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Winners of the Logo Contest
April 7th, 2007 in Events | 64 Comments
It took us five days in a row to find five best designs for our Smashing Magazine Logo Contest. It was hard and it was a neck-and-neck race for 5 competitors. You can find selected designs in the article Logo Contest - Sketches and Designs.
And now we have the winner.
It was a tough decision to choose 5 best logos from over 190 sketches. Our choice might not look reasonable for all of you, but you have to keep in mind that the logo should fit perfectly to our color scheme and our site layout. We had to create many screenshots with different logo variations and check, whether the look we get is optimal. Not every logo we liked first passed this test, so only “bulletproof” logos remained.
More rewards!
However, since we’ve been having a really hard time making our decision, we just couldn’t let the best participants pass the contest without getting anything at all.
And then Hiten Shah came along and helped us out, providing us with few Crazy Egg accounts. If you haven’t known it yet, CrazyEgg is the popular click tracking service, which enables you to analyze your visitors’ behavior and visualize it.
5 participants listed below are therefore being rewarded with a Crazy Egg account. The first place gets it as an addition to the main reward we’ll send out in a couple of days.
Here are the best entries of our contest, which made it to the final selection.
The winner of the Contest
The main reward goes to South Africa. Ruan Deyzel was the first designer, who has sent us his logo suggestion. The design is quite simple, but it’s easy to memorize and to recognize.
Ruan Deyzel (South Africa)
I used some warm colors (orange and red), giving the logo an inviting look to it. I also saw that you used a pastel orange on your current log and dark red, so I combined the two colors. The “S” is explains itself, S - for Smashing. I love simplistic design and that’s why I used a plain rounded background behind the S just to round the design off.
Selected Designs (without any specific order)
Joanna Betlej (Poland)
The idea was to keep it very simple, black text, (font that you’ve featured: district thin) with two colour accents, made with two badge-like stars in vibrant web 2.0 colors.
Roland Hidvegi (Hungary)
There is a green one fresh and a corporate style with sweet rates and a tiny oval shapes.
Goce Mitevski (Macedonia)
The logo that I created it’s represented by two ’s’ characters colored in two gray variants, and an orange dot that stands in the middle, over them. Well the ’s’ characters are actually 2 different roads and the dot is where the Smash is. Smash is Smashing Magazine, the 2 roads are 2.0 and the dot is the WEB, so in a translation it’s nothing than the Smashing Magazine in Web 2.0.
Igor (?)
Congratulations!
Congratulations to the winners and thank you to all participants of our contest. We’ll contact the winners soon to discuss further details. We’d like Ruan to send us his photo with our award, once he’s received it.
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Jeremy (April 7th, 2007, 7:12 am)
Congratulations.
Joanna (April 7th, 2007, 7:24 am)
Congrats Ruan! Your logo is smashing! Far the best!
Good choice!
And thank you for chosing mine! I’ve never thought I will get so far! Thank you!
Goce Mitevski (April 7th, 2007, 7:36 am)
Congratulations and thanks :)
This was an awesome contest with A LOT of great designs. I personally loved them all and Roland Hidvegi’s design was my favorite :)
Dan (April 7th, 2007, 7:39 am)
Bravos. Congrats to all.
rietz (April 7th, 2007, 8:18 am)
Congratulations on your brand new trendy, web 2.0 logo.
Elena (April 7th, 2007, 8:23 am)
Congratulations. I would like my logos removed from the entry. THX. :d
JasonM (April 7th, 2007, 8:42 am)
Fantastic Work … you all deserve a pat on the back !
Animalist (April 7th, 2007, 8:47 am)
I don’t like any of the selected logo. I think they are just horrible. There were much better candidates.
Ashley (April 7th, 2007, 8:54 am)
I don’t like any of the selected logos. I think they are just horrible. There were much better candidates. Any contest is decided by the subjective opinion of a group of individuals, but the logos selected are awful.
Brutal (April 7th, 2007, 9:05 am)
Congrats! Eventhough I liked the one from Goce Mitevski better..
Daniel (April 7th, 2007, 9:06 am)
I think the favorite icon is better than these logos.
Ridikul (April 7th, 2007, 9:14 am)
Congratulations Ruan. I knew the first time I saw that logo it’d win. It’s definitely smashing.
achmadbisri (April 7th, 2007, 9:18 am)
Congrats Ruan and Smashing Magazine, with new logo i hope this site will be more smashing :D. Smash .. smash …!!
Myriam B. (April 7th, 2007, 9:19 am)
Congratulations to the winner ! All the designs were awesome !
Doug (April 7th, 2007, 9:29 am)
Nice designs…and a great idea for other popular blogs as well. :)
hanifan (April 7th, 2007, 10:03 am)
congrats for ruan Deyzel and uff course for SMasH1N6 |\/|4Gaz!n3. within mostly kiss logo. hope can make your site smash..smash and more smash…i still wait for your great smash info.
Angga (April 7th, 2007, 10:16 am)
Congrats Ruan, your logo really deserved to win. And good job for Smashing Magazine for choosing the right logo
Jermayn Parker (April 7th, 2007, 10:30 am)
I agree that some of those logos are very basic and umm a little disappointing. The only one I would even think about using would be Ruan Deyzel’s first logo…
Jake (April 7th, 2007, 11:05 am)
Congrats Ruan. Very nice work.
Seyora (April 7th, 2007, 12:36 pm)
I like it (: simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.
Brenton (April 7th, 2007, 1:21 pm)
Nice, but I think Joanna’s was the best!
Navdeep (April 7th, 2007, 1:45 pm)
nice work. hope to see this site soon with the new logo.
Hugo Beltran (April 7th, 2007, 2:02 pm)
Congratulations Ruan, there´s an amazing logo. You really smash out the contest
Roberto (April 7th, 2007, 2:39 pm)
Congratulations!
Whynet (April 7th, 2007, 3:07 pm)
I love this logo… I wan’t one of them for my website…
dz (April 7th, 2007, 3:39 pm)
I sincerely hope that those of you claiming that the selected logos are horrible have nothing to do with design for a living. Sure, it’s subjective, but I fear that your lack of insight in regards to design would greatly hinder your professional output.
Congratulations Ruan, your logo was the best fit for Smashing Magazine.
Taoski (April 7th, 2007, 3:44 pm)
Well done to all.
When/what is the next competition?
KhoNS (April 7th, 2007, 4:18 pm)
The selected designs are completely contemporary and are trendy in the first place, and have a strong recognizable idenitity in the second (or should i say don’t even have it).
The winning design is nothing more, than lame copy of YouTube logo, and your choice for making a decision about quality of presented work based on statistics is shameable step towards pleasing the masses over the expert public!
Pizzadude (April 7th, 2007, 5:15 pm)
Each of them is awesome. ^^
Congratulations, especially for the winner.
Sebastiaan Stok (April 7th, 2007, 5:49 pm)
The logo looks great but has no relation white smashing magazine :(
The design looks indeed just like YouTube, this website is about the idea of an magazine right? Logo number 20 was far more related to the idea.
Most of the logo’s look great but do not relate to smashing magazine at all! I even see one logo that gives me the idea of searching engine :| (That safari thing)
Vitaly Friedman & Sven Lennartz (April 7th, 2007, 6:12 pm)
Elena, we’ve removed your logos.
Dear friends, please keep in mind that we had to dismiss some logos, because they simply didn’t fit to the page. Even although some of them were gorgeous and had really good ideas.
Dragos (April 7th, 2007, 6:23 pm)
Grats to the winner!
I wonder, when this web 2.0 trend will pass, smashingmagazine will still use this logo or make another contest and get another trendy logo for their website?
Interesting choice.
I guess, stylish&trendy stuff is always better than good ideas.
Elena (April 7th, 2007, 7:59 pm)
Thank you again for the opportunity to be accepted in this contest. THX Vitaly & Sven.
Steve Wordpressguy (April 8th, 2007, 12:11 am)
Excellent choice, very 2.0 - I also love the icon part of Rolands design.
Скакунов Александр (April 8th, 2007, 3:11 am)
I liked 12, 13 and 24b variants, but your choise is nice too.
Raj (April 8th, 2007, 3:42 am)
Congrats Ruan!
Vitaly & Sven - It’s really not possible to please everyone when you have to select one out of so many. I know it’s very tough to be judgmental and pick one when best of creativity is all around you! I appreciate your pick, it’s a very nice looking and simple logo.
Goodluck!
Karl (April 8th, 2007, 3:50 am)
Great stuff, nice choice, stunning quality of all contestants
Luke (April 8th, 2007, 5:37 am)
i like Ruan’s logo but i prefer 20 23 and fanx no 23 for the pinoy spirit, somebody for the third world country’s
Jauhari (April 8th, 2007, 8:12 am)
Most of that design really strong and I like it.
jswo (April 8th, 2007, 9:51 am)
Honestly, I am a little dissapointed to see Smashing Magazine get an actual logo. I think having a simple, text logo like it is now fits the quality-content-beats-eye-candy feel of this site.
Gernot (April 9th, 2007, 2:21 am)
Cheese 2.0
Lex (April 9th, 2007, 8:03 am)
I’m glad I’m not the only one to think these aren’t that great. They’re close, but still missing the mark of a well thought-out design, with technical faux pas that make me cringe.
gr8pixel (April 9th, 2007, 12:33 pm)
ok guys… so now when are you gonna use that logo?
firman firdaus (April 9th, 2007, 1:42 pm)
I thought so. the winner by far the closest in character with your website design.
NaFigator (April 9th, 2007, 3:57 pm)
Link [www.smashingmagazine.com]
Is the best!
webthese (April 9th, 2007, 5:25 pm)
Congratulations! It’s very good works!
dude (April 10th, 2007, 2:17 am)
common on folks, it is apparent the guy who won the contest watches u-tube a lot. i am amazed the connection has not been discovered, original ? lol
louis (April 10th, 2007, 6:06 am)
i have to say i like Igor (?) better.
Uroboros (April 10th, 2007, 4:50 pm)
This is so disappointing. Selected logo is far from original (salesforce.com) and is not what this great site represents.
micha (April 11th, 2007, 2:04 am)
Congratulations. Deyzel’s design is simple, but impressive :-) The smashingmagazine is becoming better than Dr. Web…
Jim (April 11th, 2007, 2:24 am)
Apparently the winner is a big fan of salesforce.com.
rip (April 12th, 2007, 3:08 am)
I agree. The new identity is too close to Salesforce.com’s mark. Gotten any calls yet?
JP (April 12th, 2007, 8:17 am)
My first thought was Link [www.slickdeals.net]
I’m sure its just by chance - its really difficult to do a simple mark that someone else has not already done in some fashion.
KJ (April 12th, 2007, 10:33 pm)
First, I really like the new logo.
With that said…
I hate to jump on the bandwagon, but as a person who uses Salesforce quite often and as a frequent reader of this site, I was a little shocked to see that the chosen logo resembled Salesforce’s so closely. There are differences between the two, but I think the overall composition and color really make it hard to dismiss it as chance.
Ken (April 14th, 2007, 11:09 am)
Same author? Link [www.logosauce.com]
sarcasticshrub (April 19th, 2007, 6:04 am)
Logo looks just like salesforce.com logo…
Link [www.salesforce.com]
adt (April 20th, 2007, 8:47 pm)
Looks a lot like Salesforce.com’s Logo
Link [www.salesforce.com]
David Blanchet (May 14th, 2007, 1:49 am)
wow cant believe i missed this. probably cause im not so much into spec work. it’s a bit disappointing to see a site that caters to the design comminuty advocating such practices.
and before anybody gets feathers ruffled, this is just one mans opinion. I know all the debate surrounding the issue and am open minded to both sides, I simply fall on one of those sides…
Ali Sanaei (May 29th, 2007, 12:54 am)
congrats, you’ve chosen the best logo design …