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.

Here are the finalists for the Gizmo Lovers logo contest. It wasn’t easy narrowing them down, and I want to thank everyone who submitted a design for participating in the contest. I’d like to get feedback from my readers on which designs they like, or dislike. I’ll take feed back through Friday, April 4, 2008, and then I’ll make my final decision on the winner over the weekend. I am leaning toward one design, but it is a close race, and I’m not going to give my opinions lest I taint the feedback. I’d also like this to be feedback based on the designs, which is why I’m not putting any names with the submissions. I’d also like to ask those who submitted the designs to please not lobby friends, etc, to leave feedback.

And note that the order of the submissions doesn’t mean anything, it was just how I happened to save them from the submission emails.

And now, the submissions:

Submission 1:

This submission also included a solid color version of the logo, which may be better for business cards and such, as well as a concept for the site banner. The banner would be transparent in the final version, so it would be white letters on the black background.

Submission 2:

This submission also included a solid color version for cards, and a banner concept.

Submission 3:

And a third submission with a solid color version and a banner concept.

Submission 4:

Submission 5:

Submission 6:

This one has a banner concept as well.

Submission 7:

This was one of the more original concepts. A final version would be transparent to work on white, etc, but the submission is just on black.

I may work with the winning designer to tweak the design for the site. Whatever I end up using will have a transparent background to work on black, white, or other colors - as I do intend to allow readers to set their colors. The contest is really primarily for the logo, secondarily the favicon. I may work with the designer on the banner concept as well if they’re willing. Some of the designers already submitted concepts, as you see.

I wanted to update everyone on the site logo contest. I received a number of entries over the past week and the designers didn’t make it easy on me. Several of the designs would work well, and a few of them are actually similar in many ways, so picking one winner will be a challenge. I going to pick the finalists and post them to solicit feedback to help select the winner. I’m trying to get that out soon, along with the long-overdue look at TiVo Desktop 2.6. The past couple of weeks have been a bit hectic, I had a couple of days where I wasn’t feeling well which kept me from getting anything done, spent a couple of days doing my taxes, and then I got laid off. I’m getting back on top of things.

As I said in my post announcing the name change for the site, the site needs a new logo but I’m hopeless with graphics.

So, how to solve this problem? Have a contest! Whomever creates the image that is selected to be the new logo for the site wins a TiVo HD. And if you already have a TiVo HD, or just don’t want one, you can pick from the other available rewards for a total of 35,000 points. (If you already have a TiVo HD, perhaps the My DVR Expander and a Glo remote. I know that’s 36,000 points, that’s OK.)

The current site logo, seen at the right, was created by reader ‘artemis908′ back in August of 2006, originally as an icon for the ‘tivolovers’ LJ community. I’d originally created the little site icon, what you see in the browser location bar, as a kind of prototype concept:

I do like the heart motif as it goes with the ‘Lovers’ aspect of the site. I really do like the current site logo, but the TiVo guy just has to go as part of the overhaul. So something similar might be nice - but I don’t want to limit any artists. You never know what someone will think of that just feels right. ‘I’ll know it when I see it.’

I’m no lawyer, nor can I really afford one, so I’ll just say that whichever design wins would become the property of the site, which is effectively myself as this is a one-man operation. The design would need to work on the site, the current logo is 100×100 pixels - though the new one could vary within reason. I’d also need a simplified site icon (favicon.ico) version. As well as the source files so it could be manipulated for use on business cards, etc. It would have to work on the black background of the site, but the design (or variants thereof) should also work on a white background - as any business card would probably be white, and I intend to offer users the ability to use alternate color schemes on the site. (It is on my ‘To Do’ list.) If you’re so inclined you’d of course be free to include the logo in any portfolio of your work.

You can submit designs via comments on this post. Or you can contact me directly if you prefer, or if you have any questions you want to ask. If you want to bounce iterations off me before posting the submission, so as to not give away any ideas during development, that’s fine.

I’ll set midnight EST, Friday March 28. 2008 as the deadline for submissions - that’s the end of this week. Though if there is enough call to extend the deadline, I would certainly consider doing so.

Once the submissions are in I may post the candidates for review and comment. But in the end, it’ll be my decision - for better or for worse. My site, my choice. If I’m not happy with it it’ll just bug me forever.

Thank you, and good luck to any who enter!

EDIT: Of course, I woke up this morning and had a blinding flash of the obvious. The current site name at the top of the pages ‘Gizmo Lovers’ with the rainbow colored ‘Gizmo’ was just me riffing on the old ‘TiVo’ in the four TiVo colors, for lack of something better to do. It occurs to me that the design of the logo could be carried over into a new graphic site banner for the name, instead of the plain CSS-styled text used today. So if you want to put together a simple name graphic to go with the logo, I wouldn’t object.
END EDIT

I have had some thoughts about the design. But you may not want to read them if you’re the sort who likes to come up with things from a blank slate. Stop now if that’s the case.
Read the rest of this entry »

Sling Media sent out the following email today:

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to show us your guilty TV pleasures. Because, let’s face it, we all have our dirty little TV secrets.

So, just what qualifies as a guilty TV pleasure, you ask? Well, it could be a program you watch that brings you crippling shame, such as figure skating or Univision with the sound off. Or, it could be an (embarrassing/devious) manner in which you watch TV, like in church or in rest stop bathrooms.

And just why on earth would you want to expose your sordid ways to the public? Well, prizes of course. And not lame prizes, like charm bracelets or poultry. But cold, hard cash prizes.

Click here for details

To enter you need to upload a video:

Hello fellow Slinger! As you know, the Slingbox gives us anywhere/anytime access to one of our favorite things in the world: our living room TV. We’re having a little contest where you can win a cash prize just for showing us how you use your Slingbox.

1. Simply post a video (on this web site) of you using your Slingbox in a manner that is fun, original, shocking, hilarious, or whatever.
2. Then viewers will be able to watch your video and rate it on a scale from 1 to 8.
3. After the voting period, the top three rated videos will receive cash prizes.

The prizes are $5,000 for first, $3,000 for second, and $2,000 for third. The submission deadline is March 31, 2008, with voting April 1-10, 2008.