As I said in my post announcing the name change for the site, the site needs a new logo but I’m hopeless with graphics.
So, how to solve this problem? Have a contest! Whomever creates the image that is selected to be the new logo for the site wins a TiVo HD. And if you already have a TiVo HD, or just don’t want one, you can pick from the other available rewards for a total of 35,000 points. (If you already have a TiVo HD, perhaps the My DVR Expander and a Glo remote. I know that’s 36,000 points, that’s OK.)
The current site logo, seen at the right, was created by reader ‘artemis908′ back in August of 2006, originally as an icon for the ‘tivolovers’ LJ community. I’d originally created the little site icon, what you see in the browser location bar, as a kind of prototype concept:
I do like the heart motif as it goes with the ‘Lovers’ aspect of the site. I really do like the current site logo, but the TiVo guy just has to go as part of the overhaul. So something similar might be nice – but I don’t want to limit any artists. You never know what someone will think of that just feels right. ‘I’ll know it when I see it.’
I’m no lawyer, nor can I really afford one, so I’ll just say that whichever design wins would become the property of the site, which is effectively myself as this is a one-man operation. The design would need to work on the site, the current logo is 100×100 pixels – though the new one could vary within reason. I’d also need a simplified site icon (favicon.ico) version. As well as the source files so it could be manipulated for use on business cards, etc. It would have to work on the black background of the site, but the design (or variants thereof) should also work on a white background – as any business card would probably be white, and I intend to offer users the ability to use alternate color schemes on the site. (It is on my ‘To Do’ list.) If you’re so inclined you’d of course be free to include the logo in any portfolio of your work.
You can submit designs via comments on this post. Or you can contact me directly if you prefer, or if you have any questions you want to ask. If you want to bounce iterations off me before posting the submission, so as to not give away any ideas during development, that’s fine.
I’ll set midnight EST, Friday March 28. 2008 as the deadline for submissions – that’s the end of this week. Though if there is enough call to extend the deadline, I would certainly consider doing so.
Once the submissions are in I may post the candidates for review and comment. But in the end, it’ll be my decision – for better or for worse. My site, my choice. 
If I’m not happy with it it’ll just bug me forever.
Thank you, and good luck to any who enter!
EDIT: Of course, I woke up this morning and had a blinding flash of the obvious. The current site name at the top of the pages ‘Gizmo Lovers’ with the rainbow colored ‘Gizmo’ was just me riffing on the old ‘TiVo’ in the four TiVo colors, for lack of something better to do. It occurs to me that the design of the logo could be carried over into a new graphic site banner for the name, instead of the plain CSS-styled text used today. So if you want to put together a simple name graphic to go with the logo, I wouldn’t object.
END EDIT
I have had some thoughts about the design. But you may not want to read them if you’re the sort who likes to come up with things from a blank slate. Stop now if that’s the case.
I’m thinking of keeping the heart theme to go with ‘Lovers’, but obviously the TiVo Guy has to go. I was thinking of something like inter-meshing gears over the heart for the ‘gizmo’/tech angle. Something simple – not too busy, not specific to some tech. The simplified version for use as a site icon (favicon.ico) for the browser’s location bar and bookmarks doesn’t have to be identical, but should suggest the full version for users. For example, a single gear over the heart could be a simplified version of the inter-meshing gear concept.
Taking it further, I thought about the heart with a ‘G’ and an ‘L’ over it, – the G would have gear teeth around it, and the L would have teeth down the left side. They would inter-mesh with the L to the right and down from the G. Maybe the horizontal piece of the L could look like forklift forks, could be carrying some generic crate of gizmos. An animated version could raise/lower the forks. (Though I probably wouldn’t use an animated version as the main logo, too distracting.) I’m really not sure how that would look over the heart in the available space. Maybe just a static ‘gear’ G & L over the heart – either a modern, burnished metal look – or perhaps a steam-punk brass-with-fiddly-bits look. It might even be nice to have one of each – a little old and a little new. The favicon version of this could just have the gear-G over a heart.
The logo today is a simple 100×100 pixel image, which works well. So something the same size, or close, would be good. I wouldn’t want something much taller. Though a ‘raw’ large version would be useful for resizing for use elsewhere, just in case.
I realized well after I thought of this that the ‘G’ in my mind looked a lot like the Gizmonic Institute logo from MST3K – as represented by this model. See the ‘top view’ on page two. So something like that is what I was thinking.
Thank you and again, good luck!
