First of all, I think Lonny was pretty clear on why he picked each poster. Furthermore, he judged every poster based on the poster itself and not on who created it, and that’s all we asked of him. If he had taken into consideration who produced each poster would he have been giving an unbiased and honest decision on what were the best 3 posters? The answer is no. I think we can all agree that he has the experience to know what makes up a good poster design, so whether or not you agree with his opinion is kind of irrelevant. He’s the judge.

As for multiple winner issue, let me explain our rationale behind that. First of all, we made it clear in the rules that everyone can enter as many designs as they would like. We allow multiple entries because we’ve found that as entries come in they often spur more and we’re looking for the biggest possible pools of entries to pick from. Furthermore, we’ve found it allows people an opportunity to push themselves to create even better designs.

Having said that, we spent a lot of time selecting the top 10 we passed along to Lonny, and we did consider the number of entries each person in the Top 10 received, but only from the perspective of did each of their designs warrant a place in the Top 10. After all, if a person produces multiple entries that are superior to the rest of the entries, why should they be penalized by having all but one of their entries dropped from consideration? While we want the biggest pool to select from, we’re looking for the best designs, not the most diverse group of designers.

That’s not to say we don’t take into account perceived skill levels, access to design tools, etc., but our contests are designed to encourage improvement in everyone’s design skills not to foster an “everyone is entitled to a prize” mentality. Furthermore, I don’t think you have to be a design pro to win one of our contests. Simplicity, as Lonny pointed out about the Crashing Institute poster, can often strengthen a design.

In the end, we felt the 10 designs we selected were the strongest and deserved to be the ones that Lonny judged. If you don’t agree with us you’re certainly entitled to your opinion, but we’re confident that the 10 we picked were the best.

Having competed in contests of this type over the years, I know it’s tough to be judged. I’m glad no one has been turned off by this experience and I look forward to seeing you compete in future Figment contests.

It stings a little that Lonny seems to think that I just found this random image and added some text to it when I spent several hours creating my poster. Each and every piece of the poster, all of which are royalty free, is a different object on its own which I brought together to create the final image. No Photoshop effects or anything were used to create the overall look of the image, just lots and lots of time, layers and experimentation until I was happy with the results.

To reiterate, I am by no means whatsoever trying to say that mine was the absolute best poster of the bunch. I completely expected to lose out to the Zeroth Moscow poster. Like I’ve said before, it may not be as customized and creative as some of the other posters, but it still looks like a real concert poster. I’m honestly shocked that it didn’t take the top prize. But I do find it a bit unfair that someone was allowed to basically win twice. Since there was no limit to the amount of posters you could submit to the contest, what would have happened if someone just happened to win all three spots? I think for future contests there should be a rule that each person can only win one prize so that it remains a fair competition. Being able to submit multiple times to a competition is great, but if someone gets picked twice they should not count the second pick.

I know I’m getting off on a rant here and I apologize, and I certainly don’t want anyone to think that I’m bashing anybody or demanding a recount or something. That is not the case in anyway whatsoever. Massive congrats to the winners, and I’ll say it again that the Moscow poster deserved to take the top prize. But because javdoc had already taken top prize for his Only Takes One poster he should not have been allowed to claim third prize as well. I’m insanely grateful for the fact that since it was such a close call between the Moscow poster and mine that Eric and the guys here at Figment decided to award me 250 pieces of Lucre anyway because they really didn’t have to do that. So many many thanks to Eric for that huge act of generosity. And, again, serious congrats to the winners. Please don’t think I’m a giant douche because I’m not trying to start anything or demand retribution.

Nothing’s gonna keep me down, so bring on the next contest! And good luck to all who may enter!