[WiLD]

GeekExtreme, a technology news and reviews site, is looking for a new design so we've decided to throw a little contest to try and find it.

Concept guidelines:

Fixed width - no wider than what will fit at 1024x768.

2 page styles:

The home page consisting of:

• A "featured article" area that will phase through a few of our recent articles (ala AlienWare.com but about half the size).
• A blog style daily news section that starts above the scroll
• One 300 x 250 advertisment above the scroll
• The menu (can be anything from a drop down to a straight list, you do the art, we'll make it work)
• 3+ Other advertising areas - can be any standard adv. image sizes and/or a text ad area.

Full article / Review pages consisting of:

• The article (with product photos, etc... maybe some standard image styles we can use for all our articles).
• One 300x250 or Leaderboard advertisment above the scroll
• The menu (can be the same as or totally different from the home page - but intuitive).
• 3+ Other advertising areas - Again, any standard adv. images, etc... Can include in-story advertising

As far as the style of the design - Well, we're the tech guys and you're the artists. You tell (er, show) us! In an effort to keep creativity as open as possible, the only style pointer I'll give you is this: Lean toward what you think would be considered trend-whorish rather than your typical hi-tech styles. Oh - and NO BLACK BACKGROUNDS.

The Prizes:

1. A 2gig iPod Nano (or cash equiv.) and 1 year hosting.
2. A 1 year DA Subscription and 1 year hosting.
3. A 6 month DA Subscription.
4. A 3 month DA Subscription.

The Deadlines:

All entries must be submitted to designcontest@geekextreme.com by midnight GMT on March 8th, 2006.

Winners will be announced on March 15th, 2006.

The Rules:

• All entries must be your original work
• The first place winner must release all rights to their winning design
• The first place winner must provide PSD originals
• The first place winner should be available to make as many as 3 revisions to their design post-contest. (finishing touches)
• If we decide that none of the entries are usable for this project, we reserve the right to remove first place from the contest. In the case that first place is removed, 2nd, 3rd and 4th place will still receive the associated prize.
• GeekExtreme reserves the right to purchase the rights and PSD originals of any entry into this contest for the cash equivalent of first prize.
• All publicly viewable examples must be no more than 70% of their intended final size until 1 week after the winners have been chosen (to protect your rights to the design as well as ours).
• All entries should be submitted to designcontest@geekextreme.com in full intended resolution and color depth. Entries will NOT be distributed for ANY reason unless compensation is received by the artist.

Other Information:

Be creative, be original and innovate. We're not looking for "standards", we're looking for creative designs that any level of user will find easy and intuitive.

This contest will be monitored by one of our partner sites and entrants may be approached to participate in a future project that is being developed but is currently being kept confidential. Any proposals for this project will come from someone at GeekExtreme.com and will be sent from a GeekExtreme.com email address.

I look forward to seeing everyones entries!

If you have ANY questions or comments, please don't hesitate to speak your mind. You can comment here or email designcontest@geekextreme.com.

GeekExtreme reserves the right to change the deadlines and/or rules of this contest at any time. Entries can be removed from this contest at any time if a request by the author to do so is recevied by GeekExtreme. If less than 20 unique entries are received, GeekExtreme reserves the right to cancel this contest. All images submitted to GeekExtreme will remain the property of their resepctive owners until a winner has been chosen.