Later on i’ll reveal the current top logos that you’ve been voting for. Some of the panelists final picks are coming in now, so i’ll share them from time to time as well. Tomorrow will be ISO50’s, today its the turn of Mit/Aachen Professor and Open Innovation/Crowdsourcing expert Dr Frank Piller.

Here are his picks for 1st, 2nd and 3rd:

Obviously, it was more difficult than ever to pick a design. So I just let my business sense guide my decision to provide an extra input to the real design experts (=the other panel members). And I got my personal trademark attorney sitting next to me to also get her input on the protectability of the designs (for the future trademark protection of the logo).

Ok, here is my list (first, without an order):

Pop your collar! By Netweight
- simple design, but very powerful message
- a typical “why did no one think of this before” idea
- adaptable, can be used with and without words
- and very positive evaluation from the trademark perspective, should be defendable
- downside, however, not really Spreadshirt specific, could work for many fashion labels

LabelHeads by Legofish
- 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 …

Think Spreadshirt by Inadimova
- I love the versatility of the design
- Cute, innovative, and very well transporting the general SpreadShirt message
- I see a great opportunity to combine this again with a mini configurator
- My personal trademark attorney has a few concerns (this is why she is a lawyer) but in general approves the design to be defendable (and personally, she finds it gorgeous).

- Downside: Will become the favorite of Japanese’ school girls, but will your large corporate merchandising partners love this, too?

Now, the ranking:
a. ranking - serious regarding the briefing:

1. Pop your collar!
2. Think Spreadshirt_2
3. LabelHeads

b. ranking - w/r to its ability to eyecatch, memorability, uniquness:
1. LabelHeads
2. Think Spreadshirt_2
3. Pop your collar!

There you have it, what do you think of Franks picks? Do you agree or dis-agree with his selections?

If you cast your beadies eyes over here ————————> and up a little bit you’ll see a shiny new banner allowing you to vote for the winner.

The final decision will be ours, but we’d really like to know which you think should become the OLP winner and our new logo, not necessarily what your favourite logo is, but the one you think best fits as our new logo.

The system takes the last vote by a specific IP address, so voting multiple times won’t help you I’m afraid, it will just over-right your previous vote. Of course you could run around to lots of different internet connections and vote, but as the final decision is ours anyway, that would be very time consuming for little effect ;)

So great people of the OLP, come and tell us who you think should win and help us make our decision!

PS I might drop hints about how the voting is going over the next few days. If you want it to be public you can always comment here who you voted as your favourite (the survey will only let you pick one)

Not only designs that are in the Grand Final can win a prize at the olp, we also have panel prizes for rewarding the best stuff that for one reason or another we couldn’t pick as our new logo. Each panel prize has a different area of interest. Today lets discuss Frank Pillers Innovativeness prize. Which design do you think has shown really genius, in concept or execution and really pushed the envelope?I’ve come up with a few suggestions, but I’d rather hear what you think, if you want to big up your own entries feel free, I already mentioned Pascalphillys Invitation,  Alizarines Created By, Individal Design by Japasa and Cut Cut by Mootsie when I first introduced the prize so I’ll only give passing references to those. Other entries from recent weeks:

Alexander Wende’s Growing from this week

Tarzoin1.6’s a child play was a very interesting and unusual idea

Japasa’s Hands for the way it combines the end product with the handmade process.

Laurents many logos always have a strong and different concept, so a few of those could also make this list I’d say and two of our finalists that Franks voted in the past Beans Universal Language and Inadimovas Think Spreadshirt Update

What would be your top 1,2 or 3 picks for this prize? What made you think wow that’s an awesome concept, I haven’t seen that before?

Two clear finalists emerged in the end:

1. Molecular Goodness by Thescientists

We like this for a number of reasons. The concept of building blocks made up of molecules is interesting. Its visually appealing (look beyond the smarties ;), can work stand alone, has a deeper meaning and shows the fun, creative and colourful side of Spreadshirt. It might take a little simplifying for smaller sizing, or to help people visualize what we do, but we think there are enough options as Thescientists began to explore in the additional images.

Its also interestingly from a design team, an all star collaboration of Pandar (Legofish creator of Labelheads) & Shahin. That didn’t help it reach the final, but its worth mentioning as only a few collaboration entries came in (mostly are fault for not giving you the tools)

Some quotes:

“hey, everyone: these logos can be concepts to not just old fashioned branding where you mark your cow with a hot iron… I like this concept a lot - I think it’s not too advanced to be implemented using current standards. Good work, guys! (and/or gals?) ” said emperorsnewclothinginc

“Like the idea but i think that the final logo looks a little complicated when its really small, like on the website example,besides that i like it :).” said Dima

2. The Signal by Laurent

Loads of love from this in the comments and definitely some of the highest enthusiasm I’ve seen from Jana and Ami, the most votes this week go to The Signal by Laurent. Here are some comments:

“I really like this concept, so much deeper than a lot of them, simple bold and has unlimited options. Modern too.” said Esteban.

“Laurent killed me…For me you are really one of the best designer of this competition ! This one is just AWESOME !” said Lufograf

Ami’s review “It’s not about the hole. It is not about that there are no other holes in this world - or that everything looks better in a circle. This submission is about the context, about looking differently on different materials. And it would be a true successor to the fingerprint, where we started to use different fingerprints in different contexts. Really, the interesting part comes if you put it on some shirts and it always would look different - not like a “perfect” hole, but a little crumpled, and like pmd said - more of a “living logo”.”

The following also got a votes Your Ideas wk7 by Pascalphilly (incidentally my pick from this week, in case your interested ;), Flat TM by Jaehyo Jung, Sign Here by Davidnguyen and The Blank by PMD but didn’t have quite enough to push them into the Grand Final.

So our 15 Grand Finalists are now confirmed see them all here http://olp.spreadshirt.net/finalists/category/grand-finalists/

Sorry to those that made the shortlist but not the final, you still did great we had a lot of entries in week seven!

Tomorrow we’ll open voting for you to tell us which is your favourite. Thanks to everyone that’s taken part, and thanks for making the job of picking so difficult for us over the past seven weeks.

All the wildcards shortlisted entries are now permanently archived in the finalists area.

http://olp.spreadshirt.net/finalists/category/wildcards/

After internal discussion two strong favourites emerged…..

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Yep theres a clue in that title, after last weeks no show, this week we have more than 1 design that made it to the final! Actually we have two new records, record positivity to this weeks picks (internally and from the panel), and a record number put through - 4/7 making the Grand Final!!!

1. Spreadshirt TM by Japasa

Just about the most popular, but it was close. Everyone was into this. Jana’s concern that it was too close to the Microsoft Windows icon particularly on the green. But on other colours we don’t think its an issue. Some feedback:

Branded: “Really really cool, and so pleasing on the eye. Hard edges and soft curves in something so simple. Top!”

Manuel: “Absolutely great! I would buy this icon instantly, also the concept of trademark is very easy to use and fits here perfectly”

Matthias (Spreadshirt co-founder): “Because it is simple, very dynamic, scalable and combines shirt with the idea of individuality (bubble) and speed.”

2. Universal Language by Bean

We’ve been in love with this idea since the beginning. Is it simple enough yet? Hum, maybe not quite. Most people voted for this, but voted with concerns.

Computerluv: Its a bit unreadable at the first look, abscract, but some applications really means something.

Manuel: I like it also a lot and in this version it would be usable, but i feel its toooo playful for us, that means i’m concerning that we can not use the potential of this logo in the way it should be. Our key market is online and we need to be clear and understandable.

But it has so much potential and is truly unique. It would be wrong to have a Grand Final without this in it.

3. Pop Your Collar by Netweight

A big favourite with yours, tons of comments on this. Fun, playful and original.

Branded: “Another really simple idea that’s versatile and ownable, and you can see becoming instantly recognisable. Smooth!”

Last but not least:

4. Play with Forms by Lufograf.

Computerluv: “Not sure it will work as a logo, but the idea is great for a graphic system. Maybe it just need a rework to be simpler when the logo is used small and alone.”

Jana: “This is really fun, has loads of potential to be played with and altered by the shop-partners. Obviously we would need to tweak it for small sizes, but I’m sure it can work, for example using less elements!”

Many more people voted than this, but often gave just votes and not actual comments so I can’t show them here. But these four were the clear winners this week.

Congrats you four! Tomorrow we reveal the wildcard shortlist. Thanks to everyone who took part in wk6.

Three came close this week:

1. Label with hands by Japasa

We all like this design. We’ve seen numerous version of it now, it still gets better, the best being the too most recent versions this one above and Logo. But the reaction to it has always been more mixed internally, people not seeing the shirt, or the significance of the hands. The Graphics guys played around with it and did some recognition tests when its in small sizes and people saw just hands, or headphones. So regrettably its time to say goodbye to this idea, we thank Japasa for all the time he spent on it and making it so tough to say no to. We’re pretty sure he’ll be back on the shortlist this week though with “Trademark of Spreadshirt” standing a good chance if he develops the idea further.

2. Sticker by Green

This was the panels favourite, 3 out of 4 voting for it. Here are some of their comments:

CPluv: “I like “Sticker”, the idea of grabbing the label is the brief. Anyway, i really think this one deserves a redesign. Its really difficult to read, and the branding on paper etc does not translate the message of the primary logo idea.”

la Fraise: I like the first one, the sticker. It’s clean, no nonsense, makes sense, I like it.

We like this one too. But as CPluv said some parts of it didn’t do it for us. Firstly the label tagline is hard to read, and you don’t notice its one label. The sticker idea is new and great, but we struggled to see how we could make it representative of Spreadshirt. It just doesn’t feel like Spreadshirt, even overlooking the fact that we don’t make stickers. Could be a great logo, but maybe not for us.

3. Bubble Label by Ikou

This one gave us the biggest headache. It was the internal steering group favourite. But it felt like we could accomplish the same concept with Think_Spreadshirt Update, only that logo feels more relevant somehow. The relevance is a little abstract for the first time viewer, with your own label also a touch redundant. Speech Bubble logos also have the problem of being generic, with so many already in use.

So who is going to make it?

No-one :(

Feels strange to write this, but after long discussions we’ve decided that none of the finalists are ready for a place in the Grand Final. Not an easy decision, we tried really hard to find one, anyone that could fit, but it started to feel like forcing a square peg into a round hole. So we ended up selecting none. Perhaps this is a sign that our choices were a little too conservative this week. Perhaps that we have a good mix in the final already and that means a lot of the concepts behind the shortlist this week we could already find in the current finalists.

Unlucky to everyone else, congratulations on making it as far as the shortlist.

Just one this week. Interesting week, a lot of very different ideas, different executions from the pencils in Update 1.1 & Create your Label, Hand Shadowy style of Japasa to the freak out lets make a new language originality of Beans Universal Language.

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Yay, some new features here for your enjoyment.

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Here are the talking points from the past day or so:

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