Hi everyone!
As you know the T-shirt contest has drawn to a close... the flood of submissions has ceased, the image pool has trickled dry, and the hyperactive discussion boards have reached a steady calm. What remains from this once-bustling group , is a great wall of creative contributions, of diversity and inspiration.
Several weeks ago, when this contest began, we didn't quite know what to expect. We planted the seeds, left a few guiding tools, and then stepped back to observe. What we saw was absolutely beautiful. In a blink of an eye, a community of thousands from all around the world, separated by vast oceans and stretches of land, had assembled here with a common purpose. The "competitive" landscape, was quickly repaved into one of support and camaraderie. Everyone worked together as a team, providing constructive feedbacks and willingly offering their help throughout each step. The unique aspect of this contest was that the pool of submissions was open for public viewing, which encouraged designers to engage more closely with and gain inspiration from each other's work. Distant and disconnected members soon found themselves in the company of friends, where strong bonds were beginning to form.
The wall of art that you see here, represents countless hours of hard work from designers, ranging from amateurs to professionals, who dedicated their time and creative efforts in support of Firefox. We were absolutely thrilled with the level of interest and talent that came through, and thoroughly enjoyed witnessing the evolution of the group over time.
We received over 2,000 submissions, and created a growing community of over 3,500 members on the Flickr contest group -- thats amazing! Our team here at Mozilla tackled the challenging task of picking the top 5 which were then passed off to the community for a final decision. Garnering the overwhelming majority of the votes, was the "lineup" design by Tracie Andrews from the UK which illustrated the global community through universal symbols of women and men with a clever integration of the fox among them. The runners up were Kevin Weagle, Ali Riyaz, Mathew Anderson, and Brett Rex Cannell. Please join me once again in congratulating the winners! I also wanted to give a special thanks to you, to everyone that contributed and helped in shaping this effort into the success that it became.
The winning design is currently in print production as the official Firefox 3 T-shirt, and scheduled to arrive in the Mozilla Stores within the next few weeks! Tracie was among our top designers and we're very excited to have her design featured in our Store.
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So what's next? We're definitely not saying goodbyes! In fact the wide array of creative talent has inspired us into launching a whole new project to help embrace and promote the many other great submissions that we've received. Our vision is to "open-source" these designs so that they can be available for print and released into the wild. There are a lot of legal hurdles we must overcome first, but we are working hard and excited to make this happen!
We'd love to keep in touch with you and maintain this global community of designers that have stepped up and connected with us. So please make sure to stick around and check back on the Flickr group and the Spreadfirefox.com homepage for updates. I will keep you all posted and pass along the latest news.
Below is an image-collage representing the broad spectrum of designs...a mere slice, a sample of what was submitted to us by you. A great wall of creative contributions from around the world... all in support of Firefox!
This was truly an amazing experience. Great job everyone, and thanks again!
