No agreement reached with "Reda Lazri", "00ap00" and "digital ink". I really liked their designs as well, but we're running out of budget/space.. we just have too much quality artwork at this stage.

Many thanks to everyone and I hope to see you all again in 6 months when the time comes to select new artwork for Linux Mint 10.

Reached an agreement with "At your service".

The winner is Talento Design, congratulations to all the artists who participated in this contest.

We also reached agreements with 29A and 96works and I'm confident we'll reach one with "At your service".

Altogether you've provided us with fantastic artwork for the upcoming Linux Mint 9 and I'll be sure to organise more contests for each future release.

Many thanks to all of you.
Clem.

Reached an agreement with 96works and 29A. Though they're winners to us, I'm eliminating their designs to gain some clarity on the remaining submissions in the contest.

Cards on the table:

- #57 is the favorite so far. I would make a great default desktop background. I'm also interested in the other artwork from "Talento Design" and I asked him/her a few questions before making a final decision.
- Most of the artwork created by "96works", "29A" and "AT YOUR SERVICE" would make great alternative backgrounds for the release. I contacted these artists individually and made them an offer as well.
- #48 and #69 are nice as well but looking at how much we're spending already I'm not sure I'd be able to offer too much for them, so I didn't contact "00ap00" and "digital link" but they're welcome to contact me if they have a price in mind.
- #86 isn't suitable as a background but the artwork in it is very impressive and it's got a lot of potential. I'd be happy to study variations, although that'll be out of the scope of this contest and probably too late for an inclusion in Linux Mint 9.

Other things:

- I know you're not supposed to buy artwork directly from the artists but there's more than 1 winner out here. There's a great default background, and there are a selection of artists which submissions we're very interested in. So the best thing was to award the prize to one winner and to make individual offers to the other artists. It'd be a pity to see their submissions go to waste when we're ready to pay for them.
- I was impressed and delighted with how this contest went on and by the number and the quality of the submissions. Linux Mint releases every 6 months and I'm pretty sure we'll have a contest for each release from now on.

Note: Although not required, if the artwork is available both in blue and in green, that is considered a plus as it allows us to theme the KDE edition using the same background as the main one.

@Micheil: We'll only use artwork that we can modify (we want access to all layers and all vector components if applies). We're likely to take the logo out for the default background and provide the branded version as an alternative. The reason for this is because our logo already appears in various places in the operating system and provided an unbranded background by default will make the desktop more elegant.

Note to everybody: Our default wallpaper is likely not to include any logo. We'll need a version with logo but it will be an alternative. For the contest, until we choose a winner or until we come to you to buy your design, please do not include logos in your previews (unless the background revolves around it of course).

Fulop: In the brief, there's a link to an SVG version of it.