Contest: Design Challenge #2: Valentine's Zen Garden

Megan's picture

She has: 11,421 posts

Joined: Jun 1999

We've got another contest for you! The theme for this one isn't quite so impossible. Since valentine's day is only a month away we're going to use that as our theme. You must design an online valentine or valentines related site (template provided). The design must use the colours pink and red and general design themes associated with Valentine's Day.

Contest Process

  1. Entires must be recieved by 4:30 PM Eastern Standard Time on February 14, 2006. You may submit your entry by posting it in the Contest Entires thread (available on or around February 11th) or by sending it directly to Megan by Private Message (not by email). Include the URL to your design and a title for it (if you don't include a title Megan will make one up for you)
  2. After entries are closed, Megan will choose 5-7 finalists (judging criteria below)
  3. The five finalists will be put into a poll for voting by the forum community at large.

Prizes

  • Free advertising on the forums: One month free banner ad one year in the “filler” sponsor ad area (these are the Opera/Advertise here/Opera ads that rotate in the remaining sponsor spots).
  • Team100 128Mb MP3 player donated by andy206uk
  • $100 Cash, donated by demonhale and TWF via Roo (who donated it back to the community after she won the last contest)

Prizes will be distributed to the top 2 or 3 winners in the poll results. I will use my discretion on this - it depends on the distribution of votes and the quality of the entires.

The Template

Not sure what to make your page about? Renegade and I made up a template from the Wikipedia article on Valentine's day. You may use this for your design.

The code is very bare bones. You may add additional mark-up if needed. However, it could be a challenge to design this without extra markup Wink

Here is the basic template, or you can try Renegade's version with additional markup.

You may also come up with your own content and mark-up. If you want to do something silly, here's an idea Wink

Judging Critera

Submissions will be judged based on the following critera

  1. Use of the design theme (in this case, Valentine's day)
  2. Attractiveness and quality of design
  3. Level of difficulty (i.e. Do you take the easy route or do you make it more challenging?)

Extras:

  • Theme, topic, and content (if you develop your own content)
  • Quality of HTML code (if you write your own or make modifications to the provided template)
  • Quality/difficulty of your CSS - do you do something interesting & challenging or do you use the same old basic elements?

Rules

  • All TWF members are eligible, including moderators (Megan and JeevesBond are not exempt; entries will be judged on community input)
  • Maximum of two entries per person
  • Any site content, including images, that is against the against the general TWF content regulations will not be allowed
  • You may submit a single-page design, a full site, or a CMS/blog theme (implemented). It must be coded in HTML/CSS (no graphic mock-ups)
  • Your work must be original. Any submissions found to be derivative works will be immedately removed from consideration. Should the winning entry be found to be derivative work the prizes will be immediately revoked.
  • Your design does not have to work in IE (version 6 or 7). This will open up some possibilities and opportunities to experiment with more advanced CSS. It must work in Opera 9, Safari 2, and Firefox 2.

How to enter

A new thread entitled "Contest Entires" will be posted on February 11th. Contest entries will not be publicly accepted before then - just so you don't influence the other entrants. If you prefer, you can send entries to me by private message any time before the contest deadline. All entries should be received by February 14, 2006 at 4:30 PM Eastern Standard Time.

Any Questions??

Please post Smiling

He has: 1,758 posts

Joined: Jul 2002

Yay! I'm going to see what I can come up with!

Megan's picture

She has: 11,421 posts

Joined: Jun 1999

I want to do something too, if I'm not too busy working on the content site. I have some ideas already Laughing out loud Although I will officially exempt myself from prize consideration.

He has: 1,758 posts

Joined: Jul 2002

I've already made a huge leap on mine... (I've done the design and all the CSS). I just have to make a few tweaks now and sort out the navigation as I'm not quite happy with it at the mo.

Arghhh! Now I have weeks before I can post it! (serves me right for getting carried away!) Wink

I'm impressed actually as due to the text quantities it lends itself really well to a blog format. I might port it to wordpress after the contest! Laughing out loud

Andy

demonhale's picture

He has: 3,278 posts

Joined: May 2005

Why don't we make it theme just the markup provided by TWF (means not touching the html, just the css), instead of having your own content or adding a content so that it would be challenging and be more zen gardenesque...

Megan's picture

She has: 11,421 posts

Joined: Jun 1999

Well, people can have their own content if they want but I assume most will use the template.

I'm also not sure how practical the mark-up in my version is. It's very bare-bones and people might need to add something to it. Renegade's has a lot more options, but a lot of empty divs in case you want to add images and stuff. So people can use whichever they want. If we had tested this more thoroughly before hand we could say that you have to use our mark-up but we didn't, so flexibility is needed Wink

Megan's picture

She has: 11,421 posts

Joined: Jun 1999

Is anyone working on anything? I started something over the weekend. It's going quite well so far. I'm hoping it might be good enough to distrubte a bit as a wordpress theme or something, but that means I have to get it done well before the 14th! I don't know if that's going to happen Smiling

He has: 1,758 posts

Joined: Jul 2002

Mine's done and dusted. I'm definitely gonna make it a wordpress theme, as I've been doing a lot of wordpress themeing lately and really enjoy it! Laughing out loud

The content from the default template definitely lends itself to a blog layout.

Andy

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