Did you notice we added a couple of new themes this week?

You can check them all out under the "New" category in the Design tab.  They include Sparkle Aubergine and Sparkle Tomato by Yasmina Haryono, Leopard by Lynn T., and some designs featuring the Nokia N95 phone.  Lynn T. and Yasmina's designs were found through the Vox Banner Contest -- we're still adding winning banners so stay tuned!

Speaking of Lynn T.'s Leopard design, how about another installment of our Designer Interview Series? 

Designer: Lynn T.
Portfolio: Lynn T.
Themes: Leopard, Koala, Ski Girl, and the upcoming Green Goddess

1. Tell us a little bit about yourself and your design background.
I've always loved to draw since I was little, and when I was 12, my father brought home a copy of Corel PhotoPaint - so I started playing around with it and got into making graphics and websites. 10 years later it's still my favorite hobby, and I'm going to start a Diploma of Graphic Design this year so it can hopefully be more than a hobby.

2. What was the inspiration behind your winning entries?
I was thinking about themes that would appeal to a lot of people, so I came up with animals/pets. But because you already had dogs and cats, I decided on wild animals: the leopard and the koala & kangaroos, which were a must just having moved to Australia. I made the winter/ski banner because a lot of people were requesting holiday/Christmas themes, but I wanted something you could use all year if you wanted to.

3. What is your favorite Vox feature?
I love Vox because I can not only blog, but also store and publish videos and photos, and share my favorite movies and CDs. It's like 4 sites in one. I also love the fact that it's so easy to keep track of my friend's blogs.

4. What inspires you?
Lots of things, pretty much everything really. Other people's designs and drawings of course, songs, ads in a magazine, movies... or just a general feeling or mood that I want to express.

Maybe this post will inspire you to change your Vox theme!

- Lilia

Team Vox is on holiday today, but we wanted to tell you that today is the kickoff of Team Vox France's first ever banner contest. The good news for you is that the contest is open to all Voxers, worldwide!

Translated from French, here is what Team Vox France is looking for in this contest:

The challenge is to create a banner around the theme: "the French touch."  Think of a place, some music, some colors, or even some clichés that remind you of France; that's what we mean by the French touch.  Aren't we from the country of fashion and love? The spirit of the banner must be French, it can be very visible or a little more subtle.

As with previous banner contests, the winners will have their banner included as an official Vox design available to everyone, plus they'll receive some Vox goodies.

The rules are the same as the ones from our Valentine's Day banner contest, so re-read the rules here.  Deadline for entry is March 19, 2007 at 23:55 (GMT+1 - french hour), which is March 18th at 5:55 PM PST if we did the math correctly?

To enter, upload your banner into your Vox blog and tag it with the tags vox banner contest and french-touch.

Bonne chance, mes amis!

-- Krissy

With Valentine's Day approaching, you could probably imagine that we're already working on slipping a heart or two in some of the themes we'll be shipping soon. But since we know how creative all you guys have been with your own personalized banners, it makes sense to hold a Vox Valentine's Day Banner Contest!

Be creative! Be unique! The five banners that Team Vox likes best will be turned into themes and be included in a pre-Valentine's Day release that all Vox members will able to use.  The winners will also receive some cool Vox schwag (including a Vox T-Shirt!).

Get designing!  The deadline is soon: 11:59 PM (Pacific Time), Friday, January 26, 2007.

Head over to the Design blog for all the rules and details to enter the Valentine's Day Vox Banner Contest. 

- Mena

Another post in our Designer Interview Series.  Maybe this post will inspire you to change your Vox theme!

Designer: Witold Riedel
Portfolio: WitoldRiedel.com
Themes: Witold Chickadee, Owl, Radio, and Toucan

1. Tell us a little bit about yourself and your design background.
I was born in Poland at the very end of the 60's. My parents and I escaped to Germany in 1981. I lived there for about 15 years or so. In 1996 or so I was invited to come to New York... and here I am. I am writing this on Third Street, near Seventh Avenue, in Brooklyn, New York.

I was one of those children who just kept drawing. I drew on walls, windows, furniture, the floor, things, animals, myself. I later used drawings to communicate with my first friends in Germany. (I did not speak a single word of German when we arrived there.) I illustrated my first book when I was 17. I then hoped to become an illustrator, naturally, and ended up studying Visual Communication at the Hochschule für Gestaltung in Offenbach/Main. Parallel to my studies I began to do animation and graphic design. I did a lot of work for television, some commercials. A rather cool advertising agency in Frankfurt then invited me to do some of that animation and new media and print work for them. Franz Aumueller and friends had created a place called Instant Media Lab, and I was hired as one of the "scientists." It was a very fun place to work for. We did anything from videos for Brian Eno to workshops with people like Terence McKenna and the guys from Tomato. This work eventually brought me to New York, where I became the art director for a little record label on 46th Street. Then the web boom pulled me into working in advertising here in New York.

Oh and I never really stopped drawing. TheMorningNews.org published a series of my drawings from the subway and several series of photographs I have taken of a tiny bear I carry with me most of the time. So some people might know me for the bear pictures.

2. What was the inspiration behind your winning entries?
The drawings used for the entries were taken from a series I had published on my blog in 2003. I called them the 360x360 drawings, as they were all 360x360 pixels in size. I would draw something for the blog every day and then write something of a story inspired by the drawing. Some of the stories really traveled to some special places.I ended up making 120 of the drawings. The entries for the headers have a thing in common: They all open a tiny window into the souls of storytelling creatures. And yes, the radio is a creature too. It obviously is one. Have you ever spent an afternoon with a radio? The original entries are buried in the belly of my chaotic website, so I think I will just republish them on my happy new Vox blog. Vox is so nice.

3. What is favorite Vox feature?
 I think I like the Collections feature a lot. And I have not even started using it properly yet but I really like it. I have a bit of an "art collection" and a "book collection." I am obviously no Peggy Guggenheim, I can only afford pieces that are big editions or maybe tiny, tiny drawings, photographs. But I collect only pieces I can somehow connect with, so it is nice to not only be able to take care of the physical piece of art, but also to have a bit of an overview of the collection on Vox. I keep this feature open to my friends and family only. I am a shy collector, not a bad museum.

4. What inspires you?
I feel so incredibly lucky to live in New York. The city feels like a gigantic magnet (or sponge?) for people who want to create something very special.  And I am also incredibly lucky to be able to spend some time with some rather brilliant creative people.  Growing up in Poland in the 70's I could have never dreamt of ever ending up in New York, doing what I am doing. Yet I think that when I was a very little child I promised myself to never ever stop being curious. And even though it is a really tough one to keep sometimes, I hope I have not really broken my promise yet.

Another post in our Designer Interview Series.  This time we meet two designers who are inspired by music in different ways.

Designer: Katy Towell
Portfolio: KatyTowell.com
Themes: Haunted House, Victorian Lace, and Old Timey

1. Tell us a little bit about yourself and your design background.

I moved to California from Kansas in 2002, and that's when my design career got started. Most of my freelance work has been for local musicians and music instrument companies, so I've always been encouraged to experiment with unusual concepts -- for better or worse. These days, I'm a designer by day and a writer/cartoonist/designer at skary.net by night. And, yeah, people still tell me I'm not in Kansas, anymore. ;-)

2. What was the inspiration behind your winning entries?
I just love antiques. Honestly, my grandmother is more hip than I am! So, with these designs, I just focused on what I liked and went from there.

3. What is your favorite Vox feature?
Without a doubt, my favorite would have to be Question of the Day and Vox Hunt. Instant blog material when I'm out of ideas, and I love to read/see what others have posted for theirs whether they're in my neighborhood or not.

4. What inspires you?
I'd have to say music first and foremost -- the melodies more than the lyrics. I listen to different kinds depending on what exactly I need inspiration for. 1920s' jazz for happy stuff, industrial for motivation, Mozart's Requiem for work... And then sometimes there's inspiration in the clutter on my desk. There have been plenty of times I've said to myself, "I need to organize this mess... but I'm really digging the color combination of the pencil sharpener beside the movie ticket stub from three weeks ago... "

Designer: Tana Tienauchariya
Theme: DJ Girl

1. Tell us a little bit about yourself and your design background.

I think growing up in New York you are exposed to so many different forms of art and culture that it's hard not to grow to appreciate it. It started really young with me. I took a keen liking to any arts and crafts classes in grade school, when the age of AOL and the internet in general hit hard I took it upon myself to learn everything I could about web design which ultimately led to learning how to use Photoshop and Illustrator. The rest is really just history because from there on out I lived and breathed design. Eventually graduating college with a B.A. in Graphic Design.
 
2. What was the inspiration behind your winning entries? 
I'm musically driven and often find that I'm most creative when I'm blasting music, so it seemed fitting to do something geared towards music.

3. What is your favorite Vox feature?
Probably the intergration of outside services (ie. Flickr, youTube). It makes posting a lot easier. The QotD and Vox Hunt aren't bad either...
 
4. What inspires you?
 There's just an endless list. I'm very inspired and influenced by all sorts of artists, from the new emerging ones to the old legendary ones who've since passed on. Movies, music, photography, fashion are also high up there on the list. You just need to open your eyes and take everything in because there's no limits to what can be inspiring.

We're back with another installment in our Designer Interview Series.  A special shout-out goes to Yasmina who just graduated from grad school.  Congratulations! 

Designer: Lauren Musni
Themes: Bubble Gum Skies and the upcoming Beads Love

1. Tell us a little bit about yourself and your design background.

I'm a 21 year-old college student who lives in Wisconsin. I'm majoring in English and minoring in Comparative Literature. I've always been connected with the arts-- whether it be drawing, painting, graphic designing, writing, etc. Aesthetics are the one part of my life that really make sense to me. I couldn't live without being creative in some way. As far as a design background... I don't have a professional one. I suppose the best answer is my day-to-day experiences with having fun with Photoshop and taking art classes (drawing, painting, etc.) in the past.  It's all self-taught or small facts here and there picked up from others around me. I would love to pursue a career in design someday, but I fear that my lack of graphics education might hold me back. After all, I'm just a lowly college student!

2. What was the inspiration behind your winning entries?
My very first photoshoot with a really good quality digital camera was my Beads photoshoot (back in January 2006). That inspired Beads Love. Right now, I'm going through a phase that involves extreme colors versus pale, delicate colors/tones. Beads Love was an opportunity to experiment with how extreme colors could get digitally. Once I picked that exact beads photo, I had a pretty good idea of what I should do next.
 
My Bubblegum Skies banner just kind of... happened. I had stayed up extremely late the previous night and decided to "fool around" with Photoshop the minute I woke up. There's not backstory to this banner-- just a lot of colors, a lack of sleep, and a need for something sweet. Mwa ha!

3. What is your favorite Vox feature?
My favorite feature would have to be... that it exists? Haha, I'd have to say that I absolutely love Vox's connections. How smart is it to hook Vox up to Photobucket, Flickr, Amazon, and iStock? That's a pretty amazing feature. It not only allows for easy access to pictures (and more) but it enables Voxers to gain some sense of organization. That's an important feature that is sorely lacking from other blogging sites.

4. What inspires you?
I live to observe the small details that other people don't pick up in everyday life. It's those small details that build up to something really amazing. I'm fascinated with programs like Photoshop because every feature was created specifically for the user's convenience. I don't think my skills have even touched the basis of what Photoshop and other art programs really are but that's what I'm using my everyday life for-- to find out more about art, graphics and everything beautiful. Art is life, people. And life inspires.

Designer: Yasmina Haryono
Portfolio: Bananeira.net
Themes: Lovebirds and the upcoming Tomato, Eggplant, Vox Girl, and Vox Guy

1. Tell us a little bit about yourself and your design background.
 

Currently living in Milan, Italy, with my husband and finishing up my graduate degree. I have the most boring and straight academic and career path: undergrad in Interaction Design, five years doing Interaction Design professionally, and now back to school in the same subject. Although saying that, the work is diverse, very exciting and challenging; doing things from ambient environments, mobile phones, shavers, portable touch-screen tablets, TV interfaces to future-oriented research projects. I love it!

These days, when I'm not busy or stressed out with schoolwork, I am taking comfort in gelato, pannacotta, tartufo,and other yummy food, making Italian food porn for Flickr, and going for daytrips to the countryside with the handsome and talented husband.

2. What was the inspiration behind your winning entries?
Well, the Lovebirds was inspired by the drawings of artist Jason Sho Green, whose bird illustrations were used (with his express permission) on our wedding invites. So, it's just a continuation of us as Lovebirds, now in a clichéd domestic bliss of "Honey, I'm Home..."

The Tomato and Eggplant was just based on my thoughts that they were fruits and not vegetables. The Vox People
was inspired by Vox itself, based on a Vox blog post about someone receiving Vox tshirts, so I thought to incorporate a Vox branding in a stylish, not-too-obvious way.

3. What is your favorite Vox feature?
Question of the Day and Vox Hunt. In this manner, I feel Vox succeeds in engaging their members to post and create
interesting content. The fact that the questions/challenge is suggested by a Vox member also adds social and individual value because I feel that in social sites like Vox, people want recognition and reciprocation of their participation. I spend a lot of time looking at various people's answers.

4. What inspires you?
Most often, friends and children. People's unusual habits and rituals. Open doors. Holes in the road.
 

One of the most popular aspects of Vox has been the colorful designs that are so easy to change according to our moods, hobbies or the time of year.  Thanks to Vox design team and the winners of the Vox Banner Contest, new themes are added to Vox every month.  To help you understand the inspiration behind some of these themes, we interviewed the banner contest winners and will run their interviews over the coming weeks.

Designer: Taylor Savvy
Themes: Arctic Circle, Autumn, Foxkeh Mt. Fuji

1. Tell us a little bit about yourself and your design background.

Living in Lake Tahoe, California, there isn't exactly a variety of recreation other than the typical ski-slope-winters and the lounge-on-the-beach-summers. Fresh out of the frying pan of High School education, I plan on getting myself situated and playing the field in the design world. I took to photography when I first bought a digital camera several years back, and slowly but surely I immersed myself in the rest of the Adobe products and started designing things that I thought were either cute or aesthetically pleasing. I currently produce logos and package design for local businesses here in the Sierras, and intend on relocating to the Bay Area some time soon.

2. What was the inspiration behind your winning entry?
I see blogs of all sorts sprouting up across the site, and using themes can be another way for someone to personify their blog to represent themselves best. I made an autumn theme to capture the warm color tones that make this season what it is known for: being vibrant and appealing to the eye. Voxers have diversity, and what better way to show it off than to have dozens of equally beautiful and unique themes to tie it all together?

3. What is your favorite Vox feature?
I  love using VoxWatch when I navigate the site. I can jump onto the web, open VoxWatch, search tags that interest me (like the design tag) and can instantly see handfuls of different Voxers blogging about the subject I would like to read about. This not only makes things easy, it makes it possible for people to broadcast their ideas to people who have similar interests.
 
4. What inspires you?
I find my greatest inspiration to be in the variety of people I interact with in my life. Be it a single-serving friend that I speak with at a record store or a close friend joining me for a meal at the sushi bar, every single person I meet plays a part in my inspirational process. This is one of the many reasons why I love Vox -- the number of wonderful acquaintances is growing with every day.

Designer: Sara Showalter
Theme: Snowflakes

1. Tell us a little bit about yourself and your design background. 

I've been messing around with web stuff since I was in high school, starting with some terrible looking premade templates on AOL and Geocities. I quickly got tired of how ugly they were and decided to learn how to design my own.  I kept messing around and taught myself HTML and Photoshop, even while I was in college, working on a BA in screenwriting. I tried the Hollywood thing, hated it, moved back to the Bay Area, and decided to take actual classes in Photoshop and Flash and Illustrator and CSS and the like. I've always loved art, so I'm back in school right now, getting the art degree I probably should have gotten the first time.  Oh, and I still love messing with web stuff.

2. What was the inspiration behind your winning entry?  
I came up with a snowflakes banner, because I'm a December baby, so I've always kind of loved that month and the start of winter and the cold weather and Christmas.  I also think, as a girl who has only ever lived in California and never seen snow actually fall from the sky, that I have a fixation with snow.  I'm sure having to live in it and deal with it every winter would cure me, but in the meantime, I've built it up to this wonderful, magical thing in my head.  I always make wintery layouts for my website every year, so I thought I'd turn some of those ideas into a banner.

3. What is your favorite Vox feature?
I love how I can organize all my media in one place on Vox. I've been a Flickr addict for awhile now, so I was amazed at how easily it integrated with my Flickr account.  I love how easy it is to add videos and photos to my Vox entries.

4. What inspires you?
I can be inspired by a good song or even just taking a jog and clearing my head. I love looking at old pictures.  Sometimes looking at old black and white pictures will inspire me.  Sometimes looking at designs from the 1960's inspires me.  I like to take my camera out and go for a drive and see what catches my eye.  Usually I just like to sit down with a big cup of coffee, crank up some good music and create things.  It gives me a nice rush.

Designer: Lizzy Enger
Themes: Icicles and Flourish

1. Tell us a little bit about yourself and your design background.

I am a graphic designer/illustrator, graduated from Westerdal's School of Commercial Arts and the Norwegian National College of Art, although it's in fine art my heart lies now.
 
2. What was the inspiration behind your winning entries?
I wanted to see some different themes, so I went through my collection of photographs and started playing with them. Sometimes I like using my designer side too.
 
3. What is your favorite Vox feature?
I like that it's user friendly and that you can change the look of it in an instant. I also like the Neigborhood feature.

4. What inspires you?
I like playing with shapes and colors, materials and textures. My main love is the canvas and paint, oil paint and collage mostly, and even if I don't do figurative stuff it's a time consuming process with a lot of down time. So I play on the computer when I don't work actively on a painting, with photography and photomanipulation. Not that long ago I took some old drawings and scanned them and then colored them with textures from photographs, that was a lot of fun. I guess you can say I get inspired by many things.

-- Lilia

The time has come to introduce the 50 Vox Banner Contest entries that will be made into Vox themes!

First of all, thanks to all of you who entered. It was extremely difficult to choose 50 (and impossible to choose just five). The ones we picked, we feel, could have the broadest appeal to our Vox users and would be the easiest to integrate into Vox themes. File size entered into the equation so we had to pick banners that we feel could get reduced to a size that would load quickly. Additionally, there were a number of themes that came so close to being picked but because of one or two elements being slightly off, we couldn't choose them.

That said, we will be contacting a number of people who weren't picked and asking if we could make some modifications/variations to their banners and consider them for future releases too.

We picked a mix of photographic, vector-based and even hand-drawn banner. Illustrations, by far, were our largest form of submissions so you'll see more of those.

Again, we've realized how creative our Vox users can be! This has made it very clear to us that we will want to add functionality to Vox that will give Voxers the ability to customize and share their work more easily (and not just through contests)!

Without further ado, here are the 50 Vox banners that will be coming to your friendly neighborhood blogging service in upcoming releases.

And if you're one of the people whose entry was picked, we'll be contacting you about the next steps.

-Mena

               

We know that you're all anxiously awaiting the results for the Vox Banner Contest. And believe us when we say that judging this contest has not been an easy task!

But there's good news. Remember when we said we'd pick our favorite five and make themes out of theme? Well, after almost 600 entries, we've realized that there's no way we can just pick five. Right now, as of 5:00 pm PST we're down to the top 50 that we want to pick as winners and build out as themes.

So bear with us as we write up the announcement about the 50 banners we'll be making into themes. Expect it tomorrow (Friday, September 8) at the latest.

Since we promised something today, I'll just have to give you all a tease of the five banners that were most unanimously picked around the Vox headquarters. You can expect these coming to the design section of Vox in the very near future.

       

Just a friendly reminder that we are no longer accepting entries for the Vox Banner Contest which ended last night at 11:59 PM (PDT). We're amazed by the level of talent and creativity shown by the Vox community, as well as the huge number of entries (600+) -- you guys rock!

If you'd like to check out all the entries, go to Explore and view the images tagged Vox Banner Contest.

The Vox Design Team is busy at work judging the entries, and we'll post the winners on Thursday.

- Lilia