Freelancer, today announced the winner of the “Design Our T-Shirt” competition.

Tom Pearson, a freelance illustrator and designer based in Manchester, UK beat out over 5,000 entrants from across the globe in a competition to design the official t-shirt for Freelancer.com. Tom took home the grand prize of $2,500 in addition he will have the Master Graphic Designer Insignia added to his Freelancer user profile. The 24-year-old graduated from the University of Salford in 2009 with a degree in Graphic Design and chose to pursue a career in illustration. His design work is inspired his hometown, Manchester, as well as Japanese character design. Vito Tafuni from Italy and Tiemen Vergeylen from Belgium were the runners up.

“We were completely overwhelmed by the volume and the quality of the response,” said Matt Barrie, CEO of Freelancer.com, “1.5 million people use freelancer.com, so we have a massive talent pool to draw from.”

The competition was open from March through April and drew contestants from across the globe. “It was remarkable, we had entries from both the traditional design capitals and the developing world. Competitions like these show just how much we’ve leveled the playing field,” said Barrie, “Small businesses in the US or UK can now get their brochures designed in Bangladesh, their customer support run from the Philippines, blog managed from Romania and website developed in India- all for less than the cost of a part time employee in the United States. We are proud to be assisting small businesses increase their efficiency, grow their sales and lower their costs. And we are thrilled that our freelancers are able to offer world class services for very little money”, he said.

The t-shirt will be produced and used by Freelancer staff for promotional purposes. The top three designers were notified today.

Freelancer.com “Design Our T-Shirt” Top Three
1st - Tom Pearson from the UK
2nd - Vito Tafuni from Italy
3rd - Tiemen Vergeylen from Belgium