No doubt you have been following the progress of our help redesign the gap logo contest and have seen all the awesome entries. Now it’s time to help us pick a winner!
Casting your vote is easy and you can vote on more than one logo Simply click the ‘like’ button next to any logo you think deserves it.
This vote will run for 3 days and will end at lunchtime on Monday the 18th of October. So get clicking and invite all of your friends to come and vote on their favorites too!
UPDATE
Due to a technical glitch on our end, the vote will now end on Wednesday 20th of October.
You’re doing this just to popoularize 99designs ”So get clicking and invite all of your friends to come and vote on their favorites too!”
Ok, that’s understandable.
But it’s so miserable, that so unprofessional design, like ”#4591 by 1nemanja1” has already got the most votes (71 at the moment), and it’s just because he’s spaming all around to vote for his logo.
You have to change the tactic, 99designs! It’s not fair.
I agree, the voting should been left to only the 99Design community. Totally unfair.
yeah, lets see who has the most facebook friends.
I think GAP should design something more than a text/font logo. They should have an icon as well. Hope they come up with something really fresh.
agreed. it’s really a stupid idea to vote trough facebook!
i’m from northern europe and it’s a rare occurrence if someones using facebook in my country! i honestly don’t have ANY friends that use it.
agreed.. very simple to have vote… 100% spamming
I’m disappointed with this facebook silliness. the ‘winner’ will be the one with the most fb friends, i wished it would of been closed judging only to us, the 99design community – oh well, thanks for the game.
So in order to vote I need to have a facebook account? You should have something easier to count votes.
I agree oxy, Does this also mean you wont receive votes if you don’t have a facebook account? I can’t even find where and how yu vote.
I agree, you don’t want the winning design to be chosen by the best spammer and without any thought being put into it. I’d think the powers at be would want to show that 99Designs is a competant site of talented designers. But it was a fun contest anyway!
It’s very clearly! it;s stupid idea to vote trough facebook! and it’s not fair!
??? I’ve must missed something here…..where and how do you vote?
”the winning design to be chosen by the best spammer” <– exactly!
99designs stood for competant site of talented designers, but now it’s a FAIL.
99designs team should admit their mistake, and announce the winner by judges of some professional designers (for example like us – 99designs designer community) or just the 99designs team by itself should be the judge.
because it is so stupid and unfair! this is a design contest, not a spamming contest. – over than 4600 designs are submited, and there’s a lot of work invested !!
we will understand if you, the 99designs team, admit your mistake and re-make the contest.
i was thinking – not re-make the whole contest, but the voting for winning design.
I totally agree with millionM…
“and announce the winner by judges of some professional designers”
and i choose ” just the 99designs team by itself should be the judge”
As even in 99designs there are friend groups based on camps, and location favorites…
99designs team would be the ones who could do absolute justice to its community intitiative…
This contest is HUGELY disappointing from a designer perspective. It was made to sound like “design THE new GAP logo” with a measly $500 reward. 500 dollars to rebrand a multi-million (/billion?) dollar company! So designers enter for chance at exposure. Then, GAP Inc. just decides to go back to their old logo. Wow.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0fc7f4b2-d58e-11df-8e86-00144feabdc0.html
Now the voting (which doesn’t matter) relies on using Facebook to vote. Whoever has the most friends will win, yes but that’s not the point. Who stands to gain from this other than 99designs???
This was a waste of every designers time involved. To 99designs.com staff: WTF MATE!?
We said in the brief that 99designs was sponsoring this project – it was just for fun and was no way affiliated with the GAP management.
Jason,
I don’t think the staff is hearing what we the designers are saying, Not everyone has hundreds of Facebook Peeps, This is an unfair voting. You want the DESERVING winner to win, but that’s not how it is going at all.
I’m sorry but there are some designs with over a hundred votes which are not that good and some with only 2 or 3 votes that are really good, but they can’t get the votes because they don’t got enough peeps to vote for them. Plain and simple. I only got 11 people on my facebook which means I will only get 11 votes, as another soul said earlier they have none, so please tell us all where the fairness is in this voting system?
Marie
In otherwords, some of those with over a hundred votes, aren’t necessarily getting them because they deserve the votes, its because they are telling their facebook peeps….’hey buddy go here and vote for me #0000 and have your peeps do the same’
No I am hearing you loud and clear – I get it – you don’t like the way the vote is being conducted.
OK
It was decided to do it this way and we are going to stick it out.
I think the point about it not being fair because people with the most Facebook friends have an unfair advantage is being overstated – the link to vote is being shared widely and people are voting based on what they like not who they are friends with.
Also, while I do understand that everyone likes to win please remember that this project is just for fun – it’s less about which design actually wins and more about showcasing the talent of the community as a whole. A lot of really great designs were submitted – it’s impressive and people have noticed – that is a win for everyone.
Quote from their own mouths……. “Casting your vote is easy and you can vote on more than one logo Simply click the ‘like’ button next to any logo you think deserves it.” They should change that to ‘get as many of your facebook friends and their friends and so on to vote for you.’
There is a DESERVING designer who enter this contest, in fact several, but that’s NOT who is gonna win, the winner will be the person you can generate the most votes using their facebook friends and so on.
I think the winner should be the 99designs team. It’s not fair to vote in this manner.
It is a completely unfair contest. The first page of designs has more votes than the other 5 pages of the top 100 designs to be voted on. But it obviously does none of us any good to speak our minds on this, we aren’t being listened too, they didn’t listen during the contest either. Yeah was suppose to be fun, but that went out the window. Very disappointing. They say vote to pick who ‘deserves’ to win, more like the winner is who ever can spam the most votes. Well good luck to whoever wins, I know I won’t even though I got a 4 star my design is on page 2 (and I didn’t use commercial generic font either I created my own font), but no one goes that far…lol!
This is just going from bad to worse here. It’s as if the 99Designs crew got cold feet on picking the “winning” design in fear of a backlash from the design community, if they picked a weak design. So they’re throwing it back at the crowd. “Here… you guys sort out this mess”.
I need to update my post.
http://limina-ao.com/blog/2010/10/12/gap-lessons-in-a-logo-makeove-rfail/
p.s. 3 technical issues with the “like” voting process:
1) Some great designs are “eliminated” and can’t be liked by the community (conversely, some crap ones aren’t eliminated and stealing votes.)
2) He who has the most FB friends wins… (lame)
3) User Fatigue – You’ll note that the logo design with the highest votes are also closer to the first couple pages and as you click through to the latter pages, you see less votes. It’s due to a phenomenon called user fatigue. Web metrics shows this time and time again on click degradation.
Recommendations –
1) Make it a really democratic process – open voting, with user driven eliminations (you set the threshold / logic).
2) FB like?… really? Try something cronyism agnostic, polldaddy, et al…
3) Randomize the presentation of logos to mitigate user fatigue bias.
or… pull down the whole exercise, apologize the the design community for making a mockery of the entire field of design, offer a share of profits to all designers who entered this competition as compensation for wasting their time.
For the record, I stayed away from this one.
Nope – no cold feet. We said from the beginning that we would let the community vote for the winner.
I do really appreciate the constructive recommendations though.
Cheers,
Jason
Jason, um your letting everyone and anyone from facebook vote, that’s not the 99Designs community.
Sorry Marie,
In this instance I was using the word community in the larger sense – including the GAP community/anyone who thought this was an interesting project.
Jason
I’m also very disappointed with the voting system. It has turned into a popularity contest and the winner will be the person who has the most Facebook friends/connections.
Furthermore, the majority of the voters from outside the design community have no professional judgment on what’s best for Gap. For example, they might see a decent logo on top of a really cool wood background and vote for it because it looks awesome. I bet if I submitted an entry and put the logo on a shirt on a pretty girl and made it look really nice with some cool effects, people would vote for it because the PRESENTATION looks awesome, not the logo.
There are numerous reasons why this contest is not fair, not to mention the logos that are on the 3rd and 4th pages.
It would have been nice to break it down in 2 or 3 rounds. First round being the 99designs staff, second round being the public, and third round a closed vote on the designers that either are still in the contest or submitted an entry from the beginning.
The whole Facebook Like vote is just disappointing.
I’m just chalking this one up to a bit of fun.. I’m not upset with the system, but I’m also not going to ask all my friends to vote for my work.. I’m a designer, they aren’t. I’m happy to see how many votes I get from other people, at least that will show me how many people actually like my work, not just how many people like me.
I think this contest was flawed from the beginning…
First of all, it was too long. A ‘fast track’ contest of 2-3 days would have worked much better.
Secondly, star ratings was all that 99designs provided. They make a huge deal about how important written feedback is to the contest holders, yet they leave none themselves?
Thirdly, the prize was way to small. It should have been $1000 at the minimum, perhaps $1200 – $1500.
And finally, the voting (as others so wisely pointed out) was terribly flawed. 99designs wanted something that would be very easy and quick to implement and so they used canned Facebook ‘Like’ buttons. Very dumb.
I hope that 99designs see and hear what us designers (who, I might add, pay their bills) are saying and act accordingly.
I agree – a 2-3 day project would have been better.
It was not really appropriate for us to provide specific written feedback – that’s not what this project was about. We are not the GAP. We provided star ratings as a way to lift out the designs that we felt had the most merit. As you know – design is very subjective so the GAP might feel differently but sifting through nearly 5000 designs is just not practical.
The prize – this was a community project that was just for fun and paid for by 99designs. I’m sure if the GAP was actually running a project this way the prize would be significantly different.
The vote – all methods of voting are flawed in some way or another and there are always those who complain. We decided to do the vote this way because – yes it was a quick and simple way to do it and we liked the social potential it had to showcase all the great designs and talented designers to as many people as possible as a whole.
Lastly, we do listen and appreciate the feedback.
Cheers,
Jason
Imo the winner should be chosen by the board of 99designs exactly as if 99designs is a CH (actually 99designs is the CH here). Generally speaking I do not trust any public/crowdsourcing vote mechanism not only because of its obvious flaws but simply because I would like the logo to be judged by qualified professionals.
The funny thing is that in most of the contests, logos are judged by non professionals (CH are usually average people) and this one would be a wonderful opportunity for the designers to see what they stand for.
@ Jason
Even when kids are playing for fun in a playground, they tend to have some kind of rules to keep the game fair.
Creating the logo is fun. Voting for it via FB is a joke.
To 99designs.com staff: Let’s make the 3rd round! For the best 100 designs that are voted by that FB system and now just designers that have at least one win can vote for them.
I like it!!
Has anyone noticed that #3513 (306 votes) and #4641 (216 votes) are almost alike, fonts are similar, has date and lines, just laid out different. Also #2227 with a whopping 610 votes (the highest of all votes) is almost like logo that started this whole thing, except caps and two squares.
I backed 99Designs in the begining of this contest but now deeply disappointed. There are several designs with maybe 4-5 votes that are way better than the ones with over 100 votes.
Well 99Designs, Facebook and GAP all got themselves free publicity with this one. Nice marketing tactic using the sweat of others.
Maybe everyone should just go vote on every design since this is not obviously going to go to the design that deserves it the most.
Yes Marie I notice who No. 2227 was a take off of how this whole mess started. Not knocking No. 2227 (obviously a lot of votes and perhaps smart to take the Gap-Revised and streamline) – but wondering how the folks outside of the design community will understand when 99designs present No. 2227 as their solution (yes, out of 4000 entries) to the Gap mess.
I’m guessing no one is watching any longer nor care. It was all just for fun… right?
Yeah was suppose to been for fun but turned into a big mess.
Are you going to forgo the “Designer of the Month” competition for the month of September?
Yes – unfortunately I have been too busy enforcing the new community code of conduct.
Perhaps I will combine September and October – we will see.
Jason
Here’s a funny thing that happened: Yesterday one of the leading 100 was silently eliminated. i contacted the designer to find out what happened –he had about 192 (and growing) votes and the design was gone and marked “elimiinated” –according to him he was NOT contacted by 99designs his logo was just gone!
“CH simply deleted my work without any explanation….’
???? hope that they don’t do that to mine or YOURS !!!
Yeah, I noticed that too. I think it may have been the design that I was talking about in the other article. It’s a subpar design and it had the most votes as of last Friday evening. But another one of his/her design is still there racking up the vote count with alias handles and friends.
So I’m thinking 99designs wanted to get it off the front page while leaving another entry from the same designer. Either way, I’d like to know why the most voted on design was eliminated. I certainly know why I would eliminate it if I had the option but I was curious why they did.
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Jason,
I am sure 99designs did garner a lot of publicity out of this, which i am definitely not against…as its good and could translate as more business for you as well as us designers.
But what about the credibility of 99designs as the market place for ‘QUALITY’ designs, due to the flaw in the voting process (i’e more facebook friends more votes) what this is going to translate is another substandard ‘gap’ logo which will earn the ire of people and designers from all round the world, but this time at the receiving end would be OUR ’99DESIGNS’
When the whole objective here was to give a very good logo for GAP something that was miles ahead of the pathetic GAP logo(new) and better than even the current GAP logo (old Logo), you can pretty well imagine where that objective has headed to…down the drain !!!
Please notify on the contest comment board that the objective is not being effectively achieved via the voting process,
and instead please contact the renowned design institutes in Australia, and have a select faculty of these design institution to choose a winner. That way a good deserving design will get recognition and the world cannot rubbish the chosen design for the people choosing it are of tremendous knowledge and credibility in the design/creative field.
If the above is not done to correct, 99designs sure would gain popularity but for choosing a another BAD gap logo, and ignorantly we would end up buying a dent on the quality and potential 99designs has with regard to delivering ‘QUALITY’ design solutions. ALL FOR JUST $500
YOU STILL HAVE TIME TO CORRECT YOUR MISTAKE !!!
A GUD PUBLICITY IS ALL I AM EYING FOR !!!
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I think I answered this above.
Jason
Yes, pegatinas that was the design. The guy that designed it said he’s not a designer, he’s been trying out programs for about two months –and clearly is a good social media networker. Shame on 99design for eliminating his design at this point, they narrowed it down to the 100 finalist and albeit they made a lot of bad choices, they made the rules. I would of never waisted my time had I known it came down to spamming for the win.
This is a negative reflection on 99design which, as a result, is really good PR for us real designers –we can chalk crowdsourcing up as a tried + tested thing that didn’t work and go back to building relationships with clients and doing great work.
I will use this GAP game as an example of crowdsourcing and the result one should expect.
Hey Jason, I for one, enjoyed the contest and was happy with getting 50 unsolicited votes for my design. Plus I, and I’m sure other designers, have been offered jobs just on this contest alone. No matter who wins, it already was worth the effort for me. No hard feelings here!
Thanks – that was the intention of this whole thing.
Cheers,
Jason
Jason Aiken October 20, 2010 at 4:17 pm –> ”the link to vote is being shared widely and people are voting based on what they like not who they are friends with.”
My answer: ouh we all know including you that what you said is not the truth. the real truth’s that the people who are recieving those spam messages are voting for the one who was asking them to vote for his logo.
fun contest? are you kidding me? YOU ARE MAKING ANGRY ALL THE DESIGNER COMMUNITY IN HERE. And not respecting what we are asking you – to make the 3rd part of voting (the idea in comments above mine). We, the designers are the ones that keep this 99designs thing going. So you have to listen, respect and realize our initiative and ideas.
Thank you Militare…..my thoughts exactly when I read that reply too.
Make The 3rd Round!
They already picked a winner….2 in fact. Wow!
HOW TO VOTES IN THE DESIGN. . . ????
The vote has already ended and the winners announced:
http://blog.99designs.com/2010/10/22/gap-logo-contest-and-the-winner-is/
Cheers,
Jason
Thank you Militare…..my thoughts exactly when I read that reply too.
While I know this comment will probably be erased before it even has time to post I still going to put my 2 cents in anyway. I Cant believe Gap Resorted to this in the first place. These sites are nothing more than a designer slave market. Why in the hell would anyone present work that they have put any amount of time and effort into (which really can’t even come close to being sufficient enough for most of the tasks presented on here) for any possibility of not getting paid to do so? This is a disgrace to the design community. DESIGNERS: THIS IS NOT REAL DESIGN!!! Google: design process… That would at least be a start to what real design entails.