Smashing Author Contest: Results
One month ago we announced the guest author contest, with the main prize being an Apple MacBook Air. We received 252 submissions. The choice was tough and time-consuming as we wanted to have a nice mix of various articles participating in the contest. In the end we have selected 15 articles and published them last week.
We have considered various details to determine the winner of the contest: in particular, we considered the degree of utility, traffic, the quality of comments, the quality of backlinks and the poll results. The final decision was not based upon our personal preferences, but on the decision of our readers and their activities.
Apparently, discussion articles had bad chances to win the main prize. However, we are confident that top-10-articles took more time to compile. We’ll definitely contact some of the authors and ask them to develop their ideas further, for an extensive single post.
Winner
All articles have been heavily commented and rated. Some of them were viewed by over 50,000 readers. Among them is also the winner — R. Christie with his article Top 10 CSS Table Designs. The article was not only extremely popular in various social networks, it also had the best score in the poll and only a couple of negative comments — apparently, it perfectly fits to the concept of our magazine.
Congratulations, R. Christie! We hope you’ll enjoy your new Apple MacBook Air — maybe you’ll use it to write some more smashing articles for our magazine?
All finalists will get small gifts
All authors whose articles were published in our magazine will get a prize. In particular, five authors will receive designer laptop sleeves, the other five will receive web-design-related books and one will get a special prize — Luxeed Dynamic Pixel LED Keyboard displayed below.
Here are the finalists in a brief overview:
- Huw Wilkins
- Joel Eby
- Haroon Baig
- Edison Morais
- Hagit Hashimshony
- Andy Brown
- Brian Haught
- Tom Giannattasio
- Hollis Bartlett
- Juul Coolen
- Steven D.
- Jänis Lanka
- Nic Pretorius
- Irina Lyakisheva
All winners have already been notified via e-mail.
Regular writers are still welcomed!
We’ll contact some participants to agree upon test-articles for Smashing Magazine. We have found a lot of talented writers and we hope to cooperate with them to keep the high quality of the magazine and enrich it with new ideas and concepts. We are always looking for creative writers and we pay well — if you are interested, just drop us a line!
Authors of the articles which haven’t been published in the magazine may be published somewhere else — we won’t use them in any way.
We express sincere gratitude for all participants of the contest! Stay tuned, we are going to smash you with further contests and prizes soon!
void
August 20th, 2008 12:20 pmthat article whats really usefull for me
Echilon
August 20th, 2008 12:25 pmI think it’s been good having more content. Guest writers should post more often.
Amanda Fazani
August 20th, 2008 12:29 pmExcellent, I am glad to see that the Top 10 CSS table designs posts was the overall winner. This was my favorite post of the series, and the prize is surely well deserved :)
Congratulations to all of the winners! We’re all looking forward to more competitions in the future!
Janis Lanka
August 20th, 2008 12:40 pmCongrats Christie!
Free
August 20th, 2008 12:40 pmCongrats to all the winners!
That LED keyboard look dead sexy!!!
Tom Sinclair
August 20th, 2008 12:51 pmGood contest and great prize
Congrats to the winners
SSV
August 20th, 2008 12:52 pmCongrats! I really think it was the best article among the others. Well, at least the one with the most potential of being a “real” smashing post. Great work!
Michael Fortier
August 20th, 2008 1:32 pmCongrats everyone but I must say the contest was still unfair to those who wrote “plain” articles and no top 10. One writing a top 10 article had much more freedom over one writing any other type of post as they did not have a 1200 characters limit to cripple them, if I may say.
Seriously, how can you make anything interesting with only 1200 characters, or is it even possible that a well-written
Ben May
August 20th, 2008 1:53 pmI have enjoyed the more frequent content. Loved the CSS/Tables post! Deserved to win!
Keep it coming!
h-a-r-v
August 20th, 2008 2:06 pmCongratulations :-) That was fun. I’d pick this one as the winner too.
Violeta
August 20th, 2008 2:35 pmWell deserved it!!! Congratz!!
JP
August 20th, 2008 2:52 pm14 winners…. 11 prizes? (the macbookair is out of this)
wait, what?
Dave
August 20th, 2008 3:20 pmCongrats, all! Great prizes, too.
My suggestion, unless you do it already and I’ve missed it, is to start to make multiple rss feeds as you publish more content. I like the article-a-day feel of smashing… but could have a back-up feed for when i’m bored ^_^
Dave
h-a-r-v
August 20th, 2008 3:36 pm#12 JP: I guess you’ve missed that part..
“Congratulations, R. Christie! We hope you’ll enjoy your new Apple MacBook Air (…)”
Mike
August 20th, 2008 4:36 pmcongrats! that article deserves it.
Rom
August 20th, 2008 4:37 pmI must say, that article is memorable. Simply written but leaves you to be unafraid of tables. Congrats R. Christie, you got a new Apple MacBook Air, cheers!
Rom
August 20th, 2008 4:42 pmTables are used to be a Pandora’s box in CSS or a designer’s magic tricks, whatever that is, you must first know its sole purpose.
adapter
August 20th, 2008 5:10 pmCongratulation to R. Christie and also to the finalists…Btway, cool small gift. ^^
Getwizdom
August 20th, 2008 5:52 pmCongrats to the final winner and the runners-up!
But I must say, I am disappointed in your comment where you said “Apparently, discussion articles had bad chances to win the main prize.”
If I had known this beforehand, I would not have written an article. I would have sent in a top 10 list. I am sure others would have too.
ThemeLib.com
August 20th, 2008 7:29 pmCongrats to all the winners! ^^
HBartlett
August 20th, 2008 7:37 pmDamn, no laptop… ;-) Oh well, congrats R. Christie, that was quite a good article. I must say I was just glad just to have the opportunity, it was fun! I didn’t mind the short post length limit myself, good exercise in choosing your words. All the emails were cool too, got to meet all kinds of different people.
gr8pixel
August 20th, 2008 10:10 pmCongratulations to all the winners!! :D
Vitaly Friedman & Sven Lennartz
August 20th, 2008 11:20 pm@GetWizdom (#19): what we meant was that it turned out in the end that discussion article had bad chances of winning the main prize. Anyway, we’ll have more contests in the future, so we’ll make it up to you! ;-)
Rene Zammit
August 20th, 2008 11:36 pmGreat Css tables.Keep it up!
Regards,
Rene` Zammit
http://www.dotnetmushroom.com
Björn Rohles
August 21st, 2008 12:22 amCongratulations to the winner (very useful article) and the contest (great idea). I loved to have the opportunity to participate (though not being published).
For future contests, I suggest you limit the choice to one possibility with the same limitations for anybody. This would prevent people from feeling disappointed.
@Michael Fortier (#8): I think that it actually is possible to say something interesting in 1200 characters, it’s like newspaper articles. But it takes a lot of rewriting and re-editing, for sure.
Bobby Jack
August 21st, 2008 3:31 amCongratulations to the winner. It became obvious early on last week that the short discussion articles didn’t really stand a chance. Many readers, it seems, misunderstood these articles and the nature of competition, as reflected in their comments, many along the lines of “Nice topic, but too short”.
I think it’s a shame you didn’t separate out the two formats, since they are so significantly different that entries in each cannot really be compared. Having said that, I guess this all very much depends on your aim and which articles you are likely to publish in future. It would be interesting to see a series of short, concise articles, but it feels like you’re going to stick with the ‘top 10 list’ format, and I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing.
Have you ever considered hiring guest editors?
“One month ago we have announced the guest author contest with the main prize Apple MacBook Air.”
“One month ago we announced the guest author contest, the main prize being an Apple MacBook Air.”
“However, we are confident that top-10-articles look more time to compile.”
“However, we are confident that top-10-articles took more time to compile.”
:-)
Sean
August 21st, 2008 5:12 amFor all of us who watched the guest author contest from the sidelines, I think we should feel inspired to participate in the next one.
Caroline
August 21st, 2008 5:42 amCongratulations to the winners! It’s been excellent having so much daily content on Smashing!…however some of the articles were nowhere near the usual Smashing! standard :(
Dennis
August 21st, 2008 6:25 amCongratulations to the winners. This article is so useful :D (and easy to read)
Roj
August 21st, 2008 7:57 amCongratulations! I’ve one of the solutions of the Top 10 CSS table designs on our site. Thanks!
VernonLaz
August 21st, 2008 3:03 pm@Bobby Jack (comment #26) I agree with you that Smashing Magazine leaves a lot to be desired when it comes to spelling and grammar. They get away with it thanks to a generous helping of eye candy. The risk, as you suggest in your comment, is that they will end up catering to an audience hooked on bright lights and cool graphics, because much of the substance will have fallen by the way side. If that’s how Vitaly and Sven want to play it, fair enough, but it’s part of the reason why I go to tech crunch and mashable for my fix of geekery.
Getwizdom
August 21st, 2008 3:27 pmThanks for clarifying Vitaly Friedman & Sven Lennartz.
Tell you whut…give me a Mac laptop and we will call it even, ok? LOL
Thanks for responding. I will keep my eyes open for new contests. Meanwhile
keep the content coming!
spongepuppy
August 21st, 2008 4:01 pmThank goodness. The stupid article about how wonderful Mac OS is exemplified everything that is wrong with design blogs and the internet at large.
Steven
August 21st, 2008 8:14 pmspongepuppy, I think mean-spirited comments from behind a veil of anonymity exemplify everything that is wrong with the internet at large, your comment included. Everybody who contributed an article to this contest is almost certainly a devoted reader of this site — and more importantly, they’re our colleagues — yet nobody seems hesitant to publicly bash them and their work.
The hostility, malice, and sheer spite found in many of the comments on these articles is a black mark on the integrity of our profession — you would never see architects, composers, copywriters, or other creative professionals tearing into each other that way. If the web standards community can’t muster a sense of ethics and professional courtesy in our dealings with each other, we’re in pretty sorry shape.
Zarathustra
August 22nd, 2008 6:24 amhear hear
JP
August 22nd, 2008 10:29 amnot talkin about macbook air winner…
i was talking about other finalists and prizes..
there are 14 of them…
* Huw Wilkins
* Joel Eby
* Haroon Baig
* Edison Morais
* Hagit Hashimshony
* Andy Brown
* Brian Haught
* Tom Giannattasio
* Hollis Bartlett
* Juul Coolen
* Steven D.
* Jänis Lanka
* Nic Pretorius
* Irina Lyakisheva
and the prizes for them are 11
5 authors will receive designer laptop sleeves5
5 will receive web-design-related books and..
1 will get a special prize — Luxeed Dynamic Pixel LED Keyboard
that´s what i was talking about 14 finalists, 11 prizes
=)
R.Christie
August 22nd, 2008 10:09 pmThank you so very much.
It was a wonderful contest, and I want to take this chance to thank everyone, especially smashing magazine for making this contest. The finalist articles are all great, kudos to all the finalists!
I definitely will enjoy my new MacBook Air – and I will definitely write again. Thanks guys.
Vitaly Friedman & Sven Lennartz
August 22nd, 2008 10:30 pmR. Christie please reply to my mail.
R.Christi
August 23rd, 2008 10:53 pmDone! Sorry for the delay.
Jimi
August 24th, 2008 11:57 ami love you smashing magazine
Permana Jayanta
August 25th, 2008 1:58 pmNo wonder the 10 table css style is the winner. Great explanation and example. And very useful …
hendra
October 2nd, 2008 4:31 amcongratuliation