It was just like any other day at school, until Quinten Fernandez’s teacher rushed in last week and broke the news: a design he’d submitted for a first-ever Elections Division T-shirt logo contest had won first place.
“You won, you won!” the 12-year-old E.B. de Silva Elementary School sixth-grader recalls his teacher, Kimberlee Chinen, exclaiming.
“She was jumping up and down. I was so happy and surprised,” he said. “I didn’t expect it.”
Quinten’s color-penciled sketch — with a “peace sign” to represent the number two and a large green mountain — won the 2016 Hawaii County Elections Division T-shirt Design Contest, a first-time competition aimed at getting students in grades 6-8 more involved in the elections process.
The division offers programs for elementary- and high school-age students, elections clerk Kui Kama said, but nothing at the intermediate level. Students created designs that exemplified “their own idea of what elections (are),” Kama said.
“We felt like (Quinten’s) had his own personal touch to it,” Kama said. “It really caught our eye, he put in a lot of work and created his own version of what voting should be, basically.”
As winner, Quinten’s design will appear on at least 50 T-shirts next month worn by elections staff at various events leading up to the August and November elections. Quinten also will get a free T-shirt and his class at E.B. de Silva will receive a pizza party Thursday.
Twenty-two Big Island schools received word of the contest this year, Kama said, but Quinten’s 23-student class — encouraged by Chinen — was the lone school to participate.
“We don’t do enough art,” Chinen said. “So when opportunities like this come up, I sort of require that they participate. (Quinten) is a great artist, so I was not surprised that he was selected but very happy for him.”
Kama said the division wants the contest to continue — and grow — in future years. Quinten, who’s eyeing a future career in art, encourages other students to enter in the future.
“It’s fun,” he said. “And you don’t have much to lose.”
And as for seeing his design on T-shirts around town?
“It will be cool,” Quinten said with a grin. “‘I’ll be like, ‘That’s my shirt.’”
Email Kirsten Johnson at kjohnson@hawaiitribune-herald.com.