Who wants to design a postcard for Gallifrey One? The prize is a pound of See's Chocolates, or half a kilo of Cadbury Roses (or other Cadbury). We're going to cram an entire progress report onto one side of a little postcard. What should we put on the other side? We've got full color printing capability. Bleed, even -- you can have color and stuff going right up to the edge.

• Deadline for Fall postcard: (Pacific time) 3:59 pm, 15 September 2010. (British time) 11:59 pm, 15 September 2010.
• Deadline for Winter postcard: (Pacific time) 3:59 pm, 01 December 2010. (British time) 11:59 pm, 01 December 2010.
• Dimensions at 300 dpi: 1350x1875 or 1875x1350 pixels. Display thumbnail size, if you post your designs, should be 270x375 or 375x270 pixels (i.e., 60 dpi).

Gallifrey 2011 Postcard #1
Illustration by David Burson

Design your art to be 4.5"x6.25" at 300 dpi, and allow for at least 1/8" along the edges where you won't have any text or anything vital to the design. It'll be 4.25"x6" once it's trimmed. So, don't have any text or logos within 40 pixels of the edge (1/8") and we should have no trouble trimming it. You can e-mail the high-resolution version to gallifrey@postcardart.info, or just publish a link to it on your server.

You could have a photo of Canary Wharf in flames and a big banner that says "Greetings from Torchwood!" like a standard tourist photo postcard. You could pretend you're designing a color cover for the convention program book and make a photo montage with lots of dark blue swirls in it. Make it look like a still from the opening credits sequence with the TARDIS flying through hyperspace . . . whatever. It should probably have the official full name of the convention on it somewhere, although that's not actually required.

Each Gallifrey has a different full name and this MUST be used. The 2011 convention will be "Gallifrey One's Catch 22: Islands of Mystery." You can use that theme as inspiration for your postcard design. If you want, we can use actors that we have confirmed as guests on our postcards. You can do a collage of photos, or you can draw any of them.

Some notes from the August 2009 postcard contest: We're a Doctor Who convention. When we have a Doctor confirmed as our guest of honor, if there's anyone portrayed on the card we'd like that Doctor to be included. (This just goes for when you can see an actor on the card. Designs with other show-related images -- Cybermen, Daleks, the Tardis -- have all been winners in the past.) We had one or two Doctor-less designs that were as good as the ones with the Doctor that had been invited., i.e. they made the first cut, but were washed out in the second round of consideration. However, when a Doctor had to cancel/postpone their trip, we ended up picking one of the Doctor-less designs and printing that after all.

So if we don't have a Doctor on the guest list, you can still use some of the other confirmed guests on the postcard. (Or go without an actor at all, as mentioned above.) Related to that, you can't sneak in cartoon drawings of people who aren't attending, even if they're just drawn on playing cards. Our judges generally tend to prefer art that stands alone without captions or word balloons. Nothing wrong with having text on the card, but the design should make sense without it. Incorporating the theme of the convention isn't strictly required, but a good piece of art using the theme definitely has an edge in the judging.

Prize for the one we use will be a 1-lb. box of See's chocolates, or 500g of Cadbury Roses (or other Cadbury chocolate), or something else if you're allergic or dieting. If you've used someone else's art in your composition, get their permission -- you'll be splitting the prize with them.

You can also get on our mailing list, if you just want to get the postcards in the mail. Your info will be kept on a computer in California, and will only be used to send you convention postcards. Website for the postcard mailing list: www.postcardart.info.

Questions and Clarifications on the Design a Postcard Contest:

What about silhouettes? Tom Baker is pretty distinguishable with his scarf in silohuette, but you could argue that's not him too. So if you don't want people for whatever reason at all, that's fine. I just wanted to ask. (2007-09-20, vandonovan) Nope. You can include any guests we've announced, but since Baker's not on our guest list at all, we don't want to give the impression that he's coming.