Hemp – good for you, and our planet.

Designers – step up and join the sustainability revolution! There’s a plant out there that has the potential to change the world, and that plant is hemp. Help make the world a better place with your design in our Hemporium contest and win your share of our $2 000 prize!

Yes folks – we’re looking for your best design interpretation of how hemp can make the world a better place. Best part about this? The winning designs will go on hemp T-shirts!

Facts about Hemp:

So, what’s the deal? It’s simple - industrial hemp has shown itself as a leading sustainable resource but its potential has been held back by the controversy surrounding its cousin, marijuana. Dedicated to changing the misconception and making the world a better place through the use of this most versatile of plants, Hemporium has actively showcased all that hemp has to offer so this incredible resource can flourish again all over the planet.

Did you know that wearing a hemp T-shirt instead of a conventionally-grown cotton one saves the planet approximately 1900kJ of energy, 0.8 metres of land, 2000 litres of water, 77 grams of fertiliser and 1 gram of toxic pesticide!

The most versatile plant on earth, hemp has innumerable uses including for food, cosmetics, clothing, building, paper, oil, medicine and many more - one acre of hemp produces 2 to 3 times the amount of biomass than a field of cotton, and the fabric is 4 times as warm. Hemp also produces four times more pulp per acre than any other paper crop!

THE BRIEF:

Create a design or illustration that communicates the message of hemp being one of the world’s leading sustainable resources. We want to see versatility, organic nature, conscious consumerism, eco-awareness, cooperation and positivity!

But let’s be clear – we’re not looking for marijuana-based designs or reggae colours - this contest is about the industrial and practical uses of hemp and the positive effects it can create for us and our environment. Your creation should promote the positive and practical ways in which hemp can make the world a better place!

Contest Do’s and Don’ts

• Do create your design for olive green or mélange T-shirts
• Do make use of the Hemporium logo
• Do create both a T-shirt design, and a swing tag design
• Don’t make reference to Marijuana – this isn’t about the smoking plant but its industrial cousin, hemp
• Don't go for reggae colours in your design
• You don't have to include the Hemporium logo in your T-shirt design: it's optional - if no logo, use the word 'Hemporium' somewhere on your design

NOTE: SWING TAG DESIGN ALSO TO BE INCLUDED IN SUBMISSIONS

With this contest, we’re giving you the chance to not only create a design that could be printed onto a T-shirt, but also the design of a swing tag the shirt will be sold with. A swing tag is the loose card which comes attached to an item of clothing when you purchase it.

NOTE: Swing tag designs must have Hemporium and Springleap logos included - logos and swing tag template are included in Design Pack on the Submit page.

Please place your swing tag design in your Super Preview file upload - use half the space if necessary.

NEED INSPIRATION?

We’ve got it in spades! Check it out:

1. Visit the Hemporium website, www.hemporium.com

2. Click on over to Hemporium's Facebook page

3. Read the hemp wiki

4. Check out this blogpost on hemp

So, get creative and get designing! We want to see your most inspired designs creating awareness and helping to put hemp back in our factories and homes to where it rightfully belongs!

DATES:

Submission & voting period: 

11 October 2021 – 23 November 2012

Winner announced:

26 November 2012    

PRIZES: $2000 in total!

1st     -  US$1500 (R15 000)

2nd    -  US$  300 (R3000) 

3rd     -  US$  200 (R2000)

READY TO BE AWESOME?

1. Click the Submit button below

2. Choose your contest and download the Design Pack

3. Enter your design by uploading your files!

RULES:

1. No obscenities, hate speech or depiction of drug use - this contest is about the industrial, practical and environmental aspects of hemp usage.

2. Only original works will be accepted.

3. Colours: If you decide to use the corporate colors, please use the correct Hemporium pantone (356C)

4. Each designer may submit up to five (5) designs.

5. Winners will be chosen by the Springleap design panel, in conjunction with Hemporium.

6. Standard Springleap and Hemporium Terms & Conditions apply over and above.

7. Hemporium operates independently from Springleap.com and all commercial transactions completed through Springleap are in no way linked to Hemporium. All queries relating to this contest and their website should be directed through Springleap.com

8. Hemporium and Springleap reserve the right to request the high-resolution artwork of any entry submitted into the “Hemporium” design contest for non-commercial benefit, such as media covering the process.

9. The contest will run from 11 October 2021 to 23 November 2012. Final winners will be chosen and announced on 26 November 2021 via the Springleap.com website and Facebook page, as well as The Hemporium website and Facebook page. The winning designs are final and no correspondence will be entered into.

10. Prizes are not transferable.

Video Friday: The index

Our Video Friday posts feature the best in film, animation and moving image that we can find. If you've seen any of them, you'll know that we cover a wide range of moving picture genius including classics from the dawn of film to the latest in cutting-edge CGI. Here's the list so far - keep an eye on this, we'll be adding more every week!

1. H5 - 'Logorama'

2. Salvador Dali + Walt Disney - 'Destino' 

3. Terry Gilliam - 'Storytime'

4. Walt Disney - 'Steamboat Willie'

5. Fabrice o. Joubert - 'French Roast'

6. Daniel Levi - 'Henry'

7. CRCR - ''Les Chiens Isolés'

8. Salon Alpin - 'Much Better Now'

Don't touch that dial - there's lots more where that came from!

'Much Better Now' by Salon Alpin

'Much Better Now' is a short video for...wait. Do you surf? Maybe bodyboard? Read books? Like stop frame animation? Love clever videos? You're going to love this. So, that kinda makes this for...everyone! The video we bring you today here on Video Friday at The Leap is a genius little piece of stop-frame that reminds us all of just how versatile the medium is. This is a very simple story, about a bookmark whose boring existence is transformed by a fortunate gust of wind. Suddenly everything's changed, and with it the way the little bookmark (let's assume here he's a he) sees himself. New horizons open up, surf's up - and the whole world is changed.

Expert stop-frame execution

The real beauty of 'Much Better Now' is in the range of emotion and excitement that the simple tools used are capable of communicating (and hats off to the team at Salon Alpin for their skills), and it comes as no surprise that the team (Thomas Welz, Silvio Canazei, Kris Staber, Simon Griesser. Phillip Comarella) have won awards and earned prestigious screenings at film and animation festivals the world over. A deserted room and simple paper, cardboard books and...not much else really are brought to life and communicate a real sense of enjoyment and hope. But before we go off the deep end and wind up telling you that this is an awesome little short that's about surfing and optimism...drat. Happy Friday, get stuck in!

p.s: wanna watch the making of?

Sure, you’re familiar with that leaf. It’s been blasted into mainstream consciousness for many years as the harbinger of doom, the gateway drug, a warning sign that every parent has learned to recognise. Or is it?

That’s the issue with the reputation of hemp - it’s almost always mistaken for smokable Cannabis, and the use of drugs. It’s understandable; the plant and its leaf are virtually indistinguishable to those who aren’t familiar with the differences between Cannabis species. But it’s time that was put to rights, and hemp given the credit it's due. Let’s take a closer look.

OK, the basics first: what is hemp? It’s a long-stemmed, low-resin variety of the Cannabis family. It’s great for fibre, paper, building materials, oil, medicine and biomass. You can’t smoke it, because hemp contains less than 0.3% THC (the psychoactive compound found in other cannabis species). You might as well try smoking your jeans. 

So, what is hemp good for? To answer that question, we should look at its use in antiquity. If we go back to Mesopotamian times, the long fibres in the stalk of the hemp plant were used to create some of the world’s first woven textiles, around 8,000 BC. Moving on in time, hemp keeps making appearances in different forms: in 2737 BC it is listed as a ‘noble herb’ in the pharmacopeia of the 'Divine Farmer', Emperor Shen Nung of China.

More recently, hemp was the fibre that most of the world relied on for paper, sail and canvas from around 1000 AD till relatively recently - it was hard-wearing hemp sail and rope that made the Voyages Of Discovery possible. The fact that the words ‘cannabis’ and ‘canvas’ sound so similar is no coincidence – they come from the same root word.

These days, there’s a real push to put hemp back where it belongs – as an important source of raw materials for industry, food and medicine. The best way to do that? Getting the world to understand the difference between hemp, and its cousin cannabis.

Little-known facts: Various car makers are beginning to use hemp in their cars, including Audi, BMW, Ford, GM, Chrysler, Honda, Iveco, Lotus, Mercedes, Mitsubishi, Porsche, Saturn, Volkswagen and Volvo. The Lotus Eco Elise has hemp in it.

The Mercedes C-Class has up to 20 kg of hemp in each car.

Interested in hemp and how it can make the world a better place? Why not enter our Hemporium ‘A New Leaf’ contest, here on Springleap!

In the world of animation, there are many creators who have raced headlong into the world of CGI and taken their tip from the Pixars of the world, producing super-slick work which leaves the 2D origins of illustration behind. It's understandable - the motion, emotion and versatility provided by new techniques opens up a whole new world of possibilities. But in the process, much of the depth of character, dialogue and inflection can get lost along the way. Which is why it's so refreshing to see work of high standard being produced by 2D animators the world over. Work coming out of the Gobelins School Of The Image in Paris is amongst the best in the world, and amongst that output the creators of today's video, the team at CRCR, rank highly.

'Les Chiens Isolés' (which has been nominated for a Vimeo Award this year) is a great example of how traditional animation still stands proud as an artform which requires nuance and insight to master. It's the story of Andrew and Julien, two co-workers on an oil rig - one old, one young - and how their freindship is torn apart by the older man's paranoia that his friend is only interested in leaving. This suspicion takes the form of a phantom dog, who appears to Andre whenever his fears get the better of him. The outcome is a sad end to an otherwise positive freindship. But don't take my word for it - see it for yourself here!