French Banner Contest Winners!
We're excited to announce the winners from Team Vox France's banner contest! Team Vox France announced the winners in a meetup they had in Paris on March 31st. Check out a bunch of photos and video from the event.
Meet the top three winners, see their winning banners, and hear a little bit about the inspiration behind their designs:
3rd Place: Mimi
“At first I just wanted a new banner for my own blog, because I didn’t really like the old one. I wasn’t inspired by anything in particular; I just dove in a bit haphazardly, tried different brushes on Photoshop and some special effects. Once it was “acceptable” I put it online. I think the whole thing took about an hour – I don’t know, I wasn’t keeping track! Actually it was MiniPez who convinced me to take part in the contest, once he saw my banner. I took his advice and made some adjustments. He was telling me that I had a chance, but I admit that I didn’t really believe him! It was a huge surprise to be named among the ten finalists. So – a big thanks to MiniPez and to Vox!”
“To start, I thought about what the term ‘French Touch’ means for me. My first designs featured typically French objects: a bottle of wine, the Moulin Rouge, a Parisian landscape, a tribute to Mucha and Art Nouveau, and Parisian architecture (I love the entrances to Parisian metro stations). But I wasn’t satisfied with the results, so I searched some French sites for inspiration. The ‘French Touch’, in effect, represents all of France’s artistic achievements, and the term was coined in the field of electronic music. It was then extended to include art, notably in the infographic and graphic genres. Thus, French talent came to be in high demand overseas, principally in North America and in Asia. So I found inspiration on the sites featuring the French design sensibility I love so much. To create the banner, I used a trial version of Photoshop CS2 (the full version is a bit expensive for a lowly student). I think I spent 2.5 to 3 hours tinkering around. If I were to do it again, an hour should be enough. Thanks to the contest, I finally learned to use the ‘plume’ on Photoshop, which will help in future illustrations. Thanks Vox!”
1st Place: Stéphane
“I used Fireworks CS3 from Adobe to create this banner: a gradated blue background, then the contours of the Eiffel Tower and the Arc of Triumph layered over it. It took me less than 20 minutes, but required numerous tries featuring different buildings. In the end, I chose the simplest rendition. The original had the word ‘Salut’ (Hi) in a bubble, which I replaced with the heart, in part to add a touch of red (to reference the colors of the French flag), but also to make it more accessible to the non-Francophones in the international Vox community.”
We will add these winning themes in a future release (probably around the end of April). Of course, we'll let you know right here as soon as they're available!
-- Krissy
Comments
The 1st place one is amazing.
-Russ
xo
Yes!!!!!!!!!!!
nice to read this note!!!!!
I've been waiting forever for you guys to release these designs. I'd really like to use 'em. Hurry up! ^_^