- This topic has 35 replies, 11 voices, and was last updated 21 years, 1 month ago by
.
-
Posts
-
Jeff and I been talking about this off and on for a few days now. And thought it would be a great idea to see what everyone else thought.
Because BBB is running a referral contest wouldn’t it be nice to have new exciting fresh banners as well? And what a way to get members involved in the site. We have a lot of talent here and it would be great to see what they could come up with.
But we need to think of prizes as well as rules. And if these 2 contests should be ran together and if so how to link the two.
I was thinking one of the rules should be how it should at least somewhat match the site. Another would have to pertain to not stealing someone’s graphics or copyrighted material. And if Jeff permits the use of his graphics.
I hope posted this because Jeff is busy and forgot to post this. (Hope you don’t mind Jeff, at least now all you have to do is reply and add to it lol)
Thanks Amy!
I’m home today, so hopefully I’ll be able to catch up on a few things. Saves me 3 hours of commute time!
As Amy said, I think it’s a great idea. I have no problems sharing some of the BBB graphics, and can probably even Photoshop files for some of the artwork.
I will provide the name of the font used in the logo (Trebuchet MS), and hex values for the logo’s color scheme. #0066CC, #66CC33.
When we talk about banners, some people immediately think of 460 x 60 advertising banners, which is not what this contest should be about. Maybe we should call this a “button contest” to make it more palatable?
On that point what size(s) should we accept? Should there be a maximum size? Or maybe an award for the winner(s) in each size group? I’m inclined to suggest we use some standard sizes:
- 80 x 15
no animation - 100 x 15
no animation - 88 x 31
animation o.k. - 50 x 50 AIM Buddy Icon size
animation o.k. - 96 x 96 MSN/Yahoo/ICQ Display Picture size; no animation
- 120 x 90 animation o.k.
- 125 x 125 animation o.k.
- 120 x 240 animation o.k.
- and maybe an “oddball” category for anything else
It’s also important for participants to understand the purpose of the buttons. The goal is to promote BigBlueBall and bring new people here, hopefully to become members. These images are not intended for use as avatars or signature graphics here at BigBlueBall, although they could be used on other sites.
They could be used to promote a specific section or feature of the site, such as Yahoo!, MSN, or our IRC.
Acceptable formats, GIF, JPG, and PNG, with bonus points for PSD. :p
That’s my “brain dump” for now…. any other ideas?
I think its a great idea! Would you want us participating also? Or should it be left to the other BBB members? I’m asking because some of the moderators here might be considered highly experienced in this category. They could either end up scaring away the competition or instead bringing in more.
Sounds interesting. I’m sure we’d get a lot of entrees. The winner can get a Mazda RX-8 but first it has to be sent to me for umm evaluation purposes. Can’t send a faulty prize you know…yeah…*coff*.
About that 460 X 60 comment, it sounds like something I’d do. heh. But yeah it’d be interesting to see more buttons than banners, maybe even flash animated ones?
Someguy03 wrote:I think its a great idea! Would you want us participating also? Or should it be left to the other BBB members? I’m asking because some of the moderators here might be considered highly experienced in this category. They could either end up scaring away the competition or instead bringing in more.i would tend to think we would be able to participate as well… if you drop the staff from the contest, you lose a LOT of people with graphics abilities… yourself, myself, Sami, etc… BBB has more to gain than to lose by allowing staff to participate.MiamiGuy wrote:But yeah it’d be interesting to see more buttons than banners, maybe even flash animated ones?good question… are we allowed to do animated buttons? i dont know flash (yet) but what about GIF files? obviously not a million frames, but enough to do some kind of animation perhaps? or do you want purely static images?
also, what formats do you want these in? GIF, PNG, JPG… ?
I think it’s fine to allow staff to participate, as long as they don’t win. :p
Seriously though, how would the contest be judged? Should we do a poll and allow members to vote on their favorite?
Also, do you think the size classes I proposed make sense, or should it be one big pool of images of any size competing against each other?
Jeff wrote:I think it’s fine to allow staff to participate, as long as they don’t win. :ppshh. i dont care if i win anything, it gives me a chance to do at least two things: do something productive and give back to bbb.
Quote:Seriously though, how would the contest be judged? Should we do a poll and allow members to vote on their favorite?that sounds ree-zahnable. (if you dont like Homestar Runner… that wont be funny)
Quote:Also, do you think the size classes I proposed make sense, or should it be one big pool of images of any size competing against each other?yeah, it makes more sense to have separate categories, that way it gives people something specific to design for, and an idea of what the end should be like. like having weight classes in boxing.What about keeping them all private until the contest is over. This way people can’t see the other competition and/or mock any of them. Then perhaps putting them up for a vote though the voting would have to be done once per user to avoiding any cheating.
*salutes Tom* I hear you there. I’ve gotten bored, photoshopping together pictures and pokemon cards for my uncle’s girlfriend’s son, heheh, I need a new project, and my two photoshop students are now learning enough on their own where they don’t need me. I really never thought about winning, just as long as I have something to do and can be of some use to folks. Kind of like that ever obnoxious banner search for SAIS.
Anywho, yes yes, Amy *nod* I think that having people critique the buttons beforehand could be a good and a bad thing. It’s great to get constructive critisism, especially if you’re just beginning and asking a more adept person what they think, but bashing on someone’s work is just pointless and can discourage them from entering, or make them pull their entry out completely…so really it’s a grey area. Do we want to have people asking others on opinions before the final product, like predetermined folks, or leave them to their own devices, let people offer up their impartial services, or what here?
Voting sounds fine, but how do we cut down the number of entries, assuming we’ll get a number of entries from a number of people. And should we restrict the number of entries people can submit? I’ve been involved in judging and organizing a few of these kinds of competitions where a person has sent in over 20 submissions. I wouldn’t want to say that everyone can just hand in one, just because there are a number of ways to construct a button, but we don’t want someone flooding or “stuffing the ballot box” as they say.
I’ve seen similar contests done before on other sites, and they were posted publicly in a forum topic. People could comment, if they chose, and they could see the work submitted by other people. There is the chance that someone could take someone else’s idea and modify it, but having all the submissions entered in a forum topic helps sort out who did what, when.
I’m inclined to have submissions be public, personally.
Here’s a few examples from other contests I’ve seen:
- Sitepoint’s t-shirt design contest (also check the guidelines and prizes)
- Sitepoint’s Holiday Avatar contest
If you know of any other contests on other sites that we can look at for an example of what to do (or even what NOT to do), post’em here. I’d like to get this rolling.
When I ran a contest like this, we just had them email them in then judged in private. But since you’ve done it another way and that worked, I say stick with what you’re use to.
just out of curiosity, what ever happened to this? i came looking for this topic because i remember seeing a few different banner sizes posted, and i’m about to start whipping up some banners and link buttons for a website i’m still working on. did the banner contest/whatever get abandoned, or postponed, or just kinda neglected?
as long as i’m making some banners for the other project, i can try to put something together for BBB if they’re still wanted/needed… yes/no?
- 80 x 15
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.