Your art. A fair shot.

The challenge

Show us what justice, safety, or community means to you. Create an original T-shirt design, comic cover, or comic sequence in the real world, then photograph or scan your work. Entry and voting are free. No purchase is necessary.

Who may enter

Arizona students in kindergarten through grade 12 may enter. A parent or legal guardian must approve each minor’s entry before team review.

School divisions by grade

• Elementary: Kindergarten and grades 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5.
• Junior high: Grades 6, 7, and 8.
• High school: Grades 9, 10, 11, and 12.

Your division is based on your grade when you submit your entry, regardless of how your school names or groups its grades. Homeschooled students use their equivalent grade.

Impact Legal employees, contractors, and their immediate families may participate but are ineligible for the three division prizes. They remain eligible for Crowd Favorite, which is determined by valid public votes. Disclose this relationship in the entry form. Judges must disclose conflicts and step aside from judging affected entries.

Dates to remember

• Submit completed entries by December 31, 2026, at 11:59 PM Arizona time.
• Eligibility review takes place as entries arrive. Judging runs January 1 through January 16, 2027.
• Public voting begins as soon as an approved submission is published in the gallery. Voting closes January 18, 2027, at 11:59 PM Arizona time.
• Winners will be announced by January 23, 2027.

All dates use Arizona time (America/Phoenix). Allow time for uploads and guardian approval. An uploaded draft is not a completed entry.

$3,500 in prizes

• Elementary overall winner: $1,000.
• Junior high overall winner: $1,000.
• High school overall winner: $1,000.
• Crowd Favorite across all divisions: $500.

Each division has one overall winner across all three categories. There are no separate cash awards for each category. An artist may win both a division prize and Crowd Favorite. If entries tie for the highest valid Crowd Favorite vote total, the $500 is divided equally among the tied entries.

Impact Legal will contact winners using the private contact details supplied. Prizes will be paid within 21 days after eligibility, authorship, and any required payment or tax paperwork are verified. Winners are responsible for any applicable taxes. We will coordinate minor winners’ prize arrangements with their parent or legal guardian.

One original work per category

Each student may enter one distinct work in each category, up to three entries total. A comic sequence of two through six pages counts as one entry. The same or substantially similar artwork cannot be entered in more than one category. Extra accounts do not create extra entry allowances.

Make it yourself

Physical artwork only. Digital illustration is not permitted. No AI-generated imagery, generative fill, tracing of AI images, plagiarism, or artwork made by a parent or another person. Photographing or scanning your physical work is allowed. Ordinary cropping and exposure adjustments must not change the artwork or add visual elements.

You may include the T-Shirt Lawyer character in an original scene created for this competition. This limited permission does not permit copying or tracing existing TSL illustrations, selling TSL merchandise, or claiming ownership of the character. Other protected characters, logos, photographs, or material require permission covering the competition’s permitted uses. AI-detector scores alone will not determine disqualification.

What to upload

T-shirt designs and comic covers need two or three clear photos or scans of the final work. Comic sequences need one image per page, with two through six pages uploaded in reading order. Every entry also needs two or three progress photos showing the work being made. Upload all required images with the entry.

Use JPG, PNG, or WebP images up to 20 MB each. The site resizes and compresses images and removes embedded metadata. Keep your physical originals and original photographs until results and any appeals are resolved. Keep faces, names, addresses, and identifying backgrounds out of your photos.

The team selects the final image shown in the public gallery. Other final views and all progress evidence stay private. Your public artist name and optional public artist note may appear with approved artwork. The two required explanations about your idea and process are private review material.

How division winners are chosen

Division awards use the following judging rubric:

• Connection to justice, safety, or community: 25%.
• Originality: 25%.
• Craftsmanship and execution: 20%.
• Ambition and effort: 20%.
• Overall impact: 10%.

Ambition and effort, 20%: Judges consider the scope, difficulty, creative development, and sustained effort demonstrated by the finished artwork and progress photos. This includes the pages, scenes, and panels created, the techniques attempted, and the consistency and completion of the entire piece. Longer comic sequences may earn additional recognition for their scope and consistent execution. Page count alone does not guarantee a higher score; an intricate, carefully developed T-shirt design can also earn a high effort score.

Work and effort are evaluated within the student’s school division, using the artwork and process evidence rather than claimed hours spent. These weights apply only to the $1,000 division awards. Crowd Favorite is determined by valid public votes, without a category or page-count multiplier. The head judge resolves a division tie using these criteria. We may ask for originals or further process evidence before confirming a winner.

Entries must be appropriate for students and families. Threats, targeted harassment, hateful content, explicit sexual content, graphic violence, and disclosure of private personal information are not permitted. The team may request corrections, reject an entry, or remove work that violates these rules.

To appeal an eligibility, moderation, or disqualification decision, email [email protected] within seven days of notification. Include the entry title and supporting information. The team will review the evidence before confirming its decision.

Crowd Favorite voting

Each entry can receive votes as soon as it is approved and made public. Submit early to give your artwork more time to collect votes before the voting deadline. Entries published earlier have more voting days available; voting time is not equalized for later entries. Submission alone does not open voting: guardian approval and team review must be completed before publication.

Each email-verified person may cast one vote total per Arizona calendar day during the voting period. Entrants may not vote, even for someone else. Artists can share their gallery links and invite friends, family, and their community to support them.

No bots, fabricated identities, duplicate accounts, purchased votes, automated voting, or money or rewards offered for votes. Totals remain provisional until fraud review. Invalid votes may be removed. An entrant is disqualified for manipulation only when evidence connects the entrant or their representatives to it. Shared school or household internet access alone is not evidence of abuse.

Your artwork and permission to use it

The artist keeps ownership. Impact Legal may display and promote the artwork for five years from approval, automatically renewing for successive five-year periods unless removal is requested at [email protected]. Merchandise and other uses require a separate agreement.

This nonexclusive, worldwide, royalty-free permission covers reproducing and displaying submitted artwork on our website, social channels, and promotional materials for Impact Legal, TSL, and the competition. It applies whether or not the entry wins. Vendors may help carry out these permitted uses. Reasonable resizing, cropping, and formatting are allowed, without materially changing the artist’s work. Public credit uses the approved artist name where practical.

The license does not permit merchandise, apparel sales, or other uses beyond display and promotion without a separate agreement. No additional payment is promised for permitted display and promotion. Removal can be requested at any time by the artist or guardian at [email protected]. A request ends further use and automatic renewal; we will remove material from channels we control. Previously distributed printed materials and copies shared independently by others cannot necessarily be recalled.

Privacy, consent, and retention

We keep artwork for five years from approval, renewing for further five-year periods unless the artist or guardian requests removal. Email [email protected] to request removal of artwork or deletion of associated personal information. We may verify the requester’s authority first. Any information that must remain for a legal obligation or unresolved dispute is restricted to that purpose.

The artwork renewal policy does not automatically extend retention of children’s private personal information. Private contact details and evidence are used for entry administration, consent, authorship checks, disputes, and prize delivery, and should be deleted when no longer needed for those purposes. A guardian’s typed signature records assent; their phone number is private and used to contact them about the entry or a prize.

Mailing-list enrollment is separate and optional. Only people who opt in receive competition news, voting reminders, winner announcements, invitations to new events, and TSL updates. A mailing subscription continues until unsubscribe or a removal request. It is not required to enter or vote.

Questions or removal requests

Contact Impact Legal at [email protected]. Include the artwork title when asking about an entry. Existing entries keep their recorded consent version; updated terms are not treated as accepted without a new acknowledgment.