Today is my last day working for Spreadshirt, hopefully I’ll write a proper long goodbye to OLP crowd post over Christmas. But for now I’d like to thank you one last time for taking part in the OLP. Its the most fun project I ever worked on and thats because you made it so entertaining. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you all.

Where are I going? Find out here

And now for our second part of the meet the winners interview special edition, bigger, longer and uncut logo special interviews boxset.  This time it the Swedish wonder kid Kim Larsen creator of Lovetab. New job, new city, same funny outlook on life. Read the interview in the full post.

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Its been a while now since we crowned both Lovetab and Play With the Forms champions supreme. Now that the intial shock has worn off, we (well actually Rebekka) sat down with Nicolas aka Lufograf and Kim to discuss their logos, the OLP and life since then.Come and read Nicolas’ interview in the full post. Kims we’ll blog tomorrow.

ps: Oh and one other thing, after the longest of long waits Ina just got her ISO50 prizes (we had to get them shipped via Spreadshirt and then customs jumped in both sides i’m guessing as it took forevvveeeer):

Inadimova with some of her ISO50 prizes

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One step closer, no steps back. The ball is well and truly rolling now on the finalization of our new logo. On Monday both agencies (read about them here) submitted their initial review and developments on both Lovetab and Play With the Forms. This stage was about the agencies delivering a:

- A first reaction (what do you think, what makes the biggest impression etc)

- Usage examples (one colour, small sizes, stationary, web, marketing initiatives lets see them in action)

- Development Opportunities (break it, twist it, show how deep the logos rabbit hole goes)

The results are really promising. We’re so proud of both logos that I’m certain we’ll find ways to use them both in some capacity - marketing, special campaign etc. But only one can become our new logo, and we’d welcome your input on the agencies work and your recommendations.

Here are some highlights from the proposals, showing different usage possibilities of both logos:

Play With The Forms By Lufograf

Lovetab by Kim Larsen

And here are both pdf’s the agencies submitted. Let us know what you think.

Kocmoc.net (read Kosmos) - There’s also covers Frankensteining which wasn’t in the brief, and we’ve been pretty strongly against since the start. But its nice to see their interpretation of it.

Beau Bureau - Lovetab pdf & Play With The Forms pdf

I was impressed how well they worked when used together though. Not combined but supporting each other as in this advertising campaign proposal from Kocmoc:

So what do you think overall?

Look for an announcement of which will become our new logo soon.

Here it is. At last. The special Computer Arts Logo Edition. Inside along with about 30 pages of discussion about logo design, is the near-full page interview with Nicolas and Kim aka Lufograf and KimLarsen. When I first talked to the CA guys we never discussed that there was a logo design special planned, so I hope in some way that the interest in the OLP helped create enough interest in this topic, to result in this special.

Come read the interviews and more pics in the full post

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PDF of CA feature coming later today/tomorrow. But I thought you might enjoy seeing Pablo & Laurent (aka Nelson & Laurent) enjoying their prizes (no i’m not trying to rub it in, you get a special losers shirt what more could you want?)

Laurent opted for a beautiful Leica camera, as he already had the prizes we were offering. His bathtime will never be the same again it seems.

Pablo inspired by his new iPod Touch made a song for us as well. Proving his skills stretch much further than graphic design. If any of you have a rough idea how to make it sound slighty musical (I’m a little lost on this one) record it and mail me, i’ll blog it for us all to enjoy.

More prize pics coming (hopefully) from Legofish, Shahin and Inadimova :)

Have a good week, don’t work too hard.

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)

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.

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