DFTBA Short Story Contest

Greetings Tumblrers! Today we have but one part, but it is an important part!

That’s right! It’s time for

The DFTBA Short Story Contest Logo Design Competition

As helpfully put together by the good people of DesignersOfTumblr. The rules here are very simple. We want you to submit logo designs to the link provided above. They need to be 500px by 500px maximum, and they need to follow the following brief

“A clear, fun, bright and bold logo, incorporating the themes of Nerdfighteria (the hand sign, French Llama’s, etc), creative writing, and the specific prompt of this year - applied 21st century research (of any/multiple fields). The words “DFTBA Short Story Contest 2013” must be included.”

Many of you may have seen this posted about before, but now we have a specific place to submit your designs to. I want to say again, thank you to Elliott Marriess for her help with that. You have until February 18th, so you best get designing!

Thank you all, I look forward to seeing your work! God Bless, Best Wishes and DFTBA!

So this is a brief post just to refresh everyone’s memory about the big vote and let you know how everything is going for that.

For those of you who are new, and I see we have several new followers recently, we’re having a vote for the best logo design for our fair and noble contest. DesignersOfTumblr were very gracious in allowing us access to their website to host the contest, and if you want to go and vote on the contest, you can see all forty two of the designs here.

Although I don’t want to reveal to you yet just who is winning, as I don’t want you to be influenced as to who to choose based on who is likely to win, I feel compelled to tell you that in the last few days, the competition has been whittled down from it being a five horse race, with several others in the not too far behind who look as though they might catch up, to becoming a two horse race. There are two designs which are running… not exactly massively close, but far closer to each other than anyone else is to them.

The top design currently has (using my voter totalising system) ninety points from it’s first, second and third place votes. The second design after that is trailing somewhat with seventy nine using the same system. After that, things get more spaced out, with the third place design having sixty three, then fourth having fifty nine, fifth having fifty two and so on.

Those of you who have voted should be able now to see the simplified graphs of results by clicking on the link that you originally used to go to the voting page in the first place. If you do, you should be able to work out fairly quickly which are the two designs I am talking about. If you wish to publicise who is winning to those who have yet to vote, I’ve got nothing against that. I just won’t be doing it here.

One other point. I have seen many of the designers putting on their tumblrs “Voting is open, vote for me here! I’m number X”. While I appreciate that this is perfectly fair and okay to do, and I’m not going to dock points for doing this, I’d prefer it if you advertised to your friends to vote for the best design, rather than just voting for you because they are your friends and you want their help. If you have made the best design, chances are they will vote for you anyway. Tell them that you participated, sure, but also tell them to vote for the one they think is best. Don’t feel upset if they like someone else’s more than yours. It’s not the winning, it’s the taking part. I’d just like the contest as much as possible to be about the designs, rather than becoming a popularity contest.

And finally, remember that the final deadline for the vote (in case I haven’t linked to it enough) is Wednesday at midnight GMT! So you’ve not got long. I see one hundred and seventy five of you have already made your views known! This is excellent and a big thank you to everyone who has voted so far. For those of you who have not, make haste! Thank you all for participating and making this a great contest!

All the submissions are in, all the designs have been collected. It’s now time, on the occasion of the sixtieth post to this blog, for the democratic process to do it’s thing!

Right now, if you click on that picture (assuming I have worked my Tumblr magic right, but if I haven’t click here) you will be taken to a website where you will be asked not one, not two, but THREE questions. Yes, you each have an option to cast three votes on which of our amazing thirty nine forty two logos (or amazing thirty eight, and my one graphic oddity) are worthy to become the DFTBA short story contest’s logo of choice.

Numerically speaking, the way this will work is as follows. Everyone gets three votes, but your vote for your first choice counts for three points, your vote for your second choice counts two points and your vote for your third choice counts for one point. At the end of the week, all the results will be totaliser and the winner will be the one with the most points. I should add here, because of the way the survey is designed, I don’t know how to eliminate your previous selection from the list of total choices. Therefore, I’m just going to ask, please DON’T vote for the same design three times. It will really just muck things up, and it’s not really in the spirit of things. If anyone’s got any questions about that, feel free to send them to me in an ask.

This is a big week for the contest, and I’m very excited. This logo will be the emblem of the contest. It will be on the E-Book Anthology’s cover and will be embedded into everyone’s ticket. Before we do go into things however, I would like to take a moment to talk about how you might want to use your vote.

Remember this is a logo! - When I gave the brief about the contest to DesignersOfTumblr I said four words. “bold, bright, fun and clear”. A logo MUST be clear. Simple, easy to identify and quick to glance at and understand. So please don’t just base your choice on which one is the prettiest. I apologise if that sounds patronising, but it’s something I just wanted to put out there. It’s a logo first and foremost. We will be having to build the website around this logo also, along with putting it on the E-book front cover. Given most e-readers somewhat limited graphic potential, the simpler and clearer the better. That way, it will come out better on the screen at the end. It’s quite clear from the designs, people have by and large understood this, I just wanted to put it out there for the voters too. Please don’t mistake simplicity for being boring! Not at all! Clarity is never boring when it communicates something awesome.

With that done, I’m now going to link you to each of the designs, and their made of awesome creators. I’m not putting the pictures up here, since I think over the past few weeks you’ve seen them on here a great deal. So here is each picture linked and their creators credited

One by bakerie

Two by pondear

Three by mstrimmer

Four by happy-smiley-robot

Five by happy-smiley-robot

Six by jbgirl

Seven by happy-smiley-robot

Eight by mullixhi

Nine by snowcones

Ten by shantypants

Eleven by JasonEtcoDesign

Twelve by avianfunction

Thirteen by Cigam (ross92@gmail.com)

Fourteen by ghostsinyourbed

Fifteen by elithegirl

Sixteen by onewhiteye

Seventeen by vibeout

Eighteen by Patrice Horvath

Nineteen by aostrancosebarrancos

Twenty by che502

Twenty One by bittersweetlegendary

Twenty Two by tylermckee

Twenty Three by -fixedatzero

Twenty Four by rachitjain

Twenty Five by perpetualthoughts

Twenty Six by tylermckee

Twenty Seven by  princessparkingonly

Twenty Eight by whentheskyisfalling

Twenty Nine by perpetualthoughts

Thirty by  rebornherooftime

Thirty One by mikerojo

Thirty Two by keeerngraphicdesigner

Thirty Three by essentiallyme

Thirty Four by juanabad

Thirty Five by thehatmanandrobin

Thirty Six by prescottmark

Thirty Seven by theslybrownfox

Thirty Eight by cecart

Thirty Nine by  thomascullen

EDIT Three latecommers who I am being lenient on

Forty by heyrhia

Forty One by  rachelgabrielle

Forty Two by  Zhiyong Xu

If you want to scroll through every single one of these as images, you can of course go here to see the page designersoftumblr have very graciuosly dedicated to us and our contest lo, this past month. I’d like to thank everyone whose name is on that list above for taking part, and to thank Elliott Mariess for his exceptionally positive response to my suggestion and now I thank you, the voting readership of this project’s blog, for reading all the way down to the base here. It only remains for me to say, that you have one week! Voting closes on the midnight of February 15th GMT so get voting!

PS. One thing I forgot to mention. As much as I like them, and as much as I’m sure the people who designed the logos like them, likes and reblogs are not votes! I have nothing against likes & reblogs. I like them a lot, but I just want people to be sure, we’re only counting votes on the website!

Number thirty nine! By thomascullendesign. Unless someone posts something in the next few minutes, this is looking like it will be the last one. I will be back to double check, as there may be some delay between when you submitted it and when it gets posted, but otherwise, time is pretty much run down. If you want to take advantage of these last few seconds, or if you want to just see all of the amazing work that’s gone into all of these, then please, click on the link in the picture.

Otherwise, as always, DFTBA and best wishes!

Number thirty eight, this one by cecart. Just over an hour left everyone! Thanks again for all your likes, reblogs, following and of course, your taking part. Looking forward to the end result next week. If you’ve got a burning design idea that you desperately want to put through, click on the link in the picture to find out how.

Best wishes and, of course DFTBA!

Number thirty seven by theslybrownfox. If you check the countdown timer, you’ll see that you’ve got less than seven hours to go to submit your logo designs! Click on the picture link to see where to submit! Best wishes and DFTBA to one and all!

Number thirty six! This one is by prescottmark. Excellent to see people making use of the last few hours. The countdown is now very much upon us, Nerdfighteria! Just over thirteen hours now, until the deadline! As always, click on the link in the picture to find out how to make use of that last little time to take part!

Best wishes and DFTBA!

Hello all! I promised a news-post, and so I shall deliver. Today’s news-post comes to you in SIX parts, so lets get to it.

Part one: Entrance fees

So we have several pieces of news on the entrance fee front. I can tell you now that the entrance fee will be…

$6.12

Now if you’re wondering why it is that rather specific amount, you’re probably not alone. The reason is to do with the service that we are using to make the entrance fee possible. That service is Eventbrite and they are charging us $1.12 per sale to make use of their service. So for every person who enters, we are donating $5 to the Foundation to Decrease Worldsuck. Given my initial prediction of the price being somewhere between $4-$8 USD, I think this is a reasonable compromise. What will happen when it comes to submissions is that in order to confirm, when you do submit, that you have indeed contributed, you’ll be asked to send in your email, a copy of your Eventbrite receipt for the event. You’ll be pleased to know you will be able to buy tickets very soon. Specifically, they will be available after the conclusion of the logo competition, which will be over on the 15th February (I’ve decided to shorten it to one week of voting).  Also, to make this easier for everyone, the payments will be received via the magic of…

Yes! I figured this was the easiest way for everyone to get involved. Its a system everyone is used to, familiar with and thus will make it the best way for as many people to get involved as possible.

Part two: Thank you

This is a small part, but just a brief thank you to the people over at FrenchThePodcast for giving our contest a shout-out on their show. I’ve been in contact with them over a couple of messages, and they’ve said that we will probably talk more soon and again when more details have been finalised. There are of course, many many more people who we need to thank for the many and various things they are doing for this contest, and at apropriate moments, such thanks will be given out. Expect this section to become a regular part of the news feed on this tumblr!

Part three: Judges

So since my last news-post our numbers have gone up rather a good deal and I wanted to give a brief refresher on the people that the panel of judges currently consists of. In order of their arrival on the panel, they start as follows.

Marcy Collier - A professional critic for the Western Pennsylvania branch of the Society of Children’s Books Writers and Illustrators as well as being the editor of the Golden Penn newsletter (a blog she regularly contributes to can be found here and her twitter is here).

Katie Biela -  English Literature teacher in one of America’s top ten preparatory schools.

Sean Totterdell - Co-editor in chief of DFTBA News a tumblr with such accomplishments as an in-depth and intriguing interview with Hank Green on the subject of Education.

Jonathan David Lim & the Bullet Reviews team - The writers and editors of a website providing insightful, succinct and clear reviews of books, films and games.

Now I think you’ll agree that this is a rather stellar list, but I am looking for more people. I’m thinking we have a maximum of three more slots available. Before I had said I wanted twelve, but on reflection that seemed too unwieldy. Now I’ve had some very interesting applications from several very interesting people, but I am once again reminding people to say that, if you want to be a judge, send an email saying why you think you would make a good judge for this contest to

DFTBA[DOT]Short[DOT]Story[DOT]Contest[AT]Inbox[DOT]Com

Previously I have said that I would be accepting these emails until the 8th April, but to speed things along for various reasons, I’m going to cut that time down. You have until the new end of the logo competition, that’s February 15th, to be sending me your Nerdfighter judging CV/Resume!

Part four: The logo contest

If you’re a regular follower of this blog then you may be possibly getting a little tired of hearing about this now, since it’s practically all the blog has consisted of for the last few weeks. But I’d just like to say that I’ve been really amazed and impressed with everyone’s entries and also just the sheer number of people who have taken to their pens and graphics editing suites to take part. I’m really glad of everyone’s involvement, and it’s been a really great part of the contest. Thank you very much. I’m looking forward to the final result. Remember though… YOU STILL HAVE ONE DAY LEFT! Just over in fact! If you’re wanting to take part, click here!

Part five: The dream of a physical book…

From the begining of this project, I’ve made it very clear that this will be, when published, an anthology on the format of an E-book. The reason being is that I know for a fact it is something I can do. Using formats like Smashwords and Amazon, I can very simply arrange it so that I can publish this anthology as a Kindle E-book. However… it would be really great if we could… possibly… maybe… just… get this published some way or some how, as a real world physical book to go into bookshops around the world.

With that in mind, I’m proposing another e-mail campaign. Specificly, one to John Green’s literary agent, Jodi Reamer (who interestingly, is also the agent of Stephanie Meyer). My thinking is that if she represents John Green, she might be quite happy to also represent Nerdfighteria and it’s literary creation, if enough people expressed an interest in her doing so. If you too would like to see the DFTBA Short Story Anthology 2012 become a physical book also

jreamer[AT]writershouse[DOT]com

And put as the subject of your E-mail “DFTBA Short Story Anthology 2012”, and in the body of your message, tell her about the contest, about what it’s trying to do, and that you would think it would be great if it is made into a physical book!

Also, while we’re on the subject of e-mail campaigns…

Part six: Operation John Green!

We’re still looking for the possibility of John Green being a judge on this contest. I’ve contacted him, and I suspect others of you have too, but we have still not heard anything like a yay or nay on this prospect. If you want to tell him you’d like him to be involved, please e-mail him at

johngreenwritesbooks[AT]gmail[DOT]com

If you’ve read all the way down to here, I thank you very much for your patience and interest! If you have any questions about anything I’ve posted here, please leave me a message! Best wishes to one and all, and, of course…

DFTBA!

Number thirty five! This one comes to us courtesy of thehatmanandrobin. This one is the last of the currently submitted logo designs, but to everyone out there who has a budding interest in graphic design, I will say, YOU’VE GOT 1 & A BIT DAYS! Specificity, you’ve got thirty five and one quarter hours! I’m posting this at 12.45 GMT. So, go to it! Draw, design! Go art! And to learn just how to submit, and to see all the other amazing works you’d be competing with, the details are, as always, in the link on the picture.

Number thirty four! I hope you’re all enjoying this run down! More news will be coming… tomorrow! I promise now. Tomorrow there WILL be a news post. Hand on heart! Until then, I hope you enjoy this work by juanabad, and hope you make use of the last few days of the contest to either appreciate all the various entries we’ve collected by clicking on the link in the picture, or you click on the picture link to find out how to take part yourself! Hope you’re having a good day, and enjoy whichever way you go.

Best wishes and, of course DFTBA

Number thirty three! By essentiallyme. Almost time now! You’ve got what’s left of today, tomorrow and all of Wednesday. So if you’re wanting to take part, get involved soon! Click on the link in the picture to see how to do it! Thank again to everyone who has taken part!

Best wishes and of course DFTBA

Number thirty two! This one here was designed by keeerngraphicdesigner. Not long to go now! Only a few days left, and yet still we’ve got more people submitting logos! Keep it up. The doors close on midnight, 8th February, GMT! Thank you for participating, those that have, and a big encouragement to others of you to do so! If you want to find out how, click on the picture.

Best wishes & of course, DFTBA!

Number thirty one! Somewhat… well I’ll leave it to your thoughts! It’s by mikerojo so you can ask him…

Four days left! Get your submissions in soon! Read all about how to at the link on the picture!

Best wishes & DFTBA

And here’s the big three oh! Or thirty, as most others say, by rebornherooftime. Not many days now! I’m really pleased with the level of response we’ve got here! It’s all been really amazing. If you want to be seeing what I’m so excited about, click on the picture link!

Best wishes & DFTBA

Number twenty nine! More here from perpetualthoughts, whose previous work included this. It appears that scarcity of time makes people react! We’ve had several more new designs posted in the last day or so! If you want to see them, or want to join them in the mad rush towards the deadline (and you haven’t already!) your more than welcome! Click on the link in the picture! Best wishes & DFTBA