New challenge: Front Page Banner!

[kass]

ETA: We're tabling this challenge for now, having realized that we need better guidelines and a longer timeframe. We'll re-post this challenge later once we've generated the better guidelines etc. Thanks for your patience; a new challenge is coming right up!

Hi all! The First Fandoms challenge is now officially closed; you're welcome to keep posting goodies from your first beloved fandom, but we're moving on to something new: the Front Page Banner challenge.

This is an art challenge. We’re closing in on the end of Fanlore’s Open Beta, and we’re looking for a new banner graphic to go on the Fanlore front page to replace the one that’s there now (the one that says “Fanlore: beta.”) We invite you to make us a new graphic, and post it in the comments here!

(By submitting a graphic to this challenge, you're giving us permission to use that graphic on Fanlore. That's probably obvious, but we wanted to mention it anyway, just to be completely clear.)

This challenge will run for roughly two weeks. Calling all fanartists: please spread the word, and we look forward to seeing what you guys come up with!

Comments

[ratcreature]

Is there any particular reason you are dissatisfied with the current logo and want to change it rather than just removing the "beta"? I mean I've seen different opinions on the typography, but personally I think the logo works as recognizable thing. Or don't you want to change the typography but make it more of a picture thing. "Banner" is quite vague in that respect. Also, is this supposed to follow the guidlines of that recent OTW thing wrt not using copyrighted image sources? Or is it intended in the spirit of the typical fannish banner that doesn't care?

[kass]

I think the general feeling was that if we were going to spiff up our logo, moving out of open beta would be the time to do it, and it seemed like it might be a fun challenge for artists.

That's a great question about copyrighted image sources -- I do not know the answer, but let me check on that and get right back to you.

[ratcreature]

So it really is the logo and its typography that is supposed be changed? The challenge says "banner graphic", so I thought it might have been intended to be like for example the LJ banner contests, i.e. the logo and its identity stays the same as branding, but gets a new and changable banner background someone designs. I think I'm just finding the parameters really vague.

[kass]

Hi again! I checked with Legal and they tell me that it's best if fanartists either use their own images, or else if they work from creative commons-licensed bases.

And I'm sorry the challenge is too vague! We were trying to leave possibilities open so that artists could exercise maximum creativity. I will bring this concern to wikicomm and will let you know if there's any further information on what we're looking for...

[frogspace.livejournal.com]

I thought the logo would stay the same and the challenge might be looking for something like the themed versions of the Google logo. For example a Stargate version where the letters are made up of gate symbols, a gate, and Ancient technology, or a SPN version where the letters are arcane symbols and weapons, etc. Then there could be a featured fandom of the month (or whatever) on the front page and maybe once it retires, it could become a skin users could choose in their preference settings...

[kass]

That is an awesome idea (which I never would have thought of, omg!)

Really, the possibilities are wide-open -- whatever y'all think sounds cool, go for it.

[facetofcathy]

I stumbled across this post (Making Big Bangs Artist Friendly by davincis_girl) again today and it immediately brought this art challenge to mind. While the post is about fanart made to go with fic, I think she raises a lot of good points about the way fandom culture treats fan artists. "we are volunteers, not graphic design companies" is the stand-out quote.

Bearing that history in mind, I think a lot of fan artists would shy away from a challenge that is asking them to put their time and effort in without any guidelines, and then post publicly here to be judged in some way that isn't really clear. Is there one "winner"? Multiple art to be used? Is there size restrictions? Content restrictions? Colour pallets to be used?

I'm not trying to harsh the squee here, or say that a fan-created logo and/or banner(s) wouldn't be awesome, but I would not submit fic under these conditions, no how, no way.

[kass]

These are all really good points, and I appreciate you raising them.

Our original notion was that people would post graphics here, everyone who reads this comm on a regular basis could squee over them together, and then the wiki committee would choose a winner out of that pool of graphics. But maybe if there are several graphics which we like a lot, we might see if the artists would be willing to rotate them over time (changing them every month? every few months?) We're leaving that question open because we don't know what kind of submissions we're going to get.

As far as content restrictions go, ratcreature asked about copyrighted images, so I ran the question by Legal, and the response was that it would be best if artists either used their own images or used creative-commons-licensed bases. But that's the only restriction; we're intentionally not restricting color palette or style because we wanted to give people as many options as possible.

Is this helpful? We didn't mean to make fanartists feel taken-advantage-of; we thought this would be a fun way to get people excited about the approaching end of open beta, is all. If the vagueness of our challenge is problematic for anyone, we do apologize.

[ratcreature]

I'm not considering to participate mostly because I suck at banners (I can't even come up with a banner for my own recent multifandom comm to promote it), but even if was any good at banners I wouldn't with the way the challenge is.

As my comment above shows, I found the expectations really unclear after reading the challenge, and it is not so great to submit something to judgment and competition when you are not even told the criteria in advance that will determine the outcome, or what the expectations and goals of the judging wiki committee are when they'll decide. And all that is on a somewhat tight time frame too.

I mean, I assume there *are* criteria the wiki committee has beyond just random taste ("I like pink glitter!") that are being considered when the committee decides how the wiki and its policies image is going to be represented/visualized on the front page and judge what they prefer. Like picking which wiki attributes are supposed to show in the logo/banner, and which are the most important things and which less, e.g. whether the committee would like the the new wiki image to harmonize more with other OTW logos (which are all red to begin with, the main OTW, the TWC, AO3...) or maybe the distance of the current one from the other OTW things was intentional, so maybe they are supposed to have a different color... Is some sort of DIY wiki spirit to show, or the oral history or the fandom aspect, and there for example how it's seen if a banner was highlighting a certain fandom or type of fandom, when the wiki is supposed to be panfandom and such.