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January 11, 2006
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The Unmatched Contest
Greetings all Unmatched Style viewers,
As promised I’ve got a contest for you to sink into. Here’s the deal, my friends over at [decentcontent] are looking for a re-design and are in a bind at the moment. So that’s where you come in. I am calling upon all of the wonderful Unmatched Style visitors who think they’re up for the challenge to step up and take part in to the contest.
Here is what Heather wrote to me upon asking her for the direction she wished to take:
So over at [decentcontent], we’re getting ready for some big changes. Right now, we have a lot of really talented people on board, but the current concept isn’t really conducive to the sort of creativity and commentary I think we are capable of. It lacks focus and direction, and we are ready to move into the next phase which is away from the blog feel on the main site, more into a magazine-type feel, with each department having it’s own site, as well being showcased on the main page. That being said, the main [decentcontent] site will become a dynamic portal of sorts with live feeds from all of the subdomains, featured articles, news, calendars’sort along the lines of sites like:
http://cssbeauty.com
http://thephatphree.com
http://studiobianco.net/itaRight now, the plan is to launch with the following subdomains:
taste.decentcontent.com (food)
watch.decentcontent.com (movies, tv)
noise.decentcontent.com (music)
style.decentcontent.com (fashion & beauty)
in.decentcontent.com (sex, relationships and erotica)I’m working on those individual sites right now. I want to get away from the grey/red/black theme we’ve got going on, and keep it pretty clean, in a way that will highlight the true focus of the site: the content. I want it to be fresh and fun. I want, I want, I want’something that I don’t really have the ability to create myself. Perhaps some talented designer that visits Unmatched Style will be more inspired and talented than I.
Heather
So based on what has been said here I might suggest keeping in mind that the page you are designing, the homepage for [decentcontent] is to be a portal. A gateway to the world if you will. I know a lot of you may think right now that it is a impossible task to make a portal look great, however I suggest you stop thinking of the PHP Nuke type portals and rather focus on those such as: 9rules Communities and Kaliber10000. It is also important to keep in mind that when designing this page to allow room for growth, space for advertising and section for an online store. Now for the important stuff:
Time frame:
Sunday, February 5, 2006 is the final date for submissions. I know I am pushing with such a close deadline but I have faith that we will still see a fair amount of participants and those who are truly interested will be able to comply with this deadline.
The Prize:
Since this is such a tight deadline I decided to kick it up a notch, so to speak. Before I knew what the contest was going to be, I had planned on handing out a 4GB iPod Nano. Still a nice prize, and I’m sure there would have been a nice response for that. However, I have the utmost respect for Unmatched Style visitors that I wanted to really give them something. To make sure it isn’t the prize list that holds you back from competing I have come up with multiple prizes for the winner to choose from.
Prize #1: An Apple Mac Mini
- 1.25GHz PowerPC G4
- 512MB DDR333 SDRAM
- ATI Radeon 9200
- 32MB DDR video memory
- 40GB Ultra ATA hard drive
- Combo drive (DVD/CD-RW)
- DVI or VGA video output
- Optional AirPort Extreme and Bluetooth
- Built-in 56k Internal Modem
Retail value: $499.99
Prize #2: iPod Mega Pack
- 60 GB Video iPod (black or white, your choice)
- Universal Dock
- Apple Remote
- iPod Radio Remote
Retail value: $516.99
Prize #3: Give me the loot
- Cash
Retail value: No guess work here. $500 cash
Now having said all of that, the comments will be open for additional questions and displaying your work. You can and are encouraged to display what you have come up with as soon as you have a solid foundation. Look at Heather as your client, she will be lurking around and providing input where needed. I myself, I am just a third party on this one. I needed a contest to host and she needed a redesign; things worked out for both of us on this one. Final judgement will be left totally up to her. And the winner will be announced on Monday, February 6, 2006.
Good luck to all participants and I truly am looking forward to see what you wonderful Unmatched Style readers come up with.
Add Your OpinionMore Opinions on The Unmatched Contest
Resources & Links
- Wireframe Showcase
- All About Typographic Hierarchy
- How to use Textmate - Zeldman
- HTML5 Boilerplate
- Take My Texture
- CSS3 Generator
- Check domain status as well as social media names at the same time.
- What does 320dpi mean to designers?
- iOS Icons made in Pure CSS
- HTML5 Rocks
- styleguide.yahoo.com
- I’M COMIC SANS. McSweeney’s Monologues
- Launch List - This is such a cool idea.
- HTML5 & CSS3 READINESS
- Steve Jobs’ thoughts on Flash
This sounds great. Is the competition for just designing the the opening page of the site? or for design the full site, including all 5 sub domains?
I just had a chat to Ryan and he told me it was a single page - might take a look at this if I have time!
hey kids…
it’s just the main, portal page that will house the feeds and features of the subdomains, which i’m working on right now. hopefully over the next few days i’ll have some stuff for you to take a look at.
“Look at Heather as your client, she will be lurking around and providing input where needed.”
Ok, here are some questions for the client:
- Do you want to keep the existing treatment of the name (with square brackets) and the strapline “choice cuts, fresh daily”, or are you open to new ideas in those areas?
- Do you have any visitor stats you could share with us, like screen resolutions?
- Is there any preference for fluid, elastic or fixed width design?
- As a fairly high-traffic site, is there an upper limit on the page size you’re willing to accept (so we don’t submit designs full of high-quality .jpgs and prototype.js)?
- Can you explain a little about the frequency and style of articles; from the current front page they seem to be pretty long?
- uh… that’s it for now.
Are you looking for an image of the design or a full fledged CSS/HTML/Javscript monster?
Emil - The winning design is going to become the hompeage for [decentcontent], so when February 5th comes we’re going to need all HTML, CSS, scrpits and images used.
Matthew - I will wait for Heather to step into field all of those questions.
$500 for the full-on page design, including XHTML/CSS? Damn, that’s not a whole lot. Let me know who normally charges clients this and I think I’ll farm my stuff out to you while still making $100/hr margins
Mike - That’s because you my friend are a hustler. If you’re trying to make me up the ante to a MacBook Pro, good luck with that, the first MacBook Pro I’m going to be buying is for myself.
Anyhow stop naysaying the contest, it’s supposed to be fun man. So go back to napping…I mean work.
okey dokey…here goes.
*the treatment [decentcontent] stays. the tagline and the meat are fluid and we are open to suggestion in those areas - but most of our team are pretty attached to them. so it’d have to be something pretty killer to replace it.
*resolutions (last 2 months) :
46.87%1024×768
30.63%1280×1024
8.80%Unknown
6.94%800×600
4.57%1152×864
2.20%1600×1200
*fluid designs can be hot if they’re done right, so we’re definitely open to them…but as a standard, we’re probably looking for a fixed width.
*all the pics and photos should be optimised for web use, to cut down on unnecessary bandwidth um, usage.
*when the departments all move to their separate sites, there will be article posted more frequently. they are all fairly in-depth, but what we’re looking for is a front page to showcase the latest work on the subdomains, featured articles, stuff like that. the style is focused on one thing: good, intelligent, solid writing. everyone has their own style, but the common bond is the writing.
Hi, where do you want us to send the designs to? Would you prefer them to be emailed to you or will a weblink on this page do? (By the way I haven’t started on any designs yet, this is just for furture reference!)
Chris - Good question. The answer would be either or. I will say that if you post your work in the comments that you might only want to use a full size image of the design to protect your own work.
I have just set up a special email account (so submissions don’t get lost in my endless pile of spam) that everyone is more than welcome to send their submissions to. I will give Heather access to this email account too so if you submit something and want some feedback on what she likes and what she doesn’t like; she can get in touch with you. The address is:
contest {at} unmatchedstyle.com
ok kids I’m here I’ll work on it some.I’m thinking about a clean but funny style. must it be validated css / xhtml?
Sinan - As good as a thing as validation is I’m more concernd that it works. Modern browsers. I know that the modern browsers term might be up in the air for debate and I’m not about to be the one who debates it so I will leave that up to your own descision.
I’ll tell you this though, I will not be checking it anything 4.x or below.
ok so one more question.must it be a wordpress theme or only designing it with XHTML / CSS ???
$500 for a website, and the justification for such a low price is that it’s “supposed to be fun”…
It’s not “fun,” it’s a joke.
Contest closed, Sinan Ata has won the contest. Congratulations.