First and Only Prize: $50 (via PayPal or Money Order). I'd love to do it in a way that forces the prize to be spent at the deviantART Shop, but I don't see a way of doing that. This way also leaves that to the winner's discretion. The winner will also receive credit for the logo design on the future website.

Hello All,

I've been a longtime lurker/admirer of the work on dA. I am not an artist. Not even close. As I child, I used to go the artists supply store to buy sketch pads and charcoal pencils thinking they would be my muse. No such luck. Instead, the only thing I've had limited success with is my photography. I mostly shoot my own children and those of friends and family. Some people who've seen my work have asked if I'd consider shooting a wedding or other events and thus far I've declined in large part because I don't want the responsibility.

However, as I've tallied up the cost of my gear and the ongoing expenses of my "hobsession" I've been thinking that I might want to consider doing some more formal work to defray the costs. To that end, I've been planning on setting up a simple marketing website and I'd REALLY like to get a nice logo/identity to build around.

Since this little venture will never make any real money, I'm not going to pour a lot of dough into the startup. I could make a run at developing my own logo, but as I mentioned earlier, I suck at this and you don't. I could also go to anyone of the "Logo-Mart" type websites and have them spit something out for me. However, I thought it would be far better if I could do something for dA and its members rather than feed the machine. As much as I hate the term, I think the contest idea is the proverbial "win-win" for everyone.

So here's the deal: hopefully one of you is going to choose both my business name and logo. I've had a few different ideas for names and have narrowed the field to the following two contenders:

PixelBox Images (PixelBoxImages.com)
Julia Bean Photography (JuliaBean.com)

Some background on the contenders...The first option was one that I came up with just playing around with words and available domain names. I think it lends itself to some interesting logo ideas with both the name and graphics. The second one is based on a nickname I use for my almost 2-year old baby girl. Her name is Julia Grace, but I sometimes call her "jellybean". That then morphed into "Julia Bean" and since many variations on "Julia Grace" domain names were already taken, the idea of using Julia Bean was that much more attractive. Choose the one you like most, tell me why, and give it your best shot.

I am not looking to drive traffic to the site via web searches, hits, etc. This is really only going to be used as a marketing site/web presence where, if people are interested in seeing some stuff, I can hand them a card and they can come look at my work and pricing. So the logo would mainly be used on business cards, CD/DVD inserts for burned images, and the website banner, etc.

In addition to all the standard file formats (eps, jpg/gif/png, tif, etc.) I will also need a contractual release of some sort from whomever's idea I finally select.

Sorry for the length of this post, but I figured the more info and background the better. Please let me know if you have any questions. I sincerely thank you for your consideration.

Cheers,
Dylan

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What if the hokey pokey really is what it's all about?