Northwest High Senior's Billboard Design Goes National

The next time you glance up at a digital billboard on 35W or 377, you might be looking at a Northwest High kid's artwork.

"See you later, alligator" became "Text them later, alligator" — three words, a familiar rhyme, a slight twist. That was enough to beat a field drawn from every corner of the country.

Lilwen Fout created the design as a junior in Northwest ISD's Career and Technical Education design and multimedia arts program. She entered it in Project Yellow Light's national distracted-driving competition without expecting her work to rise above thousands of submissions.

Her design was selected as the 2026 winning billboard. The prize: a $2,000 scholarship and national exposure, with her artwork displayed on digital billboards in Times Square and across the country, including the Dallas-Fort Worth area. She's a senior now. The win came in spring.

Lilwen wasn't going for shock. She appreciated Project Yellow Light's emphasis on avoiding fear-based messaging. "Rather than just promoting not texting and driving, I wanted to give a simple idea that sticks in people's heads," she said. The alligator illustration paired with the rhyme does exactly that — you hear it once and it replays.

Her graphic design coursework asked students to produce three billboard concepts. Her first ideas centered on phone screens and notifications, territory she felt previous winners had already covered. She went looking for short phrases that were easy to remember and landed on "See you later, alligator." The whole process — research, brainstorming, building and submitting three designs — took about a week.

The news arrived during first-period physics class in spring 2026. An unfamiliar email appeared, sent from Project Yellow Light, asking whether she was available for a Zoom call. She stayed after school that day, and it was on that call that she learned she had taken the top prize.

Run annually under the name Project Yellow Light, the competition invites high school and college students to build public service announcements aimed at convincing their peers to drive safely. Teen and young adult car crashes rank among the leading causes of death in the U.S., and the contest gives students a direct role in pushing back against that toll.