design can be as witty and creative as you like.

6) Entries close on Friday 6 February 2009.

7) 5 finalists will be chosen by staff of Search Engine College and blog readers will be given the opportunity to vote for their favorite finalists via a poll to be announced the week commencing 9 February 2009.

8 ) The final design winner will be announced on Monday 16 February 2009.

Good luck all!

STOP PRESS : If the winner of the t-shirt design competition happens to live in Australia, the very generous Barry Smyth has kindly donated a free conference pass to SMX Sydney 2009 for her/him (see comments on this post). Thanks Barry!

STOP PRESS 2 : Because some people have expressed an interest in submitting a t-shirt design but need a little more time, we’ve decided to extend the design submission deadline until EDT midnight on Monday 9 February.

Spread the joy!