Help choose our banner
We have received a great response to our banner competition from across Australia. You will find the entries we are considering beneath the fold in the order in which they were sent to us and we’d like to invite you to help us out in choosing the winner by giving us your view in a vote. A voting facility has been provided below. Your votes will be influential, but we will make the final decision largely because it is too difficult for us to be confident that the result of a popular poll represents the views of a representative sample of participants on our blog and the ease with which such competitions can be influenced by campaigning and multiple voting. But rest assured, we will be interested in and influenced by your votes.
Entries are displayed in chronological order of us receiving them.
Because virtually all the entries in the banner competition included logo type designs, we are intending to choose a single design – or possibly a family of related banner designs. It is likely that we will choose the logo within the banner design we choose, but have also included one entry which is for a logo only which we will consider in our final judging.
We will be deciding on the winner at the Taskforce’s teleconference on Thursday of this week so we cannot promise to consider any votes cast after start of business on Thursday.
(continued – over the fold – the banners and voting).
[01] Jason Cartwright
[02] Travis Jackson
[03] Nick Morton
[04] Robin Henry
[05] Russell Harrower #i
[06] Russell Harrower #ii
[07] Russell Harrower #iii
[08] Joshua Gans
[09] Jason Weber
[10] Ben Crothers #i
[11] Ben Crothers #ii
[12] Ben Crothers #iii
[13] Ben Crothers #iv
[14] Todd Lopez #i
[15] Todd Lopez #ii
[16] Todd Lopez #iii
[17] Todd Lopez #iv
[18] Richard Ferrers #i
[19] Richard Ferrers #ii
[20] Lucas Woods
[21] Jesse Horner #i
[22] Jesse Horner #ii
[23] Hubert Chang
[24] Hubert Chang; logo
Vote Now! Voting has closed
[01] Jason Cartwright
[02] Travis Jackson
[03] Nick Morton
[04] Robin Henry
[05] Russell Harrower #i
[06] Russell Harrower #ii
[07] Russell Harrower #iii
[08] Joshua Gans
[09] Jason Weber
[10] Ben Crothers #i
[11] Ben Crothers #ii
[12] Ben Crothers #iii
[13] Ben Crothers #iv
[14] Todd Lopez #i
[15] Todd Lopez #ii
[16] Todd Lopez #iii
[17] Todd Lopez #iv
[18] Richard Ferrers #i
[19] Richard Ferrers #ii
[20] Lucas Woods
[21] Jesse Horner #i
[22] Jesse Horner #ii
[23] Hubert Chang
[24] Hubert Chang; logo
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Given the winner of the competition doesn’t get a prize as such, it would have been great to see the compeitition entrants had their names (above) linked to websites of their choice.
*Disclaimer – I am an entrant (#1).
I’m actually impressed by some of the others, particularly #3 and #15.
Was that an RJ-11 jack? LOL, old school.
Sorry, but I have a real problem with your poll. Gov 2.0 cannot mean using first-past-the-post, the single worst voting system around, to decide issues, even relatively rival ones. Australia is the home of preferential voting, something we should be proud of, and it defies belief that Gov 2.0 can mean abandoning it for FPTP.
Thanks for your feedback. The question of how we should deliberate on matters like this is one we’ll be giving some thought to. So if we’ve made a mistake, it’s good to get some nice, simple mistakes under our belt early
However having considered your feedback I’m not sure we’ve made a mistake. We had a look for some voting software and settled for the Wordpress plugin for simplicity’s sake. Perhaps there are better methods of voting – though there will also be quite a lot wrong with any method you use as Kenneth Arrow proved decades ago. However, because of the speed with which we want to work in this case and the problems of gaming any online voting method, this vote was never intended to be definitive. It’s intended to be a bit like a straw poll to give those who wish it some input. We’re hoping to decide ourselves within the week.
The Arrow theorem is somewhat contested among political scientists on the grounds that it sets up a Platonic ideal that can never be met and takes no account of transaction costs or the need for transparency. Whatever the virtues of that argument, there is no argument that FPTP meets the stringent conditions of the Arrow better than the single transferable vote, or indeed any other system of voting.
You cannot build Gov 2.0 on a horse-and-buggy voting system and more than you could build it on directing the public sector to start using quill pens. There are several easy and free STV implementations online. I would recommend Demochoice.
I’ve got to say, I don’t like any of these.
*shrugs*
When does this competition close?
All contributors should be commended for taking the time to create these fine options. Several would brand the Taskforce well. Let’s not make too much of this run-off, which it never was. With good humour, we can get to the political and procedural options that matter as the Taskforce progresses.
I appreciate the caution the Taskforce are using in approaching this first vote, making it non-binding – and the openness and transparency in telling people that this is the case.
However at some point it may become necessary for the Taskforce, and other government bodies, to accept that sometimes the personal critical judgement of a few individuals does not provide as good an outcome as the collective views of constituents – whether collected at the ballot box, in a public meeting or online.
Crowd sourcing has proven in many cases to be more accurate than the experts.
parliament house banners – too canberra centric?
Why can’t we choose the existing banner?
The ‘commitment’ of the Taskforce to a great result is illustrated by their approach here – let’s have a ‘competition’.
Design professionals study for a degree and are trained to provide creative answers to a supplied brief. Their designs are then judged against that brief.
Exercises such as this are a true degradation of the design profession.
Professional bodies such as AGDA have campaigned tirelessly for industry and government to see the futility of design ‘competitions’ and for designers to not provide their services for free.
Will the Taskforce also have an accounting competition, a business plan competition, a risk management competition or a legal services competition?
This is unprofessional and an insult – and you get what you pay for.
#10 or #12 are best. The circles depicting a map of Australia is creative. I dont see any creativity in the rest…
On a positive note, 10 points for the government to explore these mediums which is positive to see. This is a good start and is generating a lot of interest which means its working.
In relation to the actual competition, I was going to vote but then realised that the vote was not going to be used in the final decision making….dissappointing. A recommendation for next time is that its better not to use votes for these purposes unless the votes decided the final outcome (showing transparency). Maybe its best to leave these types of competitions for topics that are not so core to the purpose of the website.
In all, I really appreciate the effort the government is making to use social media to engage with a greater audience of people. I look forward to future postings.
Some nice designs, but for me #17 has the right mix of sober black and blue understatement required by an official body, with some funky out-of-focus dots representing an as-yet unresolved vision thing, with a matter-of-fact font depicting a readines to get on with the job.
So it’s a choice between ’smart design’ verses ‘popular but obvious’ – No choice at all really.
Lots of great entries.
They’re all so web 1.5. . .
Quite liked the Ben Crothers’ set, but the one with the cable coming from the flagpole scared me – Gov 2.0 is cabled?
I also agree with comments about Canberra centric – I would not visually link any physical infrastructure into the banner, after all Gov 2.0 might rely on physical infrastructure but should not be limited by it.
I’ve seen some lovely banners proposed, but could I suggest that the banner be no more than could be displayed on a current PDA/Blackberry (e.g. as used by Barack Obama)? Have a banner, say 240 characters wide.
Rework the best of the submissions to produce something that works on a range of screen widths … e.g. by having part of the banner on the left, and the other part being a background image that slides under the banner for smaller resolutions … example: http://bunting.com.au/sue (OK anyone could do a better job, but it demonstrates the point).
Thanks Lloyd,
A good suggestion. I’ll be suggesting that we keep it in mind when the Taskforce considers this tomorrow.
My vote is for 03, 10 – 17. The others are not professional. Good work particularly to Ben Crothers and Todd Lopez; and good luck! I just missed the voting.
Use the text logo from 14 and put it on a design from Ben Crothers (10 – 13)
And the winner is …..
Fair question – we’ll be posting on the winner tomorrow!
We can’t promise to consider votes after start of business Thursday of this week. This has now been added to the post.
Hey my name is now linked to my site !! Very impressed at your responsiveness and willingness to take suggestions.
Cheers.
Yeh, kind of ironical that the top vote is for a parliament-house-centric banner – not the message I’d be looking for in gov2.0
Hi Craig,
No probs with your intention and agree that a different approach can give fresh results.
But do take issue with a couple of your comments …
“sometimes the personal critical judgement of a few individuals does not provide as good an outcome as the collective views of constituents”
> Sure this is true sometimes, but as Terry notes below, if the individuals are design (or branding, or usability …) professionals, I know which I’d go for more often than not over the general crowd (possibly of govt bureaucrats in this scenario??!?).
The Wisdom of Crowds has its uses but it can also lead to mediocre or safe outcomes
eg. in this case, I’d suggest #3, whilst still a great design, is winning because of familiarity with Parliament House – whereas the brand is supposed to be about being forward-thinking (and not being Canberra-centric!) which I don’t think is represented by the establishment in Canberra.
Again as Terry notes – you wouldn’t crowd-source your Business Case etc so need to be careful given this is hopefully going to be a very prominent brand identity.
“Crowd sourcing has proven in many cases to be more accurate than the experts.”
> Any case studies, examples you can provide? Would be interesting to have a comparison.
Cheers, Ian.
Just a note: there is at least one design professional in the above. Possibly more
)
My sentiments exactly – clean simple and fresh !
So why didn’t you enter yourself.
I don’t have to have made my own entry in order to be permitted an opinion.
I think that it’s a tradeoff between letting it be completely settled by votes and preventing people from gaming the vote. If it had be announced from the start as a pure vote-only situation, it would have taken all of 30 seconds for 4chan to rock up.
Hi Ian,
Case studies of crowd sourcing, let’s see…. I talk about these in my blog quite a bit (and coincidentally had a post scheduled to go out today about it in my blog, which I’ve rescheduled to earlier this morning so I can link to it)
The Netflix prize – http://egovau.blogspot.com/2009/07/benefits-of-crowdsourcing-us1000000.html
Apps for America – http://egovau.blogspot.com/2009/05/apps-for-america-competition-launches.html
UK – show us a better way – http://egovau.blogspot.com/2008/07/uk-government-drops-its-pants-to.html
And here’s some other references…
The Guardian – MP expenses: http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/4073/196/
Examples of crowdsourcing in action: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/crowdsourcing_million_heads.php
Three case studies on crowd sourcing: http://siliconangle.com/ver2/2009/06/01/crowdsourcing-evolves-three-case-studies/
I wouldn’t necessarily agree that some organisations would not crowd source their business plans, look at Facebook’s approach of consulting it’s users on the direction for the site and Dell’s IdeaStorm site which drives over 60% of new Dell products. Frankly there are other organisations who might be more in touch with their markets if they crowd sourced their business plan.
And we’re talking about government here, not business. Democratic government in its essence could be considered a form of crowd sourcing, ‘of the people, by the people, for the people’.
Note that regarding design in particular (as you mentioned), many people do not choose to wear the fashions that the expert clothes designers choose to exhibit each season. Just because someone is ‘expert’ does not mean they are ‘in tune with the gestalt’. If people want ‘ordinary’ (which I’d suggest is used in a negative way only by experts), let them have ordinary!
Sometimes there is a place for the ‘expert’ view – and sometimes you’re much better off letting the crowd decide what it is comfortable with right now. To quote ‘politics is the art of the possible’ – which aligns quite neatly with crowd sourcing in my humble opinion.
Cheers,
Craig