Design Your Own Creative Suite 3 Icons Competition

2007-01-25

##NOLIGHTBOX##

This Competition Has Ended and is No Longer Accepting Entries. View the Winning Entries Below.

Winners announced, and icons ready for you to download, below.

Foreword

In late December 2006, Adobe revealed a portion of its branding scheme for the next generation of Adobe applications, including the upcoming Creative Suite 3 and all CS3-version point products like Photoshop, InDesign, InCopy, Illustrator, DreamWeaver, Adobe Bridge, and Acrobat. Except in a few instances, the branding scheme, which incorporates all the formerly Macromedia-published products, foregoes the symbols and iconography so familiar to creative professionals in favor of color-coded, two-letter symbols for each application (see illustration).

Click the image to zoom to the entire color wheel. Adobe’s new product icons create a cohesive branding scheme based on the color wheel.

The branding change has met with passionately polarized opinions–some adore the new icons, some despise them. Regardless of which side you count yourself among, Quark VS InDesign.com is giving you the opportunity to express your vision of the perfect Creative Suite 3 application icons in the Design Your Own Creative Suite 3 Icons Competition.

If you aren’t a fan of the new icons, here’s your chance to make your opinion known to Adobe in the language you speak most fluently–visual design. Even if you love the new CS3 icons, here’s your chance to step into Adobe’s shoes to visually explore and quantify what the tools of our trade mean to you. Starting from scratch, how would you have designed the icons?

The Quark VS InDesign.com Design Your Own Creative Suite 3 Icons Competition is a good-natured, fun, and friendly competition among graphic designers, illustrators, user interface designers, and anyone who enjoys using Adobe products to create–professionally or as a hobby. This contest is about celebrating our favorite tools and thanking Adobe for two decades of creating some of the coolest software that enables us to express our creative passions.

Now that Adobe has shown how it sees Adobe applications, Quark VS InDesign.com is asking you to show how you see your favorite tools, to communicate your vision in the unique and challenging art form of 128x128-pixel canvases. When all the entries are assembled together on Quark VS InDesign.com your designs will be among a gallery of voices from around the world articulating in visual language their appreciation for the coolest software I can imagine.

The Winners and Judging

First Place: Kimberly Smith

Second Place: Danny Dioguardi

Third Place: Vito Zgonik

Judging was according to the following criteria:

30% Originality. Rotating Adobe’s own icons 90-degrees probably won’t score big.
30% Appropriateness to Subject. In part, we will look for how obvious it is that the icon represents the application it’s supposed to. In a dock or button bar, no label will be present, so a user must intuit which icon belongs to which application. Part of this criterion will also be evaluating the ability of the design to retain its integrity and recognition at typical icon sizes–256x256, 128x128, 64x64, 48x48, 32x32, 24x24, and 16x16 pixels.
30% Coolness Factor. Any iconophile knows that the appreciation of these tiny works of art is not limited to specific styles, palettes, or motifs. It’s about, well, icon coolness. Separate from the others, this criterion will look at how many and how big the oohs and ahhs the designs elicit, and how fast it makes us want to replace default icons on our own docks and launch bars.
10% Number of Application Icons. The minimum eligible submission was three (3) icons. Among the various editions of Creative Suite 3 and all the non-bundled applications Adobe recently madeover, there were more than three dozen applications that were candidates to have their icons redesigned by entrants. Adobe created a cohesive design scheme for their icons, and we looked for entrants to do the same.

With so many creative interpretations of Adobe application iconography, judging was difficult. Between the first and second place winners especially. Kimberly Smith’s excellent and instantly identifiable object-oriented graphics and Danny Dioguardi’s evolution of symbols from an homage to previous versions through new symbols are both beautifully original, immediately identify the applications they describe, and certainly meet the coolness factor. In the end, judging between them rested on that 10% criterion, the number of application icons. Kimberly created four more icons than Danny, nudging her into the top spot.

Vito Zgonik, the third place winner, produced designs that hold true to Adobe’s CS3 branding scheme by using color-coded squares and two-letter identifiers for applications, but return the symbols and functional communication lacking in Adobe’s icons. Vito elegantly incorporated the symbols as subtle background patterns where others might have been tempted to add louder elements to compete with the central letters. Two things prevented this set of icons from scoring higher in the competition: First, the styled F Flash icon broke ranks and retreated into past Macromedia branding instead of holding a cohesive aesthetic. Second, the symbols Vito used in some of the background patterns didn’t make sense. For instance, grass brushes are used to represent FreeHand and Photoshop. I could understand such a symbol applied to the vector illustration application FreeHand or to Photoshop, which contains the grass brush patterns themselves, but by employing grass for both application icons, it weakened the result for both and looks almost as if the artist ran out of ideas by the time he got around to designing the latter of the two. Despite its relatively minor flaws, the set is beautiful. I particularly enjoy the way it incorporates and updates the popular glass-button style.

A couple of sets I received, those by Adam Betts and Anatoliy Omelchenko, were also strong showings. At the request of their authors, they were excluded from judging, but have been made available for download. Of the two sets not competing the design competition, Adam Betts’s, which brings the CS3 application box imagery into the icons and retaining the flavor of Adobe’s vision, is stunning. Among my favorites, however, is Anatoliy Omelchenko’s abstract representations of Acrobat, Illustrator, InDesign, and Photoshop. Simple in design but instantly recognizable as harbingers of their respective applications, Anatoliy’s designs are remarkable examples of graphic design.

Click here to see the winning icon designs and download all entries free for use on your computer.

Want to see the incredible prize chests the winners are taking home? Kimberly’s prizes are on the next page, followed by Danny and Vito. Or, use the links box at the top of this column to jump right to them.

Next: First Place Winnings

First Place Prizes

As the first place winner in the “Design Your Own Creative Suite 3 Icons Competition,” Kimberly Smith of the United States will receive courtesy of their manufacturers and Quark VS InDesign.com the following prizes, a combined value of more than US$4,000.

Click here to see Kimberly’s winning icon designs and download them to your computer.

1 of UtilityBelt 3 Courtesy of Andromeda Software, Inc. UtilityBelt is Andromeda’s most versatile plug-in collection for InDesign. Andromeda is dedicated to making InDesign quicker and easier to use than ever before. With the three UtilityBelt plug-ins: CTBar, TypeEffects, and the latest addition, ChartMaker, you can spend more time on the stuff that matters.

1 of Total Training’s Adobe Creative Suite 2.3 Premium Bundle 2.3 Courtesy of Total Training Photoshop’s Hall of Famer, Deke McClelland, will demonstrate techniques for the most feature-rich versions of PhotoshopÂ® CS2 and IllustratorÂ® CS2 yet. Adobe certified expert, Steve Holmes, will walk you through all the features of InDesign CS2 including design, typography, and layout skills. Plus, best selling author Janine Warner will show you how to add video and other multi-media into your website using Dreamweaver 8 and industry pro, Tim Plumer Jr. will show you the secrets of Adobeâ€™s newest version of Acrobat 8. 102 hours of amazing video training!

Included in the bundle:
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Total Training for Adobe Illustrator CS2
Total Training for Adobe InDesign CS2
Total Training for Adobe GoLive CS2
Total Training for Adobe Photoshop CS2
Total Training for Dreamweaver 8
Total Training Presents: Adobe Creative Suite 2 â€” From Design to Delivery

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Next: Second Place Winnings

Second Place Prizes

As the second place winner in the “Design Your Own Creative Suite 3 Icons Competition,” Danny Dioguardi of Canada will receive courtesy of their manufacturers and Quark VS InDesign.com the following prizes, a combined value of more than US$1,800.

Click here to see Danny’s winning icon designs and download them to your computer.

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1 of Real World Print Production by Claudia McCue (Peachpit/Adobe Press) Courtesy of Practicalia, LLC Signed by the Author

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Next: Third Place Winnings

Third Place Prizes

As the third place winner in the “Design Your Own Creative Suite 3 Icons Competition,” Vito Zgonik of the United Kingdom will receive courtesy of their manufacturers and Quark VS InDesign.com the following prizes, a combined value of US$1,050.

Click here to see Vito’s winning icon designs and download them to your computer.

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Official Competition Information

Competition Overview

The competition was to design new icons for Adobe products, with the Creative Suite 3 application icons at their core. Entrants had todesign at least three (3) icon-sized representations of at least Photoshop, Illustrator, and one other CS3 application. The more icons redesigned, the better.

At the end of the contest all entries in the contest were published on Quark VS InDesign.com and made available for free download as both Mac- and Windows-format icons, ready for use on desktops, docks, and file systems across the globe. Each entrant’s name (or team name), studio/company, and Website is listed with the icons she designed, thus promoting to Quark VS InDesign.com’s many readers and icon enthusiasts a global community of designers.

The contest ran for three months, with entries accepted from 29 January 2007 through 23 April 2007. Winners were announced on Quark VS InDesign.com 1 May 2007.

Eligibility

The Quark VS InDesign.com Design Your Own Creative Suite 3 Icons Competition was open to virtually anyone, anywhere in the world–even to Adobe employees!

Eligibility was exceedingly simple: You must not work for me, and you must be a citizen of planet earth.

If you work for or are related to Pariah S. Burke, I’m afraid you’re ineligible. Sorry, Mom, Sam, Jeremy, Elisabetta, and everyone else in this group. (If you don’t fall into the this group but do owe me money, you have to square with me before you can enter.)

To enter and win the contest you must be a citizen of planet Earth. We apologize to our design colleagues from the Crab Nebula and the illustrators’ commune on Io, but we have many excellent prizes to award in this contest, and off-planet shipping rates have soared in recent months. If you live in any country on Earth with a postal system capable of delivering prizes to you, then you are eligible to enter this contest.

If you live on planet Earth and I don’t share blood or a pay check with you, you are eligible to enter this contest. It’s even open to employees of prize furnishers!* And, if anyone within Adobe would like to present an alternate idea for the CS3 icons, she is more than welcome to do so.

Non-Competitive Entries

The purpose of this contest is to have fun and to share alternate ideas for Adobe application icons with other users and fans of Adobe software around the world. To facilitate that goal we have the broadest possible eligibility requirements, but for those who don’t meet eligibility to win the contest (as well as those who may wish to participate anonymously), there is an opportunity to contribute to the icon designs without competing in the contest. On the contest entry form is a checkbox–“I am not competing to win.” If you check that box, your icon designs will not be judged as a possible winner, but will be made available for download free to all comers at the end of the contest, and will promote you, your company, and the Website address you provide.

Because non-competitive contributions are not considered when judging winners and awarding prizes, anyone may submit CS3 icon designs in this manner–even my mother, assistant, and our friends in the Crab Nebula! (People who owe me money must still settle up!)

* If an employee of a prize furnisher wins, the prize(s) provided by the winner’s company will be awarded to one of the other winners.

Entry Details

In order to be considered valid, entries had to meet the following submission criteria:

Include at least three (3) icons for Creative Suite 3 applications, including ones for Photoshop, Illustrator, and a third of your choosing. Icons for any Adobe application will be accepted as the third or additional icon designs. QuarkXPress fans may also submit a redesigned icon for that application as the third or additional icon designs. The more icons you enter for different Adobe (or Quark) applications, the better we will be able to judge the cohesion of your theme. (Why stop at three anyway? It’s so fun to make icons!)
Be original designs created by the entrant and free from any copyright or trademark claims that would hinder our ability to distribute the final designs on Quark VS InDesign.
Be delivered as 24- or 32-bit RGB PSD, AI, or PNG files. Designs are not required to be full color–if you want to submit grayscale designs, do so–but the file format must be RGB in a high color space. Embedding of an ICC profile is optional, but encouraged.
Each submitted file must contain only one (1) icon design. Thus, you must submit a minimum of three documents in an eligible entry.
Submitted documents must be entitled only with the name of the application they represent. For instance, a PSD containing a design for an InCopy icon must be saved as “incopy.psd”; an Illustrator document containing an icon for Adobe Flash should be saved under the file name “flash.ai.”
All designs must be a maximum of 256x256 pixels and a minimum of 64x64 pixels. We will take care of resizing them and providing Mac- and Windows-compatible icon files of all standard sizes (e.g. 16x16, 32x32, 48x48, and so on).
All documents must be compressed together in a .ZIP archive and submitted with the entry form. (Instructions are in the entry form.)

Even Better

Contestants were able to enter up to three (3) different sets of designs. Although an entrant could only win once, all the designs submitted were considered eligible for winning the contest. Also, up to three (3) contributed sets of icons will be presented for download from Quark VS InDesign.com at the end of the contest, with accompanying credit to the contestant and a hyperlink to her Website.

Deadline for Entry

Entries were accepted until Midnight Pacific Time on 23 April 2007. That was three extra hours for you New Yawk designers, and eight more hours for you Greenwich folks and those in the military counting Zulu time. All submissions had to be delivered through the PDF entry form that was provided during the contest, and received by the Quark VS InDesign.com mail servers no later than 00:00 24 April 2007. After that, we began forwarding the mail to the FBI saying entrants were spamming us (just kidding).

The entry form was written in English (or as close an approximation as my American education allows), and, although the contest was open to all language speakers currently residing on planet Earth, they had to be able to read, understand, agree to, and follow the terms and instructions as written in English. All information provided by entrants, and all correspondence between entrants and Quark VS InDesign.com and/or prize furnishers in connection with this contest was conducted in English (mostly because I don’t know more than a few colorful phrases in any other language).

Contact and Press Information

Questions? Praise? Complaints? Marriage proposals? Please contact the publisher (me) using the means on the Contact page.

View the press release announcing the winners here.

View the press release announcing this contest here.

Members of the press may download Quark VS InDesign.com logos here (Zip, 8.2 MB).

Design Your Own Creative Suite 3 Icons Competition

Foreword

The Winners and Judging

First Place Prizes

Second Place Prizes

Third Place Prizes

Competition Overview

Eligibility

Entry Details

Deadline for Entry

Contact and Press Information

Pariah Burke

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