Right, let me start off by saying while competitions, like the SA Blog awards unofficial logo design competition may improve traffic and interactivity on your blog they are hell to run. HELL!
Right mini meltdown aside, it all started with some negative comments on the official logo which looks like so:

So we decided to run an unofficial competition to see if the critics could do better and we asked coda, Rich…! and Jon Cherry to be judges. After an overwhelming response of 86 entries and reading Stii’s post, about having competitions on muti, Neville offered to help us out and get the  and open them up to voting.

I thought this was an awesome idea and possibly the most fair way to decide (silly me)…. That was until the rather obvious vote spam started! One logo went from having a few votes to 77 over the space of a few hours – all hail the power of the group email.

And the bitching resumed… Neville and I reevaluated the situation and decided to hand the 5 designs that had the most votes over to the judges for the final decision. Good idea… I thought so but then comments like “Ralph!... The 5 'finalists' are not the best there was IMO.” Ralph indeed – I know I felt like upchucking on more than one occasion when I thought about this competition.

So, regardless Jon, coda and Rich…! All had their say and of course they all voted for a different design (buger, fing,bugger - Sarah bangs head into wall). After contemplating what to do, who to crown the winner, who to phone for my first dose of schitzo medication we decided to give Jon Cherry the swing vote – he is the curator of the awards, after all.

So he decided and happy days we have a winner. It is at this point that I’m pretty sure we (and by we I mean Quirk) are opening ourselves up to more criticism and negativity… but the winner of the competition and the Apple TV is Grant McLachlan with design 66:


Yes Grant is a QuirkStar. No we didn’t rig the muti poll. No his design didn’t even feature in the vote spam stakes and Yes, we’re damn proud of him!
So after a few weeks of negative comments, overly sensitive reactions, a couple of sob sessions in the loo and some excellent interaction with South African designers the competition is over! I for one will never, ever, ever, ever run a competition like this again, my shattered little nerves can't take it.

Thanks once again to Jon, coda, Rich...! and Neville for all their help as well as to all the designers!

Oh, I almost forgot… there’s anther unofficial logo design competition on the go at the moment – this time for the 2010 world cup, check it out and submit your designs. Gerald – good luck!