The Losers Shirt contest was a lot of fun. Some really nice entries came in, as you probably saw as I posted them here.

Now we’ve created the final collage and it looks really great :)

There are 8 or so OLP designs that didn’t 1st place included. Mixed up with entries from the la Fraise contest in a frame provided by Lufograf.

Find out more here in the post I just wrote for the la Fraise blog. (if that link doesn’t work go here, you’ll have to scroll down a few posts)

At the moment we are working out both submissions further so that we can have a better comparison - and finally a decision about the new logo before Christmas. Since our graphic guys are busy with xmas (not only decorating the office) we decided to do this step with support of an agency.

We’ve asked a few agencies from Germany and the UK, some of them knew spreadshirt and already worked with us before, others didn’t. Here is our choice, and the title of the blogpost is right: we actually picked 2 agencies :)

Read the full post

Hey everyone, I’m back from my little break in England.  It was awesome to be in the home of prepacked sandwiches and junk food. I had a lot of fun staying with friends in London, Cambridge and Nottingham where I studied. Now I’m back and I have lots of news:

1. I was a judge on Computerlove’s t-shirt design contest. I’m delighted that our very own Mootsie and his Moustache Man scooped 2nd place.

Its a really funny design, congrats Mootsie!

2. Our friend Dr Frank Piller is involved in a new design contest with a twist. This one allows you to design the shoe of your dreams, which will give you all a nice break from logos and t-shirts.

Here is the blurb

“Your task is to design a shoe model along a theme called “Original Origin”. This category of aesthetic trends expresses cultural values, regional roots and techniques and at the same time uses authentic materials and innovative shapes. The contest asks everyone to play with the theme and interpret it in the most creative, but still feasible way.”

If you submit something mail it to me and we can show it here.  Read Franks post about it here, or jump straight to the competition here

3. The Losers shirt design is ready. I’m not sure if i’ll blog it here or keep you waiting longer :)

I’ll talk to the printers today, we only have 4 weeks until I leave so hopefully it will all be ready and sitting on your doormats by then.

4. The Logo Design CA special is out. With interviews with Kim and Nicolas. I picked it up in London at the weekend. They’ll be a full post about this in the next days :)

5. Page the German design magazine did a whole article about Crowdsourcing but didnt mention the OLP once :( Boo, hiss, boo!! Still if you want to read more about Crowdsourcing in Germany give it a read, we’re not bitter (much).

6. Spreadshirt has nice little anti-christmas design contest running. All you have to do is create an anti-christmas design and submit it to the Spreadshirt Marketplace with the tag “Anti-Christmas”. Prize is approx €350 in Spreadshirt gift vouchers. Deadline is this Friday. Again if you take part mail me the link to your design so we can show the other OLP peeps here on the blog!

Have a good week gang!

Thats me and “Diggers” my roommate for 3 years at Uni and my host in Nottingham. You’re probably not interested, but there you go.

Hello OLP homies, I’m chilling this week in the land of scantily dressed women and pre-packaged sandwiche’s. So far I’ve spent two days in London, three in Cambridge seeing my family and I’m now in Nottingham where I studied. Even with the €21 I just lost at the Casino backing bad blackjack bets its nice to be home. I’ve seen a few mails and although they weren’t in a language I can do more than order beer in, it seems there might have been a few crossed wires (babelfish seems unsure) if so are a few points:

- The OLP was a big success. Internally we’re chuffed. But if I take the project document and stamp it with “massive success” we wont learn very much. The review is a little critical but we want to do better next time, good enough isn’t. So I was candid in sharing my learnings with you all, because thats the spirit of the OLP and being honest about where you can improve is Spreadshirt style.

- We’re delighted with our logos (soon to be logo). Crowdsourcing is not dead. Spreadshirt is going from strength to strength. There will be no “Frankenstein-ing”. Its one or the other, an agency will lend their experience to this. We’re stunned by the quality of the finalists, we could have picked any of the finalists as our new logo. It’s that the quality was too high that we ended with 2, not that it wasn’t high enough.

- I had booked my flight tickets even before the OLP. I love my job, I’m gutted to leave but I’ve always been a nomadic little pup, at last count I’m on my 18th house now. Spreadshirt is the best job i’ve ever had x100. If you got mails from me at 2am during the OLP that was because I was too excited to sleep, not because I was under pressure or obligation to make this work ;)

I’d love to go back to Spreadshirt after travelling, we’ve discussed it and lets see how it goes. I can’t imagine a more fun company to work for. When I started there was no Brand and Comms team, Ami and I founded it and now we’re up to something like 15 people. Everyday the work we do is challenging and fascinating. I wouldn’t walk away from that for anything but the trip of a life time.

- Polarbears hair is not white, but actually clear. Its their skin that is white and gives them that complexion from distance. This is in no way related to this post, but I’m sure you’ll agree its damn interesting.

Now some cheekies then bed, see you all next week for some more OLP action (the losers design is looking awesome, I’ll reveal it soon ;)

I spent Tuesday writing up the OLPs project review. Its not over yet, but looking back its incredible to see just how fast the months have flown by since we kicked this project off back on August 7th (the day I first announced it internally). Its been full of tough choices, long nights, stressy meetings and decisions, and joyous ups when all was going well. Now its over and I have my rose tinted retrospective specs on it feels like it was a lot of fun. But I don’t think I would do it again anytime soon, none of us envisioned just how much work this was going to be :)

Anyway here is the full project review, its quite long i’ll warn you in advance.

Read the full post

Now that Adam posted a video with me looking really stupid with my non-ironed shirt (it’s “formal thursday” at spreadshirt and all of us are nicely dressed up .. well, in theory - but even adam came in without looking like a rally driver and without muddy sprinkles allover his cloth) so I thought I need to blog this away - best by: giving you a quick update what happens at the moment.

We are in talks with several design agencies to help us developping the drafts further:

1. Milestone: Shoulder view until end of november to get an impression which one works better.

2. Milestone: Beginning of december - having a set of materials for both submissions to make a decision between the both designs.

3. Milestone: Mid of december - further development of the winning draft.

4. Milestone: Roll-Out starting (hopefully) in January, incl. new tagline and all that.

We will select the agency beginning of next week. We also will involve Kim and Nicolas and send them our drafts before we will publish them. And of course there is still the vectors for both designs avaible for a download, just in case you have spare time and feel energetic, yet creative and want to fool around with them :)

Sorry to all the Grand Finalists and panel winner. In the next days you’ll receive a little thank you letter from us. Nothing major just a token of our appreciation. One of the gifts was supposed to be one of these really nice Web Designers Calendars. I forgot to give them to production to put in your packages, they are still sitting at my desk sorry :(

Here is whats going on at the moment:

- Yesterday some small giftpacks went out to the Grand Finalists, Panel Winners and friends of the OLP.

- Tonight at midnight the losers comp ends. So far we’ve had about 30 entries. You can check them out here.

- Tomorrow Norbert and I will work on the design of the losers shirt based on these entries.

- Tomorrow Ami is preparing a post to tell you how the winning logo development is going

- Friday I’ll blog the project review I’ve just completed for the OLP and you can see how we thought it went internally :)

Then I’m on holiday for a week! Woohoo….

How you all doing? Whats occupying your time now OLP is all but over?

A heads up that the Losers contest closers to tomorrow evening folks. If you want to take part you should get moving. Another six entries today, including these great one by fatboyjim and motorsex:

And a loser labelheads special from Legofish:

Check out all the entries here 

Interesting and very detailed series of articles over at ilovetypography will tell you. Wow, its a lot of work.

Part 1, Part 2