FINAL: Invitation will be sent tomorrow morning

 As the newly appointed queen of the style tile search - I am in a hurry. I
will send this out tomorrow morning if I hear no objections.
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FROM: Sharron Rush EOWG Co-chair
SUBJECT: INVITATION: W3C WAI Style Tiles Request for Submission
To:

The Education and Outreach Working Group of the W3C's Web Accessibility
Initiative is delighted to announce that we have begun work on a
long-awaited redesign of our website, w3.org/WAI.

One of the crucial early steps we have identified is to identify design
resources and we are reaching out to you as a noted designer and artist.
We ask you to submit one or more possible style tiles for the team to
review with the possibility of overseeing general design direction.  Please
submit your ideas to Sharron Rush (srush@knowbility.org) who is leading the
search committee under the guidance of web site redesign project co-leads,
James Green and AnnaBelle Leiserson.

We are asking that style tiles be submitted by Monday September 5 and by 5
pm US Eastern time.  We plan to anonymize submissions, so if possible
please don't share your work with members of our team.


*Background Information on the Redesign*
First and foremost, our primary goal, is to:

*Create the WAI site as the #1 Go-To place for Web accessibility *
This goal serves as our beacon. What it means to us is about the public
perception of the site — that it is seen not just as authoritative, but
also as the most reliable place for Web accessibility information and that
it's a role model. It's not about having the most traffic.

Our short-term goal is to launch the initial iteration in the first quarter
of 2017, with a modern, attractive (to our primary audiences) look-and-feel
that reflects leadership in the Web community and builds credibility.

We've identified three primary audiences:
1. Doers (includes developers, designers,content creators, web
administrators, etc.)
2. Planners
3. Advocates
If you would like more information on these audiences, see our "Personas":
https://w3c.github.io/wai-website-personas/

The following three pairs of adjectives capture our hopes for the visual
design:
1. Engaging/empowering
2. Reliable/credible
3. Practical/clear

Style tiles are to be based on the classic format from http://styletil.es/.
The only two requirements for the style tiles are that they include a
version of the W3C logo and adhere to WCAG 2.0 AA for things like contrast
and resizable text.

There is a lot of other information about the redesign, but our guess is
the above is more than enough for style tiles.  That said, if you have
questions, we welcome them.


*Other Notes*
While we wish we could pay for your very valuable work, alas we do not have
the budget.  In case it's helpful to know, most of us, including the
co-leads, are volunteers.  You are certainly welcome, however, to note in
your resume and on places like LinkedIn, that you were selected by us, the
W3C WAI Redesign Task Force, as a top accessibility designer.  And if your
work is selected, of course you can say that too. We will recognize your
work in all PR about the new site and something like the footer credits you
can see here: http://www.w3.org/WAI/training/Overview.html and elsewhere on
the current WAI site.

That said, once you send it to us, it will be ours to use.  We ask that you
not use any style tiles you send to us for other projects unless you are
told that we won't be using them.  If you're told that we are using one of
yours, we ask that you "retire" that design and only use it for things like
your portfolio.

Also, if it's alright with you, we will probably approach you again once we
we have the information architecture and are ready to move on to
full-fledged comps and prototypes.

Please don't hesitate to reach out to us if you have questions or concerns
and of course, feel free to send along to awesome designers who may be
interested.

Thank you for considering our request,
Sharron Rush

on behalf of
James Green and  Anna Belle Leiserson
Task Force co-leads

and the following Task Force members:
Brent Bakken
Eric Eggert
Shawn Henry
Susan Hewitt
Laura Keen
Caleb Watson