Winners Announced
Thanks to everyone for a wonderful first theme mockup contest. To recap, we had 46 entries, 25,000 visitors on the first day of user voting, over a thousand dollars of software and cash prizes donated by sponsors, and now, we have six winners.
Please proceed to the winners page to view and comment on the winning mockups. We are expecting the construction of these entries into themes to take about two months.
There were many great entries, and many that did not make the top 6 still deserve to be made into a theme. That having been said, I am working as always to secure more themers, to have these great ideas turned into reality. Feel free to comment here on reflections, suggestions, and general comments, and use the winners page to comment on winning mockups. All entries now display the final score, and that page will remain up for some time.
Again, thanks to everyone for making this contest a success.
Comments
Posted by will at April 4, 2004 08:47 PM
thank you webdesk for letting me be the first to comment
I LOVE NICKEL COBALT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!11!!1!!!!
Posted by Mushu at April 4, 2004 09:10 PM
I'm so disappointed. None of my favorite themes won. Infact, some of my least favorite themes one.
Posted by Jason Williams at April 4, 2004 09:21 PM
Nickelcobalt and Simple Grey were two of the 6 themes I wanted to win. Hehe I'm content..
Posted by Phillip Ryu (Panel) at April 4, 2004 09:21 PM
What were some of your favorites Mushu? Who knows, maybe one or two of them might be made eventually, anyway.
Posted by sb at April 4, 2004 09:41 PM
Congrat's to all - including the sweet job MacThemes did putting this together...
A little happy, a little sad at the winners and losers, but I did get some of my fave's in the lineup.
I think it would be nice for people to be able to see progress mockups to help shape the final outcome.
SB
Posted by Eric at April 4, 2004 09:51 PM
Congrats to all the winners. There are some truly innovative and impressive themes to look forward to. I can't wait for the next contest. :)
Posted by Mushu at April 4, 2004 09:59 PM
My favorites were Garnet, Mac-A-Be, Protean (my absolute favorite),TK-421, and I liked sleekOS a lot
Posted by Paul Johnson at April 4, 2004 10:09 PM
Thanks again, Phill, for the fun contest! Glad I entered. :)
I'm honored to have a chance to make a theme out of a design that so many people seem to like. Wish me luck, all!
Posted by Andrew Shuttleworth at April 4, 2004 10:10 PM
Myself, I'm disappointed that Equestrian didn't make it; I really dig those forty-five degree stripes. (I might have to contact the author about making it myself....) But all-in-all, I think everything was pretty fair (with jsut a few minor technical glitches), and I'd say congratulations for a great first contest!
Posted by Mushu at April 4, 2004 10:51 PM
Yeah, Equestrian was nice. I didn't really like the titlebar widgets, but I would have been happy to see it as a winner
Posted by Ernest Liu at April 5, 2004 02:10 AM
Even though I didn't make it in the top 6, I made it within the top 10 I believe. Incentive to not only keep making themes but to create the mockup I made for this contest. For all those who supported my theme and told me you like it, thanks! I'm already realizing Futura Tech to be used. Finished with Aqua Window Titlebar and Cocoa Buttons =D. Stay tuned!
- Ernest Liu
Posted by CyberMonk at April 5, 2004 03:48 AM
Of all the one's to make it, the pink one. Now, I realize it's a nice piece, design wise, but that's not necessarily an indication as to whether or not a theme might actually be used. So.. bright, a little gaudy. What happened to the ever-so-minimalist Paper & Plastic?
Posted by truthseeker at April 5, 2004 05:20 AM
The mockups calabi, sweet slumber, and half life were a bit low in the voting (compared to others that didn't make it like paper & plastic, mac-a-be, and sleekstyle). I know the panel voting accounted for 50% of the overall score but last I checked sweet slumber especially was at around 57% when panelist voting began. I actually liked sweet slumber but I for one would like to see the math that made it and the others in the final 6 over some of the others that were higher in the popular vote. I would like to see the score cards please.
Posted by Phillip Ryu (Panel) at April 5, 2004 06:32 AM
Truthseeker, the reason why Sweet Slumber scored higher than you think possible, is because 16 points was added to all entries' user vote score as a global curve (to make the highest scoring entry a 100%). I am not going to make the panel votes public, but I hope this answers your question.
Posted by cmove at April 5, 2004 06:57 AM
Half life and the last theme are so ugly :(
Posted by gautch at April 5, 2004 10:49 AM
First: congrats on Macthemes.net for the contest.
Second: Congrats on the winners.
Third: i will never use any of the winning ones.. Sorry! PLEASE what in the world was the pannel thinking? Who knows, maybe the next contest will have a better out come!
Posted by Harlan Lewis (Panel) at April 5, 2004 02:02 PM
whoa, phillip... panel votes aren't going public? That sucks. If people are ashamed to let other people know what they voted, they shouldn't have voted that way.
Posted by swiz at April 5, 2004 02:05 PM
I can tell you what I was thinking in my voting.
I design for a living and therefore gave the highest votes to themes I feel I would use on a dialy basis in a design environment.
While the winners were certainly not the most creative of the themes, that was irrelevent to me, the more creative "outside the box" themes are not condusive to an efficient working environment.
Perhaps there could be categories for the next contest to avoid these types of discrepencies.
Posted by gautch at April 5, 2004 03:16 PM
i agree with swiz. I think the next contest could have 2 winners in each catagory.. Most usable, Most Creative, Most trendy, The panels favorite, The users Most voted, ect...
Posted by ric zito at April 5, 2004 03:43 PM
swiz : I've been trying for 4 days to answer your mail, but my smtp server keeps rejecting it as "address unknown". i copypasted it into your contact page on your site, in an effort to get to you thru there, but as there's been no reply, i guess that one didn't get thru either. :-(
Do you have another addy, or could you write me again?
Posted by Philip Beck at April 5, 2004 04:26 PM
I heartilly agree with the first 2 winners, but have to say that I beleive the remaining four will have usability problems. If a theme isn't usefull then why bother? Usability should be the primary criterion for getting into the winner's circle, IMHO.
Posted by [ idle. ] at April 5, 2004 04:42 PM
what is usability? can you give me a precise answer? is it grey? does it "get out of the way"?
booorrring themes is all we'd have as a result! true, you need not bother with people that think different but i'd rather not drown in the masses of all eternal usuability. i'm not here to please everybody.
Posted by zach at April 5, 2004 04:42 PM
I was not surprised to see any of these themes in the top 6 other than Sweet Slumber. I thought it would go 1. NickelCobalt, 2. ProLCD, 3. Calabi, 4. Simple Grey, 5. Paper & Plastic, 6. Half Life. I would use all of these themes besides Half-Life and Sweet Slumber. The only ones outside of the top 6 are Hyper.OSX, Paper & Plastic, and sleekStyle. I think Sweet Slumber is well done, but the pink is too much. I am a bit disappointed to see what themer matches up with what themes. I would have liked to see NickelCobalt done by Wibs, ProLCD by Joe K. (of course), Calabi done by Max, Half Life done by Mike, Simple Grey by Swiz, and Sweet SLumber by Joe of [f]p. Now for my personal commentary on each: NickelCobalt is great. The inset widgets are spectacular, as are the progress bars. I don't like the x-+ buttons much. ProLCD is fabulous as well, other than the sliders. Also, I don't think the buttons look "pushable" to me, maybe Harold and Wibs can work on that. I love Calabi, but I am a bit fearful that it will end up with the same usability problems as JetBlack (sorry Swiz). I've never played Half Life, so I can't comment on that theme from a gaming standpoint, but I think the checkboxes and radio buttons could use some work as well as the x-+ buttons. Simple Grey is fantastic. My only two suggestions are to round all of the edges as supposed to just two, and to make the x-+ buttons less inset. As for Sweet Slumber, I think some color variations and a lot less glowing could make it a bit less distracting. Those are my 2 cents.
Posted by Harlan Lewis (Panel) at April 5, 2004 04:46 PM
Out of curiosity, what don't you find usable about Half Life and (especially) Simple Grey? Both of those have well defined, readable elements. Sweet Slumber is definitely on the edge, and Calabi only takes usability points because of contrast issues (but I'll still agree it's not the most usable of themes).
Still though... please explain your usability stance. I'm very curious :).
Posted by Jason Harris (Panel) at April 5, 2004 05:36 PM
I'm pretty happy with the winners, but that said, I think my panel vote was pretty far away from what was selected. In retrospect, I'm not sure the voting system I used for my panel votes was that hot. Just in case Phil decides to publish 'em, here's how I made my choices:
Since I was trying to be super-objective, I didn't read any comments at all before judging, nor did I see ahead of time who'd created which mockup. I used an even weighting of five categories: initial impact, personal aesthetic, originality, long-term usability, and ease of translation into an actual theme.
In retrospect, I probably should have weighted personal aesthetic higher, because the system I used made some themes that I didn't like that much get high scores and ones that I did get lower scores than I thought they deserved. Oh well, no scoring system is perfect.
Anyway, congrats again to the winners and thanks again to MTs for putting on this excellent contest! Werd!
Posted by ric zito at April 6, 2004 03:48 AM
OK - sorry to spam this server, but I'm finding it impossible to reply to Swiz's emails, on any one of the three addresses he's given me. I'm getting "unknown address" for all of them.
This is the only time this has ever happened to me; and it's a bit of a bummer, given that he's making my theme! :-)
Swiz, are you using some kind of cloaking or relaying thing?
My last hope is to try via my webmail address at Yahoo - although I never use it, it's just a spamtrap. Swiz, if you get this message, we can try and hook up via iChat on AIM : my handle is my name, with no spaces.
Cheers!
Posted by Slappy at April 6, 2004 02:25 PM
It comes to my dissapointment, nickle cobalt, is just another one of those shinobi takeoff themes, were on the otherhand..... LCD, was a new cool, desgin taking artistic vision and techonology and merging it into a beautiful theme.......... well, i hope you guys make this an annual eventm because by next year you'll have twice the entries i guuarrenteee it
Posted by Jake at April 6, 2004 02:31 PM
I agree with the idea of having a couple, erm, themed categories for next years competition. Surely next time around there will be a lot more entries anyway so it will probably be a necessity. That said, how can anyone really complain that there'll be another excellent piece of Paul Johnson UI design floating around now that he's won? We haven't seen much from him since the "good old days" of Audion faces.
Posted by jordie at April 14, 2004 01:18 AM
Where can I view the entrants. I see the winners but am confused about where to view the losers.
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