It has taken a bit longer than I originally anticipated, but the time is finally here to announce the winner of the Gizmo Lovers Logo Contest.

I want to thank everyone who submitted a design. I was surprised by the response, I never expected so many submissions and narrowing the field to the finalists wasn’t easy, let alone picking a winner. Because of the number and quality of submissions I decided to change up the contest a bit – instead of only the winner receiving a prize, I’ll be awarding prizes to all of the finalists.

First up, what I’ll call the People’s Choice Award. The comments left on the finalists post were a little surprising to me. I had almost left entry number seven off the list, since it wasn’t quite the ‘feel’ I was looking for. But the fact that it was different and creative swayed me, and it seems several people really liked it. And so I’m awarding 10,000 TiVo Rewards Points to the entry to use as desired, congratulations to Ashley Kline!

Next up is an honorable mention for Scott Pope. Scott submitted more designs than anyone else, and had two make the list of finalists. Scott came up with a number of creative entries and in reward for his effort he wins 10,000 TiVo Rewards Points.

The third place winner did a good job of capturing the look and feel I was looking for. It is important for the logo to stand out and be recognizable in different applications, at different sizes and resolutions. The simple G on a heart works perfectly, and clearly it occurred to multiple entrants. I liked the look of this design and it was a strong contender. This third place winner receives 15,000 TiVo Reward Points, congratulations to Cory Gransee!

Second place goes to a slightly different design submitted by Donald C. Alexander, who also submitted the second finalist entry. It has the G on a heart, but instead of the G being the gear the heart is itself on a gear wheel. I liked the different take on the concept, and the 3d perspective was nice for the site. But for other applications, such as embroidered on a polo shirt, it’d probably have to be re-done to be ‘flat’ – looking dead on at the heart so there wouldn’t be perspective to deal with. It was a near thing, a few people also commented that they liked this design, but in the end it didn’t quite sway me. The second place winner receives 25,000 TiVo Rewards Points, congratulations!

And here it is, the winner and the new Gizmo Lovers logo, created by Ethan Silverthorn. The one thing I didn’t quite like about the entry was that I felt it was a tad too dark, so the final version has been lightened up a bit. But that’s the only change. The shaded version is the new logo, while the solid colored variant can be used on printed materials. Somewhat amusingly reader unteins pretty much summed up my thinking in his comment on the finalists post.

The design is clean and simple, and is very clear from a distance. It scales well and looks good, and is recognizable and readable, both small and large. It is simple and translates well to a single color variant, which is important when you start pricing out printing business cards and the like. And I can easily see it embroidered on a polo shirt, or screen printed on a T-shirt. And those are things any good site logo needs to handle. And it best captures the kind of feel I was looking for for the site.

For submitting the winning design, Ethan wins the TiVo HD grand prize.

Thank you again to everyone who submitted a design. I’ll be emailing these winning entries to see what you’d all like for the points and work out delivery of the rewards.