Hello all, Here's an update on this contest...

Although many of the designs entered were gorgeous and we know you all worked very hard at your designs, at this stage we are unable to declare a winner because of some political difficulties with our client. We want you all to know that we are working diligently at resolving these issues so that we can declare a winner and intend to ultimately produce this project. That said we PROMISE that someone will be declared a winner regardless of the outcome with our client, just not quite yet.

Should we make no headway before the 30th of this month (April 2008) we will declare a winner and pay out the prize money. Please understand that we are just as frustrated as you are and are working hard to resolve the matters at hand.

Thanks again for your patience and understanding (you know we're only human), we hope you all will participate in our ensuing contests and we will do our best to avoid these kinds of issues in the future.

Thanks,
TMA

I am very sorry this contest has gone a bit stale. The project is at a standstill on an executive level but we expect to see some movement on it next week as the decision-makers are supposed to meet on Wednesday to discuss the matter.

Thank you all for your patience and for producing such great work on such a tight time frame. I promise, we will get back to you all on this ASAP.

TMA

Hello to all. Just a quick not to say that unfortunately last week was very hectic for our executive committee and we were not able to present the designs to them (required on this particular project before we choose a winner). We fully expect to have a definitive answer by Wednesday next week and appreciate your patience and understanding.

Best Regards,
Greg

Hello all,

I see that there have been several submissions in the last 12 hours and we have not had time to review them yet. Please hang tight we will be reviewing all of them within the next 12 hours in order to give you all adequate response/tweaking time before the contest ends.

Thanks for all of your participation, we love you all!!

Hello again,

Another note: I am sorry, we shouldn't have stated what we did about focus on North America, that was really misleading. This is definitely an international company and what I meant to communicate is that the company's audience is English speaking and the piece will be created in English only.

Sorry for any confusion on this.

Hello contestants,

Thanks for all of your submissions so far.

We will be posting more submission-specific feedback soon, in the meantime here are a few things my partner and I discussed this morning that we are seeing overall and would like to address:

Although the color blue is one of the companies brand colors and a somewhat obvious choice as a primary color in the design, we would like to see designs that incorporate other complementary colors that may be less overplayed in the industry, thus helping Gulmar to stand-out in the minds and visual recollection of their target audience. Be creative here, but be careful not to have it clash or be inappropriate for the subject matter/industry.

Also, photos of the ocean and nautical imagery are appropriate from a certain perspective but they are very obvious and not so creative and definitely not unique in this industry. Although we are not explicitly rejecting submissions with these elements, we are much more interested in seeing concepts that would help the company stand out in the crowd while remaining relevant.

Please remember, as noted in the brief, this is only a concept for the cover of a comprehensive brochure. The remaining pages of the brochure will allow for more imagery and space to create the overall context and depth of the business. What we are shooting for here is something that will strike a balance between engaging visuals and professionalism and will have people interested in seeing what is inside.

We are attempting to position this company as an industry leader and communicate their high-end nature, so very bland or overly simplified designs will likely be ignored. Again, we're really looking for something unique that at the same time is not overdone.

I hope this helps clarify this project better and is clear enough to drive some additional entries that hit closer to the mark.

Thanks again and GOOD LUCK!