Congratulations Ben Crothers – designer of our banner and logo!

Well I must say, I’m excited.  At a meeting of the Taskforce yesterday, there were lots of different views about which designs were best.  Some wanted to have images of people in the design. Isn’t Web 2.0 about people? Others thought the design with Parliament House was fitting for our theme. Others agreed with a commenter, that a picture of Parliament House – perhaps a picture of any building – wasn’t quite ‘getting it’ about Web 2.0.

Then there were your votes.  Nick Morton’s design was well represented in the voting, but Ben Crothers’ designs, considered as a whole were even more popular.  His four designs scored 30% of the vote, but of those four, the three in the family chosen (see illustrations above) scored nearly a quarter of the votes.  For reasons already explained, we didn’t intend to stick rigidly to the popular vote if it led us too far astray from our own sense of what was best, but we were pleased that our own collective judgement seemed to line up with the collective judgement of our audience.

Speaking personally I am very excited about the wining designs.  Given what it takes to come up with a logo, you wonder how we keep getting good ones.  I mean how many compelling new ways are there that combine some simple image like the shape of our continent using only a few dots, or simple shapes and colours?  But I think designs 10, 11 and 12 do it simply and compellingly.  I can’t be sure what the designer intended, but to me the logo captures the idea of the diversity of Web 2.0.  And it’s fresh.   I think it looks terrific.  We’ll be in touch with Ben Crothers with a view to using all the designs he’s provided and or variants of them.  And we’ll be acknowledging his work, as I’m doing here.

So thanks everyone for sending in your ideas and your handiwork, thanks and congratulations to Ben for what I think is a fabulous design and a great outcome.

Postscript: I’ve just rung Ben and given him the good news. He drew my attention to the supporting text he’d sent in with his entry which is as follows. “The idea behind the circles is again conversations and interactions popping up around the country, with the ‘water pools’ evoking ‘ripple effect’, harmonising with each other and rippling through each other.  The colour implies variety, optimism and vitality.”  That was certainly the message I took from it.

Ben Crothers’ designs are below the fold (and now above us on our banner!). His website is here.