Hello Designers,

The jurors commissioned by NextFab Studio to select the winning design have met and considered the finalists designs. The jurors were provided as glossy prints of the finalist designs with no information about the designer or the designer's physical location.

After deliberating thoroughly, they have selected design #438, by Lazariucas, as the winner, and we have awarded him the $1000 prize.
We still do not know his location and thus the fate of the additional prizes remains to be determined.

Some of the jurors thoughts behind their selection:
# Geoff DiMasi:
* "I favored the logo we picked since it spoke to fabrication without being obvious. It communicated without being boring and blunt. It was memorable. It provided a flexible system that you can play with across multiple mediums. And, it seemed to be a visual framework that can evolve over time, if you choose."

# Alex Hillman:
* "While the logo wasn't my first pick initially, my gravitation towards it as we talked through the message of each logo was charged mostly by the robustness of the logo. As I said out loud a bunch of times, "I feel like I could hit this logo with a hammer and it'd be fine". I also love the fact that the logo itself could easily be made into a physical object, like a rubber keychain."

NextFab Studio is indebted to all of the participating designers for your time and effort in producing the excellent designs you submitted for this contest, and wish you all success and happiness in the future!

Sincerely,
NextFab Studio

P.S.- 99designs has just announced a new feature called the "blind contest". A blind contest is one in which designers cannot view each others' submissions. We believe this new feature will increase the variety and creativity of the submissions (good for the contest holder) while also protecting the designers from plagiarism (good for designers). Had this been available to us at the start of this contest, we would have made use of it. We highly recommend to contest holders and designers alike to try this new contest type, and to give feedback to 99designs to help them continue to improve this excellent tool for all of our benefit.

See http://99designs.wordpress.com/2009…-contests/

Hello Designers,
Thank you all very much for your excellent submissions. It has been a pleasure working with you.

NextFab Studio will now proceed to the selection of 10 finalists. On Monday, October 19, the 10 finalists' designs will be submitted to our panel of jurors who will select the winning designer and design.

The jurors for the contest are:
* Geoff DiMasi, principal of P'unk Avenue design and development firm, adjunct assistant professor of Multimedia and Communication at The University of the Arts, co-founder of Independents Hall, Philadelphia's coworking space and community, and IndyHallLabs, its associated open-source R&D lab, and founder of Philadelphia's Junto salon.
* Alex Hillman, community and technology innovator, blogger and professional problem-solver, co-founder of Independents Hall, Philadelphia's coworking space and community, and IndyHallLabs, its associated open-source R&D lab.
* Neil Kleinman, professor of Multimedia and Communication, Senior Fellow in the Corzo Center for the Creative Economy at The University of the Arts, and champion of Philadelphia's future.

Please see the contest page on our website for links to more information about the jurors:
http://nextfabstudio.com/contest/.

The announcement of the winner will be made by Saturday, October 24th, and the prize money awarded through 99designs.

Depending upon the physical location of the winning designer, we will make contact to discuss the additional prizes (NFS membership and additional design work).

Sincerely,
NextFab Studio

Hi Designers,
Only a bit more than 1 day remains! More feedback is on the way.
Please stay tuned via Twitter @nextfabstudio for news and updates on the selection process.

Good Luck!
NFS