The Hatchwise Blog – News, Important Information and General Gossip

 I’m happy to announce that the loonnnggg awaited Design Court feature is now live.  Extensive testing has been done on it but bugs are sure to pop up as it is a fairly complicated feature. If you notice any bugs/problems with the reporting part of the process or with the actual Design Court itself please report it here, as a comment on this blog post, not in the forum, and not as a PM.

A Message To “The Cheaters”:

Plagiarism and cheating have been running rampant for quite a while, but our very strict and detailed rules have been in place longer than that.  Each and every design submitted to the site has been submitted AFTER you (the designer) read the following rules:

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A MESSAGE FROM HatchWise STAFF: We think that the above instructions are very clear. If you have a question about them please ask us before submitting any artwork. We reserve the right (and will probably exercise it) to permananently ban any designer who submits a design that violates the above rules. We’re naturally good natured people but we tend to get upset about plagiarism.

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Now, I paste that there before I state the following: The reporting feature is RETROACTIVE, which means that any design you submitted to a contest before can be reported by any designer who still has access to that contest (anyone who participated in it with you). I don’t want to hear any complaints about this. You had PLENTY of warnings. Every time you submitted a design there was a warning. If your past actions get you banned now, so be it.

If you have never cheated (as the majority of you haven’t) than please disregard the above.

Now, on to how the system works:

1. You can’t vote in Design Court unless you have previously won a contest.

2. Any registered designer can report an entry, but unless you have previously won a contest you can only have two open cases at a time.

3. If one of your designs is found “guilty”, it is withdrawn and you are issued a warning point.  If you accumulate a total of three warning points you are permanently banned and any pending winnings are frozen indefinitely.

4. If you report a design and it is found “not guilty” YOU are issued a warning point. If you accumulate a total of three warning points you are permanently banned and any pending winnings are frozen indefinitely. The warning points for submitting a design without reason are not the same as the warning points in #3, they accumulate separately.

5. Withdrawing a design that has been reported is a nice gesture, but does not stop the Court Case, or the warning point if you are found guilty.

6. There are 11 votes taken on each case, each designer can only vote once, you cannot vote on your own case. The majority wins.

7. The decision by the crowd is not negotiable. Do not email us complaining about it.

8. If you are banned because of repeat offenses then that is it. There is no arguing or pleading with staff over it, so please don’t even try.

So that’s it. To report a design simply log into your account and click the red exclamation point next to the entry you want to report on the contest detail page.

Many thanks to all of you who have waited so long and so patiently for this. Please leave your comments, suggestions and criticisms in the comments below.

We recently added a new feature to contest holder accounts that enables contest holders to rate and review designs without leaving the main contest page, this should make reviewing designs a lot easier and hopefully result in more designers getting feedback.

Next project to be completed: Design Court, where YOU get to judge entries that have been reported for not following the rules, this is almost done… stay tuned!

Hello!

I’m very excited to announce something that has been a long time in the works – a name change for eLogoContest and the addition of a bunch of new types of design contests.

Ever since we launched in 2008, we have constantly had contest holders contact us asking if they could run other types of design contest – such as website design contests and t-shirt design contests, and we also had designers letting us know that they would love to be able to enter other types of contests.

One of the things that kept us from making these changes earlier on was that when we had originally launched, we had, in effect, limited the scope of the site by naming it “eLogoContest”, which pretty much pigeonholed the site as only being for Logo Design Contests.

We wanted to expand the vision of the site and meets our customers demands, so in January 2009 we started brainstorming new names for the site, after about 6 months of debate we settled on HatchWise, a perfect combination of the fact that our site is used by people “hatching” brands, ideas and designs, and the fact that we feel that we are the wisest choice for them – and that by using us they can literally “HatchWise”.

Yesterday, on August 13th, we made the official switch to HatchWise.com, and released an update to the site that makes it possible to run contests for Websites, T Shirts, Business Cards/Stationery, Brochures, Banner Ads, and we’ve even added a special “other” category for anything the other categories don’t take care of.

A note on bugs and such…

We thoroughly tested the site before making the move and upgrades, but nothing goes perfectly and bugs DO pop up. If you run into a problem with the site please respond to this email and let us know – it’s the only way we’ll figure out what’s going wonky!

Upcoming Changes for Designers

We have a whole host of changes scheduled for the near future, among them a designer dispute forum where you can get peer opinion on designs you feel are copying yours or using clipart. And an updated client account area that requires the contest holders to rate and review each entry before they can see new entries, which should raise feedback amount by 1000%, among many other changes!

Upcoming changes for Contest Holders

We have a whole host of changes scheduled for the near future, among them an easier to use client account area, soon you’ll be able to comment and rate entries without leaving the contest detail page, among many other changes! We’ll keep you posted!
Thank you so much for participating on HatchWise, we couldn’t do it without you (literally)!

Sincerely,
George Ryan and the rest of the HatchWise team

We’re debuting a few new features for contest holders today: many of you have asked for the ability to give more visibility to your contest, and now you can. Promote your contest by featuring it on the main page and at the top of all the contest lists, or highlight it so that it stands out, or do both!

Another feature many have asked for is the ability to make contests private, well now you can! With the private contest upgrade your contest will only be visible to logged in designers, and will not show up on the main site, or more importantly, in the search engines!

The fees range from $7 to $18, depending on which upgrade you purchase. To upgrade your contest simply click on “Upgrades” once you have started your contest (it’ll be part of the order process soon, but for now you have to purchase them separately).

Hope ya’ll like it!

George

Wow, that was harder then expected: first the switch took forever and the site was unavailable overnight, then we had a bug crop up and entries were not being uploaded properly, but after working feverishly all day we finally have everything working as it should (at least I think we do…).

Thank you so much to everyone who put up with the problems and was more then gracious with us, you were great!

The server we are now on has four times as much RAM, way more bandwidth and a  way faster processor then the previous one, so hopefully we will see some increased performance in the way the site runs.

All contests that had been running for more then 48 hours were extended by 48 hours, and all others were reset to 10 days.

If anyone has any problems or questions please let me know (support@elogocontest.com).

I’m off to bed now…

George

I’m pleased to announce that we now have a portfolio page for each of the talented designers that takes part on this site.

Showcased on each portfolio page are the winning designs for any contests that designer has won, as well as ALL of the entries the designer has submitted to the site. You can also see which contests the designer is participating in and read some cool facts about that particular designers participation on the site.

Check out a few of the more prolific (and extremely talented) designers here:

Mahmur: http://www.elogocontest.com/designers.php?designer=mahmur

Xpressions: http://www.elogocontest.com/designers.php?designer=xpressions

SmurfyGirl: http://www.elogocontest.com/designers.php?designer=smurfygirl

Want to check out one of your favorite designers, or maybe yourself? Easy, just copy and paste the below URL and replace “YourNameHere” with your eLogoContest designer username.

http://www.elogocontest.com/designers.php?designer=YourNameHere

I think it’s been bug checked pretty well, but if you run across anything that doesn’t work or look right please let me know.

As always please let us know your ideas for the site over at our feedback portal.

As you may have noticed, we have been slowly adding some new features to the public section of the site, those features have now also been migrated over so that they are able to be viewed when logged in as a designer, and contest holders will soon have them as well.

The features are listed below:

Mouseover entry enlarge – just hold your mouse over an entry to immediately see the larger version.

More consistent entry sizes – entries are all the same size now, making it so that the site has a much cleaner, easier to navigate look.

Winning entry shows up at the top of all entries – now you can easily see which entry won without having to scroll through all the entries, the winning entry is also highlighted in red.

New forum – we have upgraded the designer forums and will soon be opening it up to the contest holders as well (there will be a “general” section, as well as  “designers only” and “contest holders only” sections.

More features coming soon!

Please let me know if you run across any bugs!

In a blatant effort to keep up with pop culture, we are excited to announce that we finally have joined the Twitter phenomenon.

To follow us and get up to the minute news, specials, and random bits of knowledge, please go to http://www.twitter.com/eLogoContest

We’ll follow everyone who follows us!

As you may have noticed, we just upgraded the main site to a spiffy new design. The account sections (designer & contest holder) and the blog are also in the process of being changed.

As we continue to develop and improve the site we are constantly looking for your feedback. Since we launched we have received a lot of really great ideas and suggestions from our community, many of which we never would have thought of ourselves. Several of those ideas are now being developed and will soon be added, but there were a lot of other ideas we want to get your feedback on.

We have set up a “feedback forum” using UserVoice.com and added many of the more popular ideas for improvement to it. Please check it out and comment on the ideas and cast your vote for your favorites, the best and most popular suggestions are going to get integrated into the site so now is the time to have your voice heard.

You can check out the feedback forum at http://elogocontest.uservoice.com/

Hope you like the new design! Please let me know what you think! Happy New Year!

I hope everybody is having a wonderful holiday season, wherever you are! We are having vast amounts of snow dumped on us here in Upstate New York, so we’re definitely going to have a “white christmas”!

We had a wonderful 2008 and are looking forward to working with you all in 2009!

George for the eLogoContest Team

As just about anyone that hangs out on any design related blogs or forums knows, design contests are a polarizing topic, some people love them, some people think they were invented by the devil. The feedback we have gotten since we have launched eLogoContest has ranged from extremely positive (the vast majority of designers and contest holders that use the site) to the irrationally angry (mostly from people that don’t use the site) including at least one (badly spelled) death threat.

I and the other people behind eLogoContest believe firmly in design contests, not just as a source of revenue for our company, but as a way for businesses to develop their brand and designers to make money and develop their portfolio, and as an administrator on this site I have heard alot of very positive reasons for participating in design contests, and I have personally received eMails from numerous contest holders that couldn’t stop raving about how much they love the site and the design contest format in general.

I really think that design contests can stand up to the harshest criticism thrown at them, but unfortunately most discussions and debates about contests take place on forums and blogs that are predominately used by the design contest hating types, and any decent arguments in favor of design contests tend to get buried under the loads of dissenting opinions.

I do believe that designers should make educated opinions when deciding to participate in design contests or not, most of the other design contest sites (there are a few exceptions, but just a few) tend to ignore the dissenters and pretend that everyone accepts and loves design contests. But I think that when presented with the real facts from both sides people see the validity and value that design contests hold.

With the goal of  providing a platform that allows people to see just that, as well as allowing people from both positions to have their say on an equal footing we have launched a new site, SpecDebate, which lets anyone to post their opinion on design contests and spec work, as well as comment on anyone elses post. The best arguments are voted up by the other users of the site so that technically anyone can visit the site and get the full scoop on design contests in a minute or two.

Even though we created SpecDebate it is not attached to eLogoContest in any way. We will not be moderating, approving or deleting anyones posts, although we will be participating on the site just like anyone else. Consider it an experimental satellite that we are launching into the webosphere.

I have already posted my personal view on design contests on SpecDebate, and a few others have posted as well to get the conversation going, and I would like to encourage the eLogoContest community, the No-Spec crowd, and anyone else that cares to post their opinion to please take a minute and let us know your view on the subject. I will personally respond to any comments that are posted to my post on the site.  We do require a 10 second registration to cut down on spam, but  all you need to sign up is an email address.

We will be posting a link to SpecDebate on the main page of eLogoContest, to enable designers and clients to make educated decisions before participating on the site.

Let me know if you have any thoughts or suggestions!

Links:

SpecDebate – http://www.specdebate.com

My post on SpecDebate:  http://www.specdebate.com/index.php?p=view&id=1

 Dennis Bosher (eLogoContest designer “simplyg123″) kindly took the time to do an interview with us, please read below to learn more about this talented designer:

Tell us about yourself:  My name is Dennis Bosher. I am from Naples Florida. Up until two months ago, I worked for the last 3 years  as an Engineering Technician for a large firm. Due to the economy I was laid off. During my employment there, in my off time, I searched for a way to allow my wife to work at home. We have two kids, and it would have benefited us greatly. So I searched and searched, fell for a work at home scamor two, then I found the wonderful world of webmaster forums. I initially was looking for data entry, but nothing was really worth the time. While looking I noticed design contests within these forums. It reminded me of a fascination I had with graphic design many moons ago. The first thing I did was borrow a copy of Photoshop 5.0 from a friend of mine. Anyways long story short, my journey to find my wife a stay at home job, turned into a  part time business, and now a full time business. Over the years I got better and better, and my business became more and more established online.

How long have you been designing?  Officially for 3 years

How did you get started designing? I started my designing career, when I discovered logo contests on forums.

What do you love the most about designing: The main thing that really makes me feel good about what I do, is when I visit a website, that’s using a  logo that I designed. When you see that people are willing to pay decent money for something you enjoy doing, it really does something for ones pride.

What do you HATE the most about designing: Clients that don’t know what they want. There was a time when I offered unlimited revisions with all of my services. NEVER AGAIN.

What has been your experience at eLogoContest: eLogoContest, has really surprised me, I had never heard of them, I was a member of the NamePros.com forum, and they mentioned eLogocContest would be taking over the contests for now. I was initially skeptical about how much work there would be, but to my surprise, there was a steady amount of contest being held, and with decent prizes. I reviewed many of the designers works, and felt confident that I would fit right in. I have been really happy with eLogoContest. After winning my first contest, it encouraged me to keep charging on, and assured me that I could make some decent money here.

If you could see one thing change here at eLogoContest, what would it be? When I receive notifications, the link takes me to the main page, instead of the contest the notification was referring to. I would like the links in emails to link directly to that contest. Other than that don’t change a thing

Do you have a website where we can learn more about you:  My design website http://www.skilledgraphics.com

Thank you Dennis for taking the time to do this interview, it’s really been nice getting to know more about you (it’s always great to put a face to a username!).

If anyone else is interested in doing an interview please see this post for more information.