OK, final announcement:

Congratulations - The winner is - Retrometro/Steve!

This has got to be the most difficult contest we've run so far - between the number and the incredibly high standard of the upper end of the entries, this was a very tricky choice indeed.

Thank you all so much again for your entries - A special thanks goes out to: ulahts, claurus, arpad, GeniusLogo and anyone else we gave positive feedback to. You guys all did an amazing job; in some cases it almost felt like a crime not choosing certain entries, but ultimately we had to choose just one.

Keep up the great work to all of you, and watch this space for more contests from us.

Cheers,

HostExchange.

Hi All -

Ok, we've finally got through all the feedback and have managed to get the contest re-opened (the sitepoint contest system had got stuck between the contest being suspended and the end date having been reached).

We have extended the contest for another few days, as the suspension caused us to lose the last few. For contest entrants, please read the following:

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IMPORTANT INFORMATION
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1) The current contest entry leaders are (in no particular order):
- ulahts: Entry #4 (see comments)
- claurus: Entry #2 & Entry #4
- arpad: Entry #1 & Entry #2
- RetroMetro Designs: Various (see comments)
- GeniusLogo: Various (see comments)

2) If you have entered and have received feedback that your style is not the sort of thing we're looking for, please do not continue to submit similar entries (the amount of these is what caused the contest to become suspended in the first place!) - We appreciate the enthusiasm, but just simply can't keep up!

3) If you have been shortlisted (above) or have received positive feedback specifically asking for changes - please feel free to submit variants, changes on the theme.

4) At this point, we do not have a clear #1 (we are still deciding - it's been a tough process!), so if any of the shortlisted think they can pull anything particularly special out of the hat or "sell" the design to us, please feel free to.

5) As a heads up, we don't particularly like the "shotgun" approach of submitting 12 revisions of the same logo with different colour schemes/very small changes as it makes it difficult for us to go through, and goes for the approach of winning the contest via luck, rather than well thought out design decisions.

6) We may revise the contest date to end a little earlier, depending on response (it has already been extended once after all).

Finally, thank you VERY much for the HUGE amount of fantastic entries. We've been very impressed with both the amount, and average quality of designs we've received. Sadly, this has made things harder rather than easier for us, but has been fun all the same.

Thanks all for your patience, great work all and happy designing!

Cheers,

HostExchange.

Hi All,

Just letting you know, despite what sitepoint may have 'detected', we have not abandoned this contest!

Those of you who were browsing around would have noticed we were actually operating 3 contests simultaneously, which, when we are getting more than 100 entries for contests (often batches of 8-10 being submitted at once), it has taken us a little while to get through all the feedback.

Rest assured we will be completing this process -

Thanks again to all those who entered, check here for updates,

Cheers,

HostExchange.

Just a quick update guys -

First of all - thank you all for submitting entries, the standard of some has been incredibly high - nice work!

Because of the huge volume we're getting (we're getting entries faster than we can give feedback), we may be a bit slow on updates.

Current leaders (in no particular order) are: claurus, ulahts, geniuslogo, arpad. There may be others, but we're still playing catch up.

If you have received general "good, but not what we're looking for" type responses, please don't submit another 7 slight variants as it makes it even slower for us to get through!

Thanks heaps for all the entrants so far, there's some very talented people out there.

Cheers,

HostExchange.

OK, lots of entries, some really really good... No time to give specific feedback at this stage (I have other contests expiring soon and it's way past my bedtime over here :).

BUT, best entries so far are from:
claurus (leader at this point I think), ulahts (both pretty good), converge, DGTL.

viriathe and emtonic have made good submissions too but not quite on the money.

I'll have detailed feedback over the next 24 hours, but hopefully this will give you an idea as to what we're after.

Thanks!