March 08, 2004 | View Comments (38) | Category: Version 2
Summary: Feb voting begins.
Sorry for the delay. The voting page is up and very, very crude (no reason stealing all the limelight from the entries ;). The voting scheme is one that many will people will not agree with, but is the safest method for me to handle. Had a long weekend and it's Spring Break so I might disappear for a second or two. Voting ends on Friday. Any questions, just contact me.
Again I would like to thank all the participants. I really was not expecting 33 entries! Best of luck to everyone.
Don't forget to checkout the sponsors of the event:
Trackback URL: http://9rules.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/171
We can have a discussion here on why you picked your winner. What made it stand out? Just try not to mention who you voted for.
Scrivs (http://www.9rules.com/whitespace/)
For me, it was a competition between two designs. I liked both of them because they were graphically intense while still being informative and functional.
The reason I voted for the one I did was because it retained a more traditional feel, and I think this is important to the visitors of the site. It used modern techniques, though, to draw attention and provide information (links, categories, main, etc.), and the colors are wonderful.
The other one was also excellent, but it wasted a lot of space at the top of the page, forcing any users at or below 1024x768 to scroll to see content or links or news. The colors were also a bit bright and varied.
Good job to everyone, though. I really enjoyed looking at all of the entries - perhaps I will enter the March contest. ;)
thomas (http://gendes.elivy.com)
I picked the entry I did because of a great combination of architecture, typography and colors. Very impressive. It also has a great logo, that's what really sent it over the top for me.
Todd (http://www.monkeyhouselounge.com/loungeact/)
No instructions? Do we just tell you which ones we liked? Send a separate email for each one we liked? Are we supposed to rate them or rank them? I think a little instruction would be helpful more than just some of you may not like the system. It'd be nice to know what the system is first.
Kurt (http://www.didenhover.org/rainier/)
Simple.
3 Votes max per person
Click on the "vote for entry" link and the submission box should be filled in. If you wish to add some comments do, so if not just send.
Top 3 vote getters move to next round.
Done.
Scrivs (http://www.9rules.com/whitespace/)
Wow, great work for sure. Congrats to everyone who entered.
Most designs seemed to keep in mind a balance of design and a focus on the purpose of the webpage, and this is how I made my vote; I picked the design that for me had a nice look and feel, was easily navigable and had the content front and center easy to identify.
In the end, for me it came down to 2 designs, and the one that won me over had the content styled in such a way that you knew exactly the purpose of the page.
One thing I did find unusual is that not all of the designs provided 'skip to nav' and 'skip to content' links - easy enough to add in later, but perhaps a revelation about where accessibility is in the minds of some of these designers. I did notice one 'skip to search' link, something that most people tend not to include. Kudos to those who did.
And last but certainly not least, kudos to Paul for getting this together - no doubt there is some serious time involved here...
Mike P. (http://www.fiftyfoureleven.com.com/sandbox/weblog/)
Although there's a few that are pretty good, there's one that for me stands head and shoulders above the rest simply by virtue of its sheer sense of completion, even down to one small 16X16 pixel detail that is often ignored (how's that for trying not to identify the site too much?). It works in all browsers (unlike another nice design that unfortunately fails in Opera), and fits in an 800X600 screen without horizontal scrolling because its fixed width has been chosen wisely.
The colour scheme is superb, as are the background textures, exactly suiting a library and conveying a sense of elegance and age. The site has a retro feel, without it being overdone. The typography has a feel of letterpress about it, which is also helped by the colour-scheme and logo. The type can be resized in IE, so this is good because some of its serif type might be too small for some eyes. It uses no gifs for text and so magnifies well in Opera. It is a very nice piece of work indeed, achieving its effect by putting together tried and tested techniques in a very good way rather than risking failure in some browsers through being too experimental.
Some of the other designs are pretty good too, and would probably suit some other site, but are less resonant as a design for Project Gutenberg, some being a little too non-descript, insufficiently branded with the essence of what the site is about.
Joel (http://biroco.com/)
I definitely leaned toward designs that echoed the existing layout of the book detail pages (Main nav across top, followed by search bar).
I also had to be able to find the search bar instantly. I would imagine that that is the primary way that most users get around the site (hard to say without proper research), so if it was hard to find or (in some cases) missing, I didn't give much consideration to that design.
Overall, though, it was very difficult to go with just 3, there were many fabulous designs offered here. Good work and good luck to everyone who entered!
Paul G (http://www.relativelyabsolute.com)
"3 Votes max per person"
makes no sense if one is supposed to be choosing one winner. One person one vote is surely simple enough? I will not be sending in two extra votes for the one I regard as best.
Joel (http://biroco.com/)
There were several well-design entries, and its obvious that everyone spent alot of time on their designs, but alas, only one can receive "the vote".
I definitely tried to steer clear of any that had that "blog look".
My vote tended to gravitate toward the ones using deep, rich color palettes and appropriate typography.
To me, a project like this would want a site that had that book or library-type feel to it, not a post-modern or trendy e-commerce style.
cm (http://telerana.f2o.org)
Mostly everyone has only done one vote, but I had some people before the contest started asking if they could vote for more than one. It does make sense only because the top 3 make it the "judging round" so to speak.
Scrivs (http://www.9rules.com/whitespace/)
Well I was going to vote for myself, but not only did that seem a bit rude, but there were so many excellent designs that I felt in one way or another were better than my own.
My winning selection was based on both visual presentation and the ease with which I could find what I was looking for.
I had another first choice, but after seeing that their page didn't display nicely in anything but Mozilla and IE 6, I had to give it the axe.
I guess this brings up a question. Are others like myself cross-checking their designs in multiple browsers on different platforms?
I checked mine in FireFox, Mozilla, IE 5/5.5/6.0 and Opera 7 on the PC, IE 5, Opera 6 and FireFox on the Mac. (No access to Safari here...)
James
If you truly want one design to make it voting for more than one defeats that. You are adding votes to other designs which may get more votes and hence knock your "true favorite" out.
Example: You want to be a board member, the board has 3 seats, and you get to vote. You only vote for yourself. Why give an extra vote to someone else and add to their total.
Brian (http://savedbyzero.org)
Maybe a weighting system for a person's top three would be an idea for the next round?
Mike P. (http://www.fiftyfoureleven.com.com/sandbox/weblog/)
Just a note:
Mozilla Thunderbird does not recieve contents in a mailto link following a space. So the links for "Peter Eschenbrenner" and "Peter Moulding" show up in the subject line as just "Peter".
Peter Eschenbrenner
I voted for the design which made it simplest for a new person to see the purpose of the site and how to understand the navigation quickly. I thought a lot of submissions were great artistically but difficult re navigation or the PG concept, and were simply nicer looking remakes of the existing PG website(s) without much thought to organising the content.
Peter Moulding (http://www.mouldingname.info/gut/)
There were about eight designs that I was really impressed with. Many of the others were great as well, but I didn't really feel they fit the site well (like the ones that looked like blogs).
My main criteria were:
My favorite covered all of these very well, though it was not the most stunning design. The one with the most stunning design didn't do so bad with the other criteria, either. Though a concern with that design would be load time on slow connections, since even on my high speed connection, it seemed a little sluggish.
Jennifer Grucza (http://jennifergrucza.com)
I looked at the submissions from three points of view: Information, Layout, and Aesthetics. Informationally, when I looked at the original PG site, I realized that there was simply too much stuff on there. Asking myself what needs to stay, and what you can chuck from the front page left me with this list:
Need:
1) Logo
2) Search
3) Navigation
4) Mission Statement blurb
Nice to have if there is room:
1) News/Announcements
2) New Additions
3) Get Involved
Pretty much everything else can go into subpages. If a submission had more than these elements, I generally dismissed it as being too busy or dense.
From a layout point of view, I mostly decided based on how much weight the various elements were given. The primary measurement of weight that I used in this case was if it was above or below the fold on a 760x420px window (the current cascade size of my browsing window...and a size that is approximate to a maximized browser window on a 800x600 display).
Obviosly the Logo needed to be entirely above the fold. Of the remaining elements, I felt that the search needed to be completely above the fold, the mission statement and navigation needed to at least start above the fold (if not be entirely above the fold), and ideally the News and New Additions would start above the fold.
I put such a strong weight on the search because once you actually know what PG does, that's the thing you are going to use most (except for the New Additions if you are a frequent visitor). If that is the case, then you shouldn't need to scroll to get to it.
(Sidenote: I was going to enter this contest. Really, I was. But I totally ran out of time. But my design was going to be an ultra-minimallistic design that ripped off Google: Logo, Search, and a little bit of navigation. Because that's what the site is there for, right?)
Finally I looked at aesthetics: balance, color, graphics and typography. Basically, I asked myself if the site had a feel that matched the great name of Gutenburg.
Only one submission was a homerun on all counts for me. It had exactly all the info that I wanted and nothing more. The layout gave the appropriate prominece to search, and the balance and typography felt perfect.
I also had a very close runner-up. In this case, the aesthetics were so appealing that I was willing to overlook the fact that almost nothing is above the fold. This could have been corrected by moving the search to the empty upper-left corner and starting the contents/latest news 50px higher (I think that still would have retained enough whitespace to be pleasing). Making those changes would probably have caused me to rank it first. The submission kept the layout uncluttered and simple--such a contrast from the original.
wink (http://site-unseen.net/wink)
I'm probably the layman here... my criteria were (in no particular order):
- Easy to read
- Easy to find where I need to go to get what I want
- Attractive, made me want to see more
- Pleasant color palette
- Maximum information in minimum space, while remaining clear (I run my browser in a smallish window while I'm working on other things)
speedwell
i agree with many of the comments above but what really stood out for me was the ability to not only search without having to scroll down but *also* the ability to browse. when thinking about bookstores/libraries, people should never underestimate the power of browsing to average user. so, the designs that had that browsing option either right on the main page or as a very obvious and prioritized link, well, those designs stood out to me the most. (next, i discounted the really bloggy looking ones. the original project gutenberg site looks nothing like a blog, and anyways, the average blog style is getting really really tired.)
just my 2 cents..
andrea (http://mellowtrouble.net)
Extremely close. I only just chose this one over Michele Gerarduzzi's fantastic entry... even as I write this email I'm having second thoughts. It really was between those two, although everyone should check out Andy's thoughts on the situation... Some really fantastic designs in there! I'm now tightly anticipating (did that make sense?) next month!
David House
Hey Scrivs,
Any chance we participants might get to see a summary of the comments made on our efforts (with names removed to protect anonymity, of course) after it's all said and done? It might be helpful to see what people thought of as they were voting - and heck, you might want to make the final panel's comments public to everyone as a learning resource.
By the way, I just wanted to say 'great job!' to everyone who entered. As many others have said, there's some really nice work in here. Good luck, everybody.
(Oh, and thanks for the vote, David!)
Ben Scofield (http://www.culann.com/)
Is it just me thinkin' that site like this would get a lot of visits from the PDAs and that its design should accomodate them?
Aleksandar Vacic (http://www.aplus.co.yu/)
Some really nice submission, I didn't expect this kind of quality work :)
Maybe next time ill make my submission less - errr - minimal :/
Brian Andersen
After reading the comments and doing some thinking, I find I have learned some good lessons by entering this contest (My first attempt at a web design other than my own website).
First, looks are crucial. If it isn't attractive, people will go away very quickly. Just like person to person attraction.
Second, to maintain the interest, it has to be interesting, duh! Wherever their eye lands first has to mean something, and the next prominent feature ditto, etc. Visuals catch the eye first but then the topmost text or highlighted text has to say something which will encourage them to read further.
Third, so after about 5 seconds, it dawns on them that "aah! Free eBooks! Do they have anything on xxx or by xxx?" Many like to search, so search bar is prominent.
Fourth, after searching or if they prefer to browse, they need to quickly find how to get around. So navigation must be clear and obvious so they can be pretty certain they are going in the right direction. Most people will look for ebooks or music, first time around so this should be most prominent.
Fifth, after finding something of interest, or having returned to find out more, they may then want to find out more about news, newsletters, credits, partners, getting involved etc but probably not first time around (there will be exceptions no doubt). If they are a regular visitor they will bookmark their favourite pages anyway, so imho that stuff does not need to be prominent on the home page. Whether it is there at all or on a second page is debatable. Most entrants put it all on the home page, I put some of it there but much less prominently. One entrant did not put it there at all. Perhaps this is where information architecture or information design comes in? I would be interested to find out why people put all the info there - by design, completely on purpose or not very consciously?
Finally, I must say thanks to Scrivs for hosting the contest and for having such an interesting website. You must be a very hard worker. Well done and all the best for the future.
Peter Moulding (http://www.mouldingname.info)
For me the major deal-breaker was: does the designer set the font-size for me? If someone did that, I would not even consider that redesign. I have very little patience for site authors who force me to change the font-size, especially where that breaks sites.
That weeding left only four sites (as far as I could tell), from which I picked the two nicest looking ones.
Branko Collin (http://www.abeleto.nl)
Hey Scrivs - what time does voting close on Friday? Midnight?
Ben Scofield (http://www.culann.com/)
Most of us wanted to add dates, but we would have had to make some up because there are none attached to the news items on the gutenberg site:
http://www.gutenberg.net/events.shtml
Peter Eschenbrenner
I have to say that going into this, the toughest part was the fact that the requirements were wide open, and we had to make decisions based on less than perfect information. While this was a source of personal frustration, it was also the source of amazing variety and creativity. I was personally very impressed with the resulting spectrum of unique and interesting ideas. As such, I don't think any one entry covers all the bases, but I'm sure that whichever entry is chosen can be modified and tweaked to "perfection."
Scrivs, maybe in future rounds it would be nice to put out some more requirements/guidelines. i.e. Browser baseline, no FOUC, Skip Nav Links, font re-sizing?, 508 validty, etc. It seems like a lot of entries are still just learning, and these kind of requirements could help further the cause and "re-education" for us beginners. And of course, anybody who is already well versed in these in issues should be doing them in their sleep anyways. ;)
I think it goes without saying that requirements/guidelines for content and visual design are unecessary and would hurt the diversity of the entries. Great job to all!
Garrett Dimon (http://www.brightcorner.com)
Hmm, I for one enjoyed the freedom that came with this contest. It made me pick everything up from scratch and think about how I wanted it, and how I thought it best to present the case. It certainly sparked creativity - webdesign can be a very limited and strict affair from time to time.
I've had my share of clients saying "I want that to be blue, not red", and this felt like a breath of fresh air.
I'd feel very strongly against putting restrictions on setting font-size, and I bet we could all argue for ages about pros and cons. In the end I feel that the lack of guidelines is what makes this so special.
Brian Andersen
Let's see... there were a lot of good entries here. I proceeded by first closing the ones that didn't look terribly appealing or were hard to use... then the ones where the search boxes were way too far down on the page (it is the #1 thing people come there for, after all), and was left with 4, all of which looked good. One looks slightly less good, but one of the good looking ones is basically a clone of macromedia's homepage, and they probably wouldn't appreciate that, so I'm removing that one from my list and voting for the remaining three... nice work, all of you. :-)
Scrivs - Next time, how about having them put the vote links *on* the pages, or enclosing their pages in a frameset with a tiny top or bottom window containing the link to vote? Now I have to go back and dig through thumbnails to see which is which. :-)
JC (http://thelionsweb.com/weblog)
I think it would be a good idea for voting to happen through a special messageboard, like this one here. Voters would include their vote(s) as well as their name, e-mail address, and website url (if they have one). That way you could trace the votes and voters somewhat if you thought that there was some sort of fraud or cheating. The votes wouldn't neccessarily have to be viewable to the public, but could be shown to them after voting was over. Voters could even post their reasons for voting after their votes so that designers could see what people thought of their works. You could request that people post something like:
votes: ken griffey, cal ripken, and dale earnhart.
other: I liked Pete Erwin's because of the colors, but it wasnt good because of ... etc.
What do you think about that?
thomas (http://gendes.elivy.com)
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#1
And yes I do plan on making the page look a little better.
Scrivs (http://www.9rules.com/whitespace/)