Hey, everyone! Welcome to the AHSports College Project! Here we aim to create a community database of colleges for use in any project as well as encourage collaboration between users! In this thread, I'll be explaining the rules and sign-up, and we'll progress soon.

Rules
We'll operate in "terms", a certain amount of time groups have to put together teams. The length of a term is yet to be determined, we need to see how many people are interested. Each team is led by a Captain, someone randomly decided every term by a random lottery. Everyone who wants to be a Captain will have a chance to before we repeat Captains. Captains can also choose one other person they'd like to work with (which will be on the sign-up sheet). The rest of the group will be filled out by randomized list, based on the "tier" of design expertise you put on the sign-up form. Don't worry, you don't need to be a designer to participate, if you only want to offer names or critiques, that's totally ok! Just let us know on the sign-up sheet. After the groups are determined, they'll receive their challenge from the QCS group. Who's the QCS group? Glad you asked!

This challenge is brought to you by myself, thehealthiestscratch, and Wallflower. We make up the Quality Control and Support (QCS) group and are available to answer any questions or comments you may have about the project. Teammate isn't pulling their weight? Let us know! Think you have a great idea to improve the project? Shoot one of us a PM! We'll be around to answer questions as soon as we can. (And no, the name was not my idea.)

As for the challenges, here's how they work: a group will receive five randomized criteria from the QCS group. These serve to guide your designs, and here's the categories: Region, Location, Founding Date, Mascot Theme, and Color. You'll use these categories to hone in on your school, from what state/province it's in, to the area of the state it's in, to the founding date of the school to guide style, to the theme of the mascot, to a single color that must be used in some manner, as either the primary color, secondary color, or an accent. That's not super clear, so here's an example.

Let's say I've gotten this challenge: Colorado, 250,000-400,000, 1910-1915, predatory mammal, and black. What I (or my group) would have to do is find a city in Colorado with between 250,000 and 400,000 people for my college. There is one, Aurora, so that's where my school will go. I'll call my school Aurora University, and say the founding date was 1913. Since my mascot theme is predatory mammal, I'll call the athletics teams the Bears. In my designs, I'd have to use black in some way as a school color. It could be the primary color, an accent, or anything in between but you have to use it. 

The categories are meant to be guidelines, a little vague to allow for experimentation. If you have a question about if something is allowed, just message the QCS group and we'll give you an answer. And don't worry, we'll make sure that you don't get an impossible set of categories, like a 1,000,000+ city in Delaware.

However, nothing we give you are supposed to be strict guidelines. Instead, they should be suggestions that guide your creativity towards certain themes. Using this also helps avoid massive arguments over locations or names, allowing for more time to design. It also helps to diversify schools in terms of names and colors, making it more realistic. The schools the QCS group receives will be placed into conferences by us, so that no conference is overwhelmed by one style or color.

As for the actual designs themselves, they must include the following: a school name, school mascot, school colors, a primary and secondary logo, a script, and home and road uniforms for four of the six following sports: baseball, basketball, football, hockey, lacrosse, soccer. These can be done on any 2D template and will be submitted, along with the logos, to the QCS group for evaluation. If it does not meet the standards of the QCS group, we'll send it back with suggestions for improvement so that they can be touched up before being resubmitted. If it's accepted, the QCS group will transfer the designs onto a consistent template before presenting it in a separate thread at the end of the term. 

The group can determine any of the things mentioned above however they want, but it will be up to the group themselves to get in contact. We'll ask for your preferred method of contact to see if we can group those who like a specific service together, but we can't be responsible for connecting these groups together, it's just too much work. When it comes to the names/designs, I encourage you to take a vote among the group, like the AltHL/FL and work from there. We won't be recognizing individual designs, only group submissions, so there's no personal glory at stake here. This is for fun and we don't want it to get stressful! 

If you have any questions about the rules, please contact myself, thehealthiestscratch, or Wallflower.

Sign-Up
Here's the sign-up form, I'll walk you through the questions: 

Sign-Up Form

AHS Username: Pretty obvious, please use your exact username for clarity purposes.

How do you want to be involved?: Are you a designer, namer, or both? Let us know here. This is also where you would mention if you would like to be a Captain.

Design Skill/Confidence: A scale of your design abilities from 1-10. 1 is "I have no design skills, I'm here to name some teams" and 10 is "I am a god amongst men, utter perfection in sports graphic design" so make sure you pick appropriately. We'll be using this answer to help put you with people with different design abilities than you.

What is your preferred communication platform?: Discord, email, AHSports PM, Phone, Zoom, Skype, Kik, whatever you use the most.

If you could work with anyone on AHSports, who would it be?: Let us know who you'd like the work with the most, if you're a Captain you'll be paired with this person as best we can.

And that's it! Just submit the form and we'll handle the rest. We'll keep everyone updated as soon as we've determined the groups and term length. We hope you enjoy!