Contest submissions for Blank You Very Much, a platform connecting major brands with creatives through design competitions. Four brand contests entered across apparel, packaging, furniture, and motorsport — none won, all placed highly.
No contracts won, but placed highly in every contest entered — competitive design work measured against a national field of creatives
Brand Design2014-2015
Created as a competition entry. Blank You Very Much was not a client and did not commission this work. Contest Platform.
DesignerJohn S. Eldridge, Jr.
Blank You Very Much was a contest-based platform that paired major brands with creatives through open design competitions. The format was straightforward: a brand posted a brief — apparel graphics, packaging designs, brand collateral — and designers across the country submitted work. The brand picked a winner and awarded the contract. Everyone else got a ranking, feedback, and portfolio pieces.
It was speculative work, but it was real work. Each brief came with brand guidelines, templates, and assets — the same starting point every contestant got. The constraint was the brand's existing identity; the challenge was pushing it somewhere new without breaking it. I entered four contests between August 2014 and April 2015, each a different brand in a different medium: streetwear apparel, vaporizer packaging, furniture brand design, and motorsport apparel. None of them won the contract. I placed highly in all of them.
The value was in the range. Four brands, four design problems, four sets of constraints — and nineteen pieces that held their own against a national field of working creatives.
Asphalt Yacht Club was a streetwear brand built on a nautical-meets- asphalt aesthetic — sailing iconography filtered through a motorsport lens. The contest brief called for tee shirt graphics that fit the brand's identity. I submitted seven designs, each taking the nautical-asphalt premise in a different direction.
The anchor and compass rose piece was the most direct read of the brand — maritime symbolism rendered as a streetwear emblem. The yacht silhouette over asphalt texture leaned into the contrast at the brand's core. The Eye of Horus woven into nautical rope knots pushed the furthest from the brief, mixing Egyptian iconography into the maritime vocabulary. The cloud-sky field with a small sailboat was the quietest submission — negative space doing most of the work. The skull and crossbones with rigging elements was the most aggressive. The graffiti spray-paint abstract with fragmented nautical shapes was the loosest, letting the texture carry the concept. And the small crest-and-anchor emblem on chest was the restrained entry — the brand mark carrying the shirt with nothing else competing.
Asphalt Yacht Club — anchor and compass rose graphic on dark ground, the brand's nautical-streetwear identity in a single emblem
Asphalt Yacht Club — yacht silhouette over asphalt texture with large AYC monogram, light-ground tee
Asphalt Yacht Club — Eye of Horus woven into nautical rope knots, Egyptian-meets-maritime on black
Asphalt Yacht Club — cloud-sky field with a small sailboat and minimal text, the quietest submission in the set
Asphalt Yacht Club — skull and crossbones with nautical rigging elements, the most aggressive piece in the series
Asphalt Yacht Club — graffiti spray-paint abstract with fragmented nautical shapes, the loosest visual approach
Asphalt Yacht Club — small crest-and-anchor emblem on chest, the restrained entry that lets the brand mark carry the shirt
Grenco Science manufactured the G Pen Pro, a dry herb vaporizer aimed at a lifestyle market. The contest brief called for packaging and product concept designs — retail-ready box cuts and visual concepts that positioned the device beyond its function.
I submitted three packaging dielines and three concept mockups. The dielines were built in Illustrator as flattened box layouts — print- ready files with product windows, brand panels, and color systems in black and green, the brand's core palette. Each one approached the unboxing experience differently: one led with the product window, another with lifestyle photography integrated into the panel design, and a third compressed the layout into a more compact retail footprint.
The concept pieces were built in Photoshop as presentation mockups — the vaporizer staged in dark environments with green brand lighting, lifestyle context that sold the product as a design object rather than a device. The final concept board pulled everything together: multiple product views, brand elements, and lifestyle context in a single presentation layout.
Grenco G Pen Pro — flattened packaging dieline, black and green color scheme with product window and brand panel
Grenco G Pen Pro — alternate dieline layout, darker theme with green accent strips and lifestyle photography panel
Grenco G Pen Pro — compact dieline with integrated lifestyle imagery and brand callouts along the side panels
Grenco G Pen Pro — product lifestyle mockup, the vaporizer staged in a dark environment with green brand lighting
Grenco G Pen Pro — alternate lifestyle mockup with a different presentation angle and brand treatment
Grenco G Pen Pro — full presentation board with multiple product views, brand elements, and lifestyle context
Modernica is a Los Angeles furniture manufacturer best known for the fiberglass Eames shell chair — the mid-century classic they still produce using the original presses. The contest brief called for brand designs that connected the furniture to a broader lifestyle context, positioning it beyond the product itself.
I submitted one design that went through a clear iteration. The early version placed the chair as a design object in a photographic setting with the Modernica wordmark — the furniture as something you build a room around. The final version refined the layout, pushing the brand identity past the product shot and into something that felt like a lifestyle campaign.
Modernica — early version of the shell chair lifestyle design, photographic setting with Modernica wordmark before the layout was refined
Modernica — final version, refined layout with the shell chair in a stronger environment and graphic treatment pushing the brand beyond the product
Red Bull Global Rallycross was a motorsport series — modified cars racing on mixed-surface circuits with dirt jumps and tarmac sections. The contest brief called for tee shirt designs that could sell at events and online, plus supporting graphics.
I submitted four shirt designs. The shirts were built in Illustrator for the vector graphics — checkered flag motifs, series branding, and racing iconography — and mocked up in Photoshop for presentation. The red-ground tee with the checkered flag was the boldest color entry; the dark-ground pieces let the racing graphics and GRC logo treatment carry the weight. Each shirt took a different angle on the motorsport theme while staying inside Red Bull's visual world.
Red Bull Global Rallycross — red-ground tee with checkered flag motif and GRC series branding, the boldest color entry
Red Bull Global Rallycross — dark-ground tee with GRC logo treatment and rallycross racing graphics
Red Bull Global Rallycross — alternate racing graphic on a different color ground, checkered flag and course elements
Red Bull Global Rallycross — fourth shirt design with a distinct approach to the motorsport theme
