Logo for social platform for online video gamers - a Terra Media project
a logo project by tmprojects

Brief updates

30-Apr-09 3:13 a.m. GMT

This is a guide to help explain our star ratings on CrowdSpring:

5 stars (*****) - Finalist for project award. Cosmetic changes may be required. These are only given within last 48 hrs of project. Only 3 or 4 star entries may be upgraded to 5 stars.

4 stars (****) - Semi-finalist for project award. Concept is great, but execution is either incomplete or not polished enough to warrant 5 stars. Submissions can only attain 4 stars after the project is 50% over, as this gives us time to process all submissions equally. We typically upgrade 3 stars to 4 once we've had time to really get comfortable with designs, instead of immediately dismissing them, so please DO NOT withdraw 3 star submissions as they guide us in our decisions.

3 stars (***) - For the first half of the project, 3 stars is typically the highest we give out, and will later upgrade to 4. Submissions that remain 3 stars usually have an acceptable concept, but are missing typically some key element within our creative brief and/or have executed in a style that's not in the right direction.

2 stars (**) - Concept *might* have potential, but really needs to be taken in a different direction. Usually missing multiple key elements within the creative brief.

1 star * - Poor concept, poor execution. Please reread the creative brief and take a completely different approach for the next submission.

Also to note that every submission that is 3 stars or greater will receive comments. 2-star submissions *may* receive feedback , while 1-star submissions will not. We hope that a 1-star rating is clear enough to the designer that there is too much to address in a comment.

We will be looking at the following areas:

Typography: font appeal, spacing, readability on web/print

User Experience: Color palette, image/illustration quality & recognizability, integration of illustration & text, overall professionalism, overall appeal


We hope these guideliness prove useful as we understand how difficult doing 'spec' work can be. Please let us know if there are ways to provide better feedback. For those of you that have already worked with us in the past, please let us know what helped/didn't help from our last project to get us to a great design faster. Thanks and good luck!

4-May-09 10:42 p.m. GMT

Buyer Update -

Many of the entries so far have not really been going in the direction we would like to see them go in stylistically so we would like to clarify our vision somewhat so that you have a better idea of what we want.

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First off, we have noticed that many of you have taken our suggestion of two hands touching on a more literal level and produced some logos that seem almost realistic. While artistically this is cool, the actual implementation usually ends up looking strange or not quite right.

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The message to take away from that is to really think more abstractly when incorporating our suggestions. We certainly like the idea of a portal, but that doesn't mean you necessarily have to render an actual portal - sometimes maybe even a stylistic oval or two might convey the idea. The same idea goes with the hands.

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Secondly, we really do mean it when we say we are open to new ideas. We do think having some sort of portal imagery would be a plus, but aside from that, the rest of our suggestions are merely ideas we think might work. What we really want on a more conceptual level is a logo that is cool, professional, clean and conveys the message we want to send out.

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If you need inspiration, consider this:

You are designing a logo for the next Facebook / IGN / Blizzard, etc - the logo needs to be something that millions of people will see on a daily basis and have a mostly positive reaction - so nothing too extreme, but interesting none the less. Secondly, the logo you are designing is for a website that will be attracting primarily gamers and is acting essentially as a hub to connect them to each other and all other elements of the gaming industry in a very social and non trivial way.

So thus key elements that you should consider including:

* Cleanly integratable into a website (nothing too over the top)
* Professional (not necessarily boring or generic though)
* Interesting (something that people will remember without being overpowering)
* Stylistic (don't just put an image next to the words, make the two elements flow)
* Connection To Games (considering the context of the logo, this would be a good connection)
* Connection To Portal (since the name is half "portal" this is also a good element to have)
* Social Element (this ties into the connecting of people from across the world)


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We know this is somewhat of an open-ended concept but we would prefer to see how creative people can be with these ideas - we just want to make sure everyone is more or less on the same page. Again, you don't have to include all those elements, you don't have to include any if you want - just put yourself in our mindset and let you ideas flow

8-May-09 4:01 p.m. GMT

Ok, we've got a tangible site for you to check out. Let's begin by saying this: PLEASE DO NOT COPY THIS STYLE.

The purpose here is to provide you with a tangible example of what we're going for. Clean, professional & EPIC.

Please visit http://www.onlive.com and check out their intro video. Our logo needs to be capable of standing tall against imagery such as OnLive and their media presence.

Thanks