Time for something special!

Get ready to break in the festive season with an amazing summer market which will set the tone for the rest of an amazing year-end!

Come and join the Springleap team as we light up the Fringe Handmade Creative Goods Market with the very best of our awesome t-shirts on offer, as well as a few of our very cool hoodies.

The Fringe Handmade Creative Goods Market has been created through the partnership of the most important stakeholders in the area, such as, the Cape Craft and Design Institute and the Cape Town Fashion Council (CTFC), Woodheads and the Fledge Creative Catalyst for young designers.

This market sets itself apart from other ‘typical’ summer markets by placing a huge emphasis on locally produced, highly original handmade products. If you are looking for mega unique items that you won’t find anywhere else, such as crafts, fashion, decor, jewellery and accessories, this is the place!

This is not your average market with the same ‘yawn worthy’ offerings that you find at any given ‘flea market’, this is a celebration of South African ingenuity, creativity and pure design magic.

The ‘Fringe’ for those of you who don’t know is the area in Cape Town that lies on the outskirts of the major CBD. It has fast become a Mecca for up-and-coming artistic types and is home to forward thinking design institutions such as the CTFC. Springleap is proud to be part of this funk-tastic design zone, which stands in company with some of the finest creatives in South Africa.
 

The Fringe Handmade: Creative Goods Market
Date - 03 December 2011 (10:00 - 18:00)
Place -  Harrington Street Parking Lot, cnr Harrington & Caledon Street , Cape Town, South Africa
*Find map below...logo marks the spot

We hope to see you all there!
Come say hi and share in the fun with the Springleap team. It would be great to see as many Springleapers as possible.

Don’t miss out!

Hi there guys and girls,

We are truly blessed on Springleap to have such an astounding and supremely talented group of designers.
Just lately we have received so many amazing submissions and it is becoming more and more difficult to choose a winner.

This is by no means a bad thing!
Not at all, in fact it’s great that we have such an array of design.

We heartily support design resubmissions. If your design does not win the first time around there is no reason why it won’t walk away with a victory in another competition.

We have had many cases where designs that are sent in for ‘branded contests’, which don’t manage to win, are then sent in for our Open Theme contests and fair much better.

Here are four fantastic designs, submitted into past branded contests, which have now made their way into our November 2 - Open Theme.
Voting has just started, so get involved and let these awesome designers know how you like their changes.

ABOVE - Helping hand by Zenstudio & Be Alive! by Dewedhe
BELOW - Super Salvador & Where's my jane by Matsanni

Remember that designs constantly have room to evolve and be improved upon. If your design doesn’t win it is not the end of the world, merely a stepping stone to future glory and a big phat cash prize, hehe!

Here are a few things to consider before you resubmit a design:

1. Read through the comments your received from other members. Some of our members give amazingly insightful feedback. We as artists need to be able to take criticism and apply it to our future work.

2. Ask another designer for technical help. Yep, they may be after the same prize, but you will be surprised at how helpful designers can be when they are helping out a fellow artist.

3. Try not to resubmit the exact same design with no tweaks. This is a tricky one – The best thing to do (after reading through comments) is to check your final score and see how close you were to the top of the pile. This should give you a rough ‘guess-timation’ of how close you came. Some designs require elements to be tweaked/added/removed….others just need to be placed on a different colour t-shirt.

4. Collaborate. This is a slightly different method which few on Springleap have tried. Take your design, team up with another designer and perhaps make a mash-up of your respective work. You will be amazed at what can come from this. Sure you will have to split the winnings, but this could open the doors for future work and a whole new amalgamation of shared knowledge. We all have our separate strengths, combine them and win!

5. Don’t resubmit the very next contest. People don’t want to be bombarded by the same designs back-to-back. Give it at least a 2-3 contest ‘breathing gap’ before resubmitting.

I hope this gives you a bit more insight into creating successful design resubmissions.
Don’t be afraid to ask for help!

If you have absolutely any questions about resubmitting, or would like some advice on how to tweak your resubmission, please drop me an email: Duncan [at] springleap [dot] com

D

Hi there guys and girls .

Its time for another thrilling Springleap OPEN THEME competition!
NO specific theme, only regular guidelines apply! You know the drill NO OBSCENITY, NO HATE SPEECH…all that jazz.

This is your chance to show us your creativity on your own terms. Don’t be shy – just put it out there! Let the world be your inspiration. We wanna see what lives within your artistic mind.

You can submit up to 5 designs so go wild! The more designs you submit the greater chances you have of winning!

So, get designing peeps. The time is now to show us what you got!

One winner will receive

… 4 printed t-shirts, a cash prize – US$500 (R4000)

DATES TO DIARISE:

Submissions for designs open: 18 November 2011

Submissions for designs close:  08 December 2011

Voting starts: 09 December 2011

Voting ends: 22 December 2011

Winner is announced: 27 December 2011

You could be the next winner on Springleap.com and gain exposure for yourself! You also stand a chance of winning amazing prizes and loads of cash .

Winners will now be chosen using votes as an indicator. The top 10 voted designs will get the golden stamp of approval and go in for review . The final verdict will come down to our esteemed design panel here at Springleap . For those that don’t win, you still stand a chance to have your designs printed! We’ll be keeping all top 10 designs in our re-seller catalogue and who knows we could be printing and selling your designs nationwide!

Everyone WINS!!

In order to get started on your designs download the Springleap t-shirt Submission Kit and get started right away!

Confused or uncertain about anything?

Post your questions about the OPEN THEME competition below or click our online support button to the left of our header.

Good Luck and Happy Designing!

The Springleap.com Team

Hi there Springleapers .

Springleap is a community where everyone gets involved… Whether you’re a designer or just love design, it’s the place to be!

In that spirit we are bringing back the popular “King of Comments, Queen of Quotes” competition!

Wondering what that’s all about?

Simple : Springleap designers love critique and commentary and this is where YOU come in.
Every month we are going to crown a King of Comments, Queen of Quotes – and reward them with a sweet US$100 cash prize and 2 Springleap tees .

Why? – Because Springleap is all about celebrating and rewarding all forms of creativity and contributions to design. Springleap designers love to grow and improve their work and we know that you can make a valuable contribution to make that happen.

How do you win?

Easy! The title and prize goes to the person who most consistently, creatively and constructively comments on designs at Springleap throughout that month.

Please bear in mind that you are only eligible to win 1 competition within a 3 month period.
It is only possible to win 2 King of Comments competitions per year.

What will help you win?

1. Creative and constructive critique
2. Social seeding – spreading the comments you make on a design to social platforms like Facebook and Twitter
3. Consistency – commenting on 1 or 2 designs alone isn’t going to be enough. We look at the contributions from the whole month

Springleap will also interviewing the winner and they will get published in our monthly mailer, giving them exposure and gratitude for their fantastic contribution and support to the designers at Springleap .

Read about all our winners HERE

Celebrate creativity at Springleap today.

On your marks, get set… COMMENT!

It’s time to reveal the winners of our Positive Heroes Inspire Courage design contest!

We really had some breathtaking and truly inspiring work come through from our designers. The Positive Heroes team was just as blown-away as we were and had tons of positively inspired designs to choose from.

Congratulations to our GRAND PRIZE WINNER Nicebleed for his stunning design, Freedom to Happiness! 

This really is such a beautiful uplifting design.

Everyone we've spoken to found this to be supremely optimistic and perfect for spreading a positive message of hope!

Well done also to our 2 runners-up:

Nen101's design Be a [positive] Hero and Macuz's design Love. 

Both of these designs had loads of fans and suitably impressed Positive Heroes with their positive and inspiring messages of courage and hope.

The Positive Heroes annual Fashion Show BLOOM is coming up very soon - Thursday, 3 November.

We will be printing 80 t-shirts of the winning design to be worn by the Positive Heroes team and volunteers at this event.

The top 3 designs will also be printed on A1 stretch canvases to be auctioned off at the event and included in the Positive Heroes Crowdfunding Packages to be sold as part of a further fundraising initiative by Springleap.com - we aim to raise $100 000 for sustainable trench gardens. All proceeds will go to Positive Heroes charity.

If you would like to attend the Fashion Show, check out the Positive Heroes Facebook event page for details and buy your tickets to the event via Computicket – HERE.

We hope to see as many of you as possible at the fashion show. It will be a great event and also a perfect chance for designers to network.

THANK YOU to all the designers who made this contest such a huge success.

We asked you to design with the intent to help prevent millions of South Africans dying needlessly as a result of the stigma, fear and ignorance that still surrounds HIV.

We think you all did an AMAZING job!