Launching the GAWDS Website Re-design Competition

Added on Monday 12 Mar 2007

Here is the information about the GAWDS website re-design competition. I've promised it for a while - so I apologize that it has taken so long to appear in the newsletter.

The Guild of Accessible Web Designers needs a site that is both accessible and looks fantastic. We need a site that reflects our aims, embodies our message and reflects our brand.

Are you up for the challenge?

This competition is open to members and non-members of GAWDS.

Entries will be accepted from now until midnight 30th April 2007. The winner will be announced mid May 2007.

How the designs will be judged

Each site will be judged against the following criteria:

  • Aesthetics, colour contrast, composition
  • Usability
  • Cross platform and cross browser compatibility CSS

Competition rules and guidance The rules for this competition are simple:

  1. Your design will be based on existing site structure, so it is truly a 'design' competition (therefore design will be implemented with CSS). The template can be found at http://www.gawds.org/comptemplate/index2.php
  2. The existing GAWDS logo design must be retained. Download the GAWDS Logo PSD and related information. Thanks to Rob Sayles of Designory UK Ltd for designing the GAWDS logo.
  3. The design should work in current browsers and degrade gracefully in older browsers.
  4. Design should be a liquid layout or a 100%-width layout.
  5. Client side scripting is allowed, but the site must still work if it is turned off.
  6. The design should be for the home page. The other pages on the website will be derived from the home page design.
  7. 7. Provide a name for your design to help identify it during the judging and subsequent presentation on the site.
  8. Provide a couple of sentences related to the thinking behind your design.
  9. Provide information about browser support for your design. )
  10. Email files related to your design to design@gawds.org.

Terms and conditions

  • Each competitor can submit any number of designs
  • All designs must be original work
  • Judges decisions are final
  • No correspondence will be entered into between judges and
  • designers
  • No entries will be accepted after the closing date
  • Judges can't enter the competition

How the winner will be picked

  • A selected team of GAWDS members will look at all the
  • entries and reduce them to the top 10
  • All members vote for their favourites from the top ten.
  • The most popular 5 will be made public on the GAWDS
  • website to be considered by a panel of celebrity judges who
  • will decide upon a winner.

Prizes?

The main prize will be that your design will be used on the GAWDS website. You will get a credit as the designer at the bottom of the page with a link to your own site. The winner can also select a prize from the choice below: (more prizes will be obtained, once some arm-twisting has been done).

  1. A free license for PHP AutoRun system (a $49.95 value) courtesy of Cherim
  2. A 10 User / 1 URL license of XStandard Pro courtesy of Vlad Alexander.
  3. A copy of the book, 60 hot to touch Accessible Web Design tips - the tips no web developer can live without! Courtesy of Jim Byrne
  4. A developers license for QnECMS, theaccessible content management system. Courtesy of Jim Byrne
  5. A license of Tradingeye Shop Light v5 courtesy of Wladimir

If you or your business would like to donate a prize - please get back in touch.

Re: register your interest

Please get in touch to say if you are intending to take part in this competition, as we need to know if this worth doing or not. If there is little interest from members then clearly we shouldn't start down this road - if there is lots of interest (hopefully that will be the case) then it will be full steam ahead.

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