Greetings friends, old & new.
One thing that our most recent Springleap.com theme competition did have was an abundance of design potential. Down The rabbit Hole had the most submissions I have seen in ages. Designers really took this theme and ran with it! I suppose people associated with the theme more than our past design competitions.
The big question is why? Where does this “design association” stem from?
The overwhelming popularity of the Down The Rabbit Hole theme competition most certainly reflects what the Springleap.com artists want from our theme format. While in the past some of our competitions have not had quite the popularity we thought they would. The Hard of Rock was one competition that I was a tad disappointed with. While I’m absolutely in love with Suburbanhijinx’s winning design STAYIN ALIVE, I felt that he did not have to try super hard to take the win. However I did not sulk, I suppose it’s mostly because I love the winning design so much. If it had been a dog show and some cruddy design had snuck away with the win, I probably would have gotten all “rock star” and thrown a chair at a group of passersby (beware my wrath).
Could it be that there was stronger design association because designers were bored of the past them competition ideas? I know quite a few people were quite uninterested in the original Football Fever competition, because of all the World Cup hype that is going on at the moment. Here we have a situation where design association is affected by an outside influence that has very little to do with our own competition selection. In my opinion people should be fired up for the World Cup and have a bazillion ideas, that are soccer related. I suppose it’s difficult to take an interest in a theme that you are bombarded by perpetually every single day.
Perhaps it boils down to some theme competitions being simply too abstract for designers to truly connect with. The Wright Stuff was a competition that I truly thought would work well. We did receive quite a few entries, but nowhere close to what I was expecting. *SIGH* maybe people did not quite understand what was expected of them. Confusion seemed to also reign in our Down The Rabbit Hole competition. It seemed that the designers were under the impression that it had to be focussed on Alice in Wonderland only. However, in the stipulations it sounded more like the artist was supposed to let their mind go wild and fall down the “rabbit hole” of imagination and come up with an amazingly twisted design idea. This used the Wonderland idea of madness as a starting point…nothing more.
So whether it’s a case of a theme being too confusing, or there being outside influences for a theme competition not receiving the attention it deserves, I feel it is up to us here at Springleap.com to crack the mystery code of ‘positive submission energy’ hehehe. That is unless of course you guys and girls out there have a suggestion, or perhaps a wicked idea for a theme competition.
What themes will make artist design association that much more appealing?
Duncs.
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