Joan­na Wil­son emerged the pop­u­lar win­ner of bmo­bile's In­de­pen­dence-themed T-shirt de­sign com­pe­ti­tion. She won $5,000 and an art-friend­ly Sam­sung Note smart­phone/tablet hy­brid. Her en­try ti­tled B Vi­bra­tions won the most votes from the pub­lic and the high­est score from the judges. Wil­son says she spent 24 ag­o­nis­ing hours af­ter vot­ing closed, anx­ious­ly wait­ing for the re­sults.

"I was amazed at the qual­i­ty of work by all of the fi­nal­ists...I even vot­ed for them," Wil­son said. The 23-year-old me­dia project su­per­vi­sor said she spent six days putting her de­sign to­geth­er. She said her in­ter­est in pho­tog­ra­phy and graph­ic arts helped and it al­so al­lowed her to crit­i­cal­ly ex­am­ine the oth­er en­tries. She said she liked what she saw in the oth­er en­tries.

She said: "I was a ner­vous wreck. Friends told me they were im­pressed with my de­sign and both males and fe­males told me they would def­i­nite­ly wear that style. But that did lit­tle to calm my nerves." Wil­son, who is from Ari­ma, said she went for a trendy, sporty look that could ap­peal to all gen­ders and age groups. "I want­ed to cap­ture the unique, iden­ti­fi­able things about the coun­try so the large '50' is filled with sev­er­al words that build the sto­ry of our coun­try and cul­ture," she said.

"Each word has a part to play in this ju­bilee year." She fur­ther ex­plained that the out­lines of a large crowd fram­ing the base of the T-shirt hap­pi­ly wav­ing flags rep­re­sent­ed a love of gath­er­ing and cel­e­brat­ing to­geth­er. "On the sleeve, wrapped in the flag, the steel­pan cre­ates the pul­sat­ing mu­sic that keeps us vi­brat­ing and the green dots cov­er­ing the front rep­re­sent the full cov­er­age and con­nec­tiv­i­ty with bmo­bile," she said.

Wil­son hopes this win puts the spot­light on giv­ing young peo­ple a chance. "Com­pa­nies want peo­ple with ex­pe­ri­ence or for­mal train­ing so peo­ple like me who have nei­ther are not tak­en se­ri­ous­ly," she said. "I'm proud of be­ing large­ly self-taught but I am al­so do­ing for­mal train­ing. I have a dri­ve for ex­cel­lence and cre­ativ­i­ty and it took this com­pe­ti­tion by bmo­bile for me to get a chance to show what I can do. I hope it makes com­pa­nies take note."

A re­lease is­sued by bmo­bile yes­ter­day said Trinidad and To­ba­go is blessed with "tons" of tal­ent­ed peo­ple just wait­ing for a chance to be dis­cov­ered and when their time comes they set their doubts aside and grab the op­por­tu­ni­ty with both hands. The re­lease said this was very ev­i­dent in In­de­pen­dence-themed T-shirt de­sign com­pe­ti­tion which start­ed out as a sim­ple chal­lenge to cre­ate a de­sign which told a sto­ry of the coun­try's 50th an­niver­sary of In­de­pen­dence. How­ev­er, in quick time it be­came a full-scale art ex­trav­a­gan­za. De­sign artists and hob­by­ists alike sub­mit­ted more than 100 en­tries, vary­ing in so­phis­ti­ca­tion and re­fine­ment.