Final Results!!!!
Posted by Geoffrey Grosenbach Sat, 10 Dec 2005 09:02:00 GMT
Yes, this post deserves quadsclamation, and much more.
After two months and one day, this contest comes to an end. There will be tears of joy. There will be tears of sorrow. There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
And yes, it is going to hurt me more than it will hurt you. I wish I could give a brand new PowerBook to every one of the participants in this contest.
You have given an incredible gift to the Rails community. These themes will be used all over the world and in many languages. For that I thank you.
I thank our judges for taking the time to look through so many themes. Now go buy yourself a copy of Mint or hire one of our other fantastic judges to design for your next project.
Finally, I thank our generous sponsors for digging deep and providing prizes that truly make people froth at the mouth in anticipation. Go buy their products!
- Site5 Hosting
- Planet Argon Hosting
- Ma.gnolia Social Bookmarking
- The Pragmatic Programmers
- The Iconfactory
- Macromates
- Tables Turned
For everyone else, this site will continue to be maintained as a source for fresh Typo themes for years to come. I saw many themes that were never submitted in time for the contest, and I hope we will see those here in the next few weeks.
Without further ado, here are the final results as determined by the judges…
Crowd Favorite
I really liked this theme and was surprised that it didn’t receive more attention from the judges.
At any rate, it was the crowd favorite with more unqualified positive comments than any other theme.
Hemingway receives the crowd favorite award and receives a year of Level 3 hosting from Planet Argon.
Judges’ Choices
| 9th | Inkling receives one free year of Tables Turned’s podcast creation services, hosting, and access to the Play Safe podcast music library. |
| 8th | Lush receives a copy of Iconbuilder, from the Iconfactory |
| 7th | Modernist receives a copy of XScope from the Iconfactory. |
| 6th | Bird Flu also receives a copy of XScope. |
| 5th | I am Rice receives a copy of Agile Web Development with Rails, from The Pragmatic Programmers. |
| 4th | Royal Vinter receives a copy of TextMate, from Macromates. |
| 3rd | Laughing at You receives a 4 GB iPod nano, thanks to Ma.gnolia Social Bookmarking. |
| 2nd | Phokus receives a 12 inch iBook, donated by Site5 Hosting. |
| 1st | Origami receives a 15 inch PowerBook, donated by Site5 Hosting. |
And yes, these results are final.
I will be contacting these individuals this weekend to get their mailing address or other contact information.
The clock says 3:00 AM. I will be looking forward to a few nice weeks of sleep now that the contest is over.
But…it would be nice if there were more sidebars available for Typo…
Congratulations to all who won!
I can’t help but feel the results are a bit… different from what I had anticipated. But that’s how these things go.
I know I had a lot of fun participating, and in the end, that’s what it’s all about.
I ehm… feel the same like Bastiaan. But I’m not gonna further comment on it besides stating that luckily I agree wholeheartedly on one thing: the winner.
Congratulations Leevi, you deserved this more than anyone else..
Congrats to all the other entrants and winners. A big thanks to the judges for providing their time and an extra big thanks to Geoff for organising such a successful contest. We have all helped to improve Typo and push it towards mainstream adoption. Thanks to all the competitons sponsors, without them I doubt there would have been so many high quality themes. Oh one last thankyou to my beautiful girlfriend Sarah, for her patience and support. Like Geoff I am also looking forward to sleep.
One other thing, For all of you who are using a trunk version of Typo, a trunk version of Origami with gravatars and comment previews will be available very soon.
Fabulous news. Thanks.
Congrats Leevi! I’m allready using your theme. It’s fantastic! I also subscribe to what others said about some of the results.
Congratulations Leevi! Much respect to everyone who entered the competition.
I. Am. Shocked.
For the next contest, it would be nice to know what paramaters the judges are going to be focusing on.
Congrats Leevi!
...not that I expected to win or anything… I just don’t understand whu some themes were scored higher than others…
Huray! Well done everyone. Type is do doubt going to be the blog software of choice for many more people in the future.
By the way, maybe I can’t count but Origami got way more comments than Hemingway which means Origami isn’t only the winner but also the crowd favorite.
This is not to say anything bad about Hemingway by the way! I have no idea why it isn’t in the real list. It should be as far as I’m concerned.
Marco,
I think they said “comments or something like it” So… it was a bit of a subjective vote I suppose :)
Congrats to all the inners!
Thanks for hosting the contest Geoff!
It was inspiring to see the rush of entrants in the final week.
I thought this was a contest based on original design. I’m suprised to see some of those entries up there are considered original designs.
Origami definately deserves first. It’s very tight and polished.
this contest was such a great idea. it brings me satisfaction to think about how we were given this opportunity to participate in typos development in our own way. i am both honored and inspired. thank you.
This has been a fabulous ride and I’m delighted to have been involved.
Geoff: Thank you SO much for taking charge of the entire project and making it happen! We all appreciate how much of your time and energy you’ve put into this.
I deeply respect the judges that were involved. I’m a bit surprised by the results, but I know they know what they’re doing. I think it would be interesting to better understand their thinking processes.
I agree with Thomas Aylott. In retrospect it would have been nice to know what criteria there actually were when it comes to judging the themes. I would have done a lot of things differently probably.
Surprise at this end of the table as well, but hey, it’s a contest and thus your work is subject to other peoples opinion. That’s kind of why you enter, isn’t it? :)
Congrats Leevi, enjoy it (I know you will :D).
Great winner! Well deserved..
Although a newbie to RoR and Typo (but not to web development and design) I must confess I am too surprised by the judges remaining selections but appreciate it’s objective.
Well done to all who took part :)
Wow. I’m shocked too. Can’t believe I made 2nd place, but I’m glad I did :)
Origami is a fantastic piece of work! I would have picked it too if I was a judge. Congrats Leevi and thanks to everyone involved.
Congrats Leevi, truly well deserved. As for some of the remaining places, very surprising!?
Agree with Thomas, what exactly was the criteria for the judging?
The guidelines must’ve stated something about requiring the design to be easily manipulated by users, because as far as I can tell, some of these top ten winners are far from being designers, and the results clearly required minimal thought, time, or effort.
Having said that, the only thing right is probably the winner.
I’m familiar with the sites (and some of the work) of the three judges mentioned above, but if I hadn’t been prior to this, I’d seriously question hiring them based on these results. VERY disappointing.
Congrats to the winners, and everyone involved.
What are the exact plans for keeping the themes? Are we supposed to just keep them in the same location on our servers for future reference, or are they going to be collected and put into one place in the future? If so, how would we get any updates to you?
Thanks, congratulations to everyone again.
Well after two days this thing has sort of ‘settled down’ in my head. The results of this contest have made me seriously question my own design abilities to be honest. However after reading the comments below both my little ‘post mortem’ and this announcement posting I feel better.
I’d like to congratulate John Serris with his second place as well. His submission is definitely nice. I actually listed him as a potentially prize winning contestant. And Leevi’s design kicks total ass of course but I guess I’ve said that quite often already.
About the rest of the results I can’t help but feel like something seriously strange happened. I’m not saying this because I’m pissed off about not winning a big prize but because I feel it has damaged this otherwise excellent contest and Geoffrey’s hard work during the whole event. I guess we can all try to think of all kinds of theories as for what happened but as long as we don’t know what the (hidden) criteria were, whether all judges actually sent in their results (I wonder about that) and whether they actually took this whole thing really seriously (none of them actually blogged about this noteworthy event. just to mention one odd aspect) we can only make wild guesses.
But… life goes on. I’m still glad I participated in this contest, I’m glad I got to know Typo, Rails and the awesome friendly community behind it and I’m glad to see the Typo community does love the insane amount of work I dedicated to this contest. The Typo theme tutorial I posted resulted in an all-time hits record on my blog which kicks ass too. I’m sure a lot of good things will come from this all despite the disappointing ranking list.
Thanks again everyone!
I did not enter the contest, nor am I a judge, but I have been watching the themes come in and reading this thread too. Someone needs to say it: Enough with the attitudes! I’m sorry you are shocked that you didn’t win, but seriously folks, have some respect. Plus, I feel like some of you are missing the point. The contest was for a highly adaptable blog theme to be distributed with Typo. Blogs are about you, about what you have to say to the world. A default Typo theme needs to be highly usable too—I’m sure technicalities of markup and degradation were considered.
You should take a look at how the winners’ themes addressed all of the above … and you should also load them up in a web browser since the PNGs don’t do justice to the way some fill up a window or behave on the search and comments.
There might be themes that were more complex or which looked like the designer “put in more effort” but again I think you are missing the point. Did you take a moment to get to know the judges? These folks really know the web, backwards and forwards. A stock typo theme needs to be timeless. Anyone can fade in some diagonal lines or make a button in the latest, hottest style. I honestly think the winners were well chosen; each skin will serve well as a stylish stock theme for a user who is just getting familiar with Typo.
Kumar, I mentioned I was “shocked”. I’m not sure if any of your post was directed to me but I just wanted to clear something up. I assumed I wouldn’t get into the top 10 at all!
So it was a nice surprise :)
Kumar: “highly usable” you say? Well for example 3rd place winner theme doesn’t even have a search box… and the examples can continue.
Congrats Leevi,
well deserved. For others… arghh hammm… i won´t say anything. Sorry.
What i´m really sure now is that there were better themes as those selected for the first 10, IMHO.
Next time, to avoid unexpected results, it will be better to ask for a high traffic website to host a popular voting. This will surelly avoid such an awkward result.
Stay lucky guys !
Henrique
Been a great contest and I think the results are fair enough.
This is a theme design contest. It is not about how much cool little plugins you can integrate into your theme it’s about how it looks aesthetically.
So yeah thats why I think for the most part the places seem fair enough. Although yes I am also a little disappointed I didn’t win even an honourable mention prize. :p Oh well. As contests always go: Better luck next time.
Jonathan said “This is a theme design contest. It is not about how much cool little plugins you can integrate into your theme it’s about how it looks aesthetically.”
Is that really the case? I mean, others have mentioned that functionality was also one of the criteria. What exactly WERE the criteria used to judge this contest? I’m sure many of the entrants would have spent their time more effectively had they known that the results would be based on aesthetics only.
I didn’t enter this contest so I am posting from a relatively neutral perspective here. From what I have read however I feel that a little more transparency in the judjing process would have been prudent for such a high profile competition.
Would any of the judges care to comment here to clarify things for everyone?
Wow, I have to say some of these responses are dissapointing.
I entered this contest at number 2, before the extra prizes were added and before the judges were announced. I did not try to read up on the judges or build my theme to appease them. I merely designed the way I like to design.
I have been in the design field for over a decade. I have gone through many design “phases”. My design process started off complicated, intricate then to simple. I like simple designs.
The point of this contest was to bring more themes to the Typo community. I’m not sure what the judges were told to base their descisions on but I think they did a pretty good job. I do disagree with a few placements (I should have come in around 5th or 6th).
I do find it odd that none of the judges have said a word about it but they are very busy people. Anyway, thanks to Topfunky for putting on this contest and to the judges for donating their time.
The rules for this contest were intentionally vague in order to give you the greatest creative latitude. They were clearly posted here and were easily available by searching for “contest rules” on this site (also the first Google result for “Typo Theme Contest Rules.”)
The rules were later amended to allow themes that used the more advanced features of the upgraded Typo trunk, resulting in many of the top quality themes you see here.
Please do not pester the judges with questions about their motives or choices. Every one of the winning entries was superb and you’ll be seeing them all over teh blogosphere real soon.
Thank you to everyone who participated! After a few weeks, others will be maintaining this site and will be posting contact info, should you desire to send in other themes that you are working on.