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 :(

Patric sent this collage of him getting up close and personal with his special merit prize an Epson Lazer printer.

If a career in Graphic Design doesn’t work out for Patric aka Japasa, I think he needn’t worry about other job options. This photo shows he’d be a brilliant product model. Look at the enjoyment on that face, he could sell snow to Eskimos, melting their icy hearts with his fiendish grin. Enjoy your printer Patric and we hope it helps you on your way to graphical stardom!!

All the details about your thank-you OLP collaborative losers shirt have now been revealed!

- It will be a special contest over at la Fraise. It will be collaborative with you all submitting parts of the design into one big collage.

- Anyone who submitted to OLP will get one for free.

- It won’t be for sale, if you want one you have to reserve it in advance by commenting this thread.

Submission for designs is now open over at la Fraise. It closes next Wed (14th).

All the designs submitted will be visible here

Really looking forward to seeing your designs for the shirt :)

We know you wanted this prize split, but it didn’t feel right as we’d advertised a certain prize, and we should honour that. So the la Fraise gang picked:

Pascalphilly

A one man OLP machine. One of the first to take part (he submitted our fourth logo with invitation back in wk1). Our top submitter (44 entries at last count), our top commentor (something like 200 comments). I don’t think anyone has spent more time on the OLP than Pascalphilly. Came close to the short and grand final lists 101 times but somehow kept missing out on that Grand Finalists spot. But his innovative concepts and advice helped numerous others with their entries. The prize is a thanks for us and la Fraise for his role in our community, particularly in kick starting the contest with a bang.

He wins a whole years worth of t-shirts from la Fraise Europe’s Largest t-shirt design site. In total thats about 100 shirts!!!!

Heres a sample of some recent shirts:

Also two other people we should mention

Mootsie.

The la Fraise gang loved your style and approach! Excellent designs that our both playful & funny. Their all time favourite OLP entry being Trust Moustache. So you win 5 free la Fraise shirts of your choice!!!

T-shirtTalk

The best external supporter of the OLP. Provided the collages of all the entries each week, but also interesting commentary and insights about the competition. We actually used the collages internally to promote the contest. The prize comes from us rather than la Fraise so its a special super secret Spreadshirt prize pack of goodies. Thanks for your support t-shirt talk!

For anyone that wants to stay involved with this style of competition we highly recommend you go and try your luck over at la Fraise, the English language part is just starting and you can expect a warm welcome. Read about la Fraise here

Mootsie and Pascal send us photos of you in your new shirts and we hope to see more of your work over at la Fraise in the future!!

Thanks to everyone who made OLP so fun to hang around in, it became seriously addictive to us and I guess to some of you.

The Superheroes series by Nelson

Branded are delighted to award Nelson and his superheroes on their valiant quest to defend against the evil of Pollutionman, Badwool and the Scissor

This series has provided a lot of fun and humour over the course of the OLP. I think we all knew it wouldn’t make the shortlist, but Nelson was obviously having as much fun with it as we all were and so the new versions kept coming. Would Scissor recover the HQ? How would he counter the threat of Pollutionman?

But putting all that to one side, there was something deeper to Superheroes. It was brilliantly designed and very memorable. While its not right for us as a logo it shows:

a) a fresh idea,

b) a simple, clear & bold design

c) a little wit.

Everything that the Branded award called for. We’re already trying to think of ways we can use it in future, we’re sure Spreadshirt customers and partners will love it.

Congratulations Nelson you’ve netted yourself this 16gb Ipod Touch!

The remaining prizes will be announced over the weekend and Monday. 24hrs until to the winner unveiling here in Leipzig and online a little later.

An exciting day in the office today as some of the winners prizes showed up. This post is for anybody who thought we didn’t really exist and would just shut the contest down and all move to Mexico…:)

Read the full post

Labelheads by Legofish

 Picking Labelheads for the my special award was not an easy decision: For my selection for the overall award I tried to look most of all if these designs would make sense for Spreadshirt from a logo perspective (for me, this is not only a design decision but also one of giving a company and its employees a new identity). There are a number of constraints for such a selection (contrarily if you just evaluate the beauty or freshness of a design alone).

But for the innovativeness award, these constraints are gone, so my selection space was much larger. But a few designs made it into my personal short list for both awards, and one of my most favorite designs since its first posting are the Labelheads.

I have commented on this entry before:

“- A clear winner, one of the most innovative ideas seen in customization in a long time
- transports perfectly the customization message of Spreadshirt, you should launch it in any case with the logo configurator, and for a premium, allow Spreadshirt customers also to customize their personal Logohead; for top merchandisers, you could create an own logohead (perhaps with a king’s crown)
- And if Spreadshirt needs a serious logo, the stand alone version of the letters without the Labelheads also works well
- My personal trademark attorney is indifferent about the design from a professional point of view, but just LOVES it from a personal point of view

- Downside: what is in ten years? How sustainable is the logo? However, I believe that the language of the Labelheads also will allow for modifications and fun in 11 years …”

I am not a designer nor a graphic arts specialist, but I know a little about customization and personalization and thus the business model Spreadshirt is based on. And to connect this idea with the Labelheads design was a great idea for me. I especially liked the detail and level of execution of the design proposal (as in the end in innovation management, having a great idea is one thing, the other is to transport your idea and transfer it into a rigid solution), including the great mini-configurator. I could go on, but from reading the postings and comments in the OLP blog, I believe many of you share my selection anyway.

So, Congratulations Pendar aka Legofish — and have fun with your totally customized outfit!!!

Thanks Frank!

Congratulations also from the Spreadshirt/OLP team Legofish this was a very popular entry and you thoroughly deserved to win this prize!

You get entirely customized:

Trainers from RBK Custom,

Clothing naturally from Spreadshirt,

A watch from 121 Time

A bag from Timbuk2.

Custom Muesli from Spreadshirt friends MyMuesli.

More panel prizes to be announced over the coming days.

We’ve talked a great deal here about design (5000 or so comments) but we’ve talked less about the individuals behind the design. You can meet the finalists here, and some of the other participants here. This prize is about the people who’ve made OLP a fun place to be the past two months, and helped us reach our goal of getting so many great designs into the final. Those that have helped promoting and supporting the contest (like t-shirt talk) and you guys who’ve been submitting and commenting, particularly the latter in this case.

One of the successes of this OLP for me has been the bringing together of professional and amateur designers, in one contest without the elitism you can sometimes see in other contests. As you’re all at various levels of design experience its great to see those with more knowledge helping other designers with advice. So who should we reward with a whole years worth of shirts for their contribution to the community of la Fraise?

Some suggestions:

Jebs - a regular commenter, reviewer and advice giver (top commenter for this month)

Japasa/Nelson/Mootsie/Legofish - For not taking things too seriously, and for entertaining and playing around like Superheroes, Moustache and Eyebrow Man, Mood for Adam, Pirate Label heads as well as submitting serious entries.

Pascalphilly - the most active submitter and commenter, I don’t think anyone has spent more time on the OLP since it started.

Azzaoui - Supportive and quick to give advice to others.

Laurent - For submitting consistently different and great designs that made us think and might have pushed other designers into new directions.

Shirtnerd - A personal pick, interesting comments that usually make me laugh/smile.

The list could go on and on (AlexanderWende, Jeffersonb etc etc). Who would be your pick?

However you found a way to contribute to the OLP, thanks! If we could give this prize to you all we would (we’re trying to line something up, give us a bit more time to see if we can pull it off)

We already revealed the Computerlove collaboration prize last week, which received a resounding zero comments (how are those design teams forming everyone?). Now we can reveal one more prize in the second installment of Schwag Friday.

Its the Frank Piller Innovativeness award, find out more after the jump…

Read the full post

Guys, we had a brief discussion this morning and we are thinking about replacing the Adobe Photoshop Prize and maybe drop it for the latest Microsoft Paint release (it is delivered with every Windows Vista, so your prize will be a Microsoft Vista). What do you think about this idea? The reason is that we saw this groundbreaking documentary of the latest MS Paint version - please have a look how awesomely the software works:

via valleywag.