It might feel like you just dropped $75 on this year's city sticker, but the design for next year's sticker is already in.
The City Clerk's annual Sticker Art Design Contest, where high school students from around the city submit designs and residents vote on their favorite, just concluded this week. And a newly-minted Chicagoan took home the top prize.
Suthida Lertpanichphan moved to the city from Thailand just a year ago, according to a Chicago Sun-Times report today. But her design for this year's theme, "Education Is Key," will be on more than a million cars in her adoptive home town starting in June of 2011, when the stickers go on sale.
She also won a $1,000 savings bond. All ten finalists went home with at least $100.
Voting on the contest was extended an extra week after an email blast from the Clerk's office caused a groundswell in voters that temporarily brought down the site's servers.
But HuffPost readers might be disappointed with the choice: in a slideshow poll on our site, Suthida's design came in fifth in the voting, with an average rating of 5.8 out of 10.
Like it or not, readers, here's the design for your next city sticker: