Hydration Station Sign Contest

Influence things happening on campus even while you’re remote! Whether you’re a seasoned designer, looking to explore your creative side or simply have a great idea, we want to see your design!

It can be frustrating trying to find a place to refill your water bottle on campus, especially when you’re in an unfamiliar part of campus or on a time crunch. It’s not always easy or obvious where the closest water bottle refilling station (“hydration station”) is located. Sometimes, you have to literally walk past the station before you realize where one is. The Semel Healthy Campus Initiative and UCLA Sustainability is calling all UCLA students, staff, and faculty to submit their design for a campus-wide hydration station icon that will help alleviate thirst on campus!

This design should be a simple and easy-to-recognize icon. When you see it, you should immediately think, “there’s a place I can fill up my water bottle!”.

Contest Details

When: EXTENDED DEADLINE! Please submit by Sunday April 26, 2020 at 11:59 pm
Goal: create an easily distinguishable logo that will act as a sign/symbol indicating the location of hydration stations on campus
Prize: $100 Amazon giftcard and your design on hydration station signs on campus!
Contest Rules:
- Include Semel HCI logo (download below)
  - Include the entire LiveWell logo or just the outer ring of the logo
  - The logo can be recolored.
- All submitted work must be original work and must not include, be based on, or derived from any pre-existing or third-party designs, trademarks, or copyrighted images.
- All entries will become the property of the Semel HCI Center at UCLA. By submitting an entry, all intellectual property rights in the design are deemed assigned to the Semel HCI Center.
- An entry submission into this contest constitutes permission to use winner’s name, prize information, and information provided on the entry form for publicity purposes.
- Semel HCI Center reserves the right to modify the winning logo to better fit the needs of specific sign dimensions and other requirements per each hydration station.
- The decisions of the Selection Committee will be final.
- The selected winner MUST submit a scalable vector version of the winning design so that it is adaptable to electronic and print media, to reproduction on small and large surfaces, and to use in color or in grayscale.
- Must be a UCLA student, staff or faculty member to enter this contest.

Download Semel HCI Logos

How to enter

Create a logo design in .jpeg, .png, or PDF formats (if you are chosen as a winner, you MUST be able to provide a high-resolution vector file (e.g., in Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, or InDesign).
Complete the Official Entry Form to submit your design
*Remember that your design must include one of the versions of the Semel HCI logos
Submit your completed Entry Form by Sunday, April 19 2020, at 11:59 pm

Official Entry Form

Selection Criteria

The Semel HCI Center and UCLA Sustainability Committee will evaluate all entries based on the following criteria (though other criteria may be considered):

Relevance – Does the entry align with the theme and goals of the competition to create a recognizable icon for hydration stations?

Originality – Does the composition exhibit original design, creativity, and imagination?

Aesthetic Quality – Does the submission command attention? Does it display visual balance and color coordination? Do all the elements work together to create a unified and appealing design?

Once the Semel HCI Center and UCLA Sustainability Committee narrows down the submissions, voting will be opened to the student body, staff, and faculty at UCLA!

In case you are thirsty for more information…

The Semel Healthy Campus Initiative Center ‘s (SHCI) mission is to create a culture of health on campus by making the healthy choice the easy choice. With consumption of sugary beverages as the primary source of added sugars in the American diet and as Americans have begun to drink more and more of their calories, the need for healthy beverage promotion and intervention becomes increasingly pressing.

This academic year, the University of California Office of the President has committed to funding the UC-wide Healthy Beverage Initiative (HBI). The HBI aims to create “healthy beverage zones” that promote tap water as the healthy alternative to sugary beverages on UC campuses. At UCLA, the plumbing team and SHCI have worked together to improve access to drinking water through installing more “hydration stations” or water bottle refill stations on campus. However, through mapping hydration stations on campus, it was found that the vast majority of stations lack any form of wayfinding signage indicating where the stations are located. Oftentimes, a passerby will have to walk directly past a hydration station to know where it is located. Simply knowing where a station is located may improve non-bottled water consumption on campus.

Last year, SHCI worked with ASUCLA to install two temporary wayfinding signs in the Ackerman Student Union to alert and direct passersby to a hydration station. After installing the signs, usage of the station increased by 43%[1]. In an effort to improve non-bottled water consumption and use of existing hydration stations on campus, SHCI will be hosting a design competition for a sign that can be used to indicate where hydration stations are located throughout campus.

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[1] Data on the number of water bottles refilled at the station were collected from weeks 5-9 of Winter 2019 quarter before the sign was installed and during weeks 5-9 of Spring 2019 quarter after the sign was installed. The water bottle counter on the station itself was used to collect data. Counter accuracy was tested before data was collected. Each water bottle refilled on the counter is for a 20 oz serving. The daily average usage of the station before the sign was 85 bottles, while after was 121 bottles—indicating a 43% increase in use of the station after the signs were installed.

Questions? Please feel free to email Meagan at mwang07@ucla.edu