$150 Web Community / Hosting Logo contest - CabSpace.com

CabSpace currently offers free web hosting and free forum hosting. We are developing additional features and a paid hosting area (CabSpace Pro), and we need to bring the overall quality of the site up a couple notches.

We are looking for a simple, professional, and yet fun logo that we can use for the CabSpace and CabSpace Pro websites.

CabSpace

Desired Color Scheme:
black, white, grey...yellow or blue? See Contest Update in description

Desired Style:
Fun and inviting for a wide variety of demographics, while making the site appear more professional. We want the quality of the site to match the quality of our upgraded product offerings.

Accepted File Formats:
.psd or other vector

This logo is for an existing website with over 13,000 members. The site currently offers free web hosting and free forum hosting, however we have a paid upgrade section being developed now. The paid hosting section will be named CabSpace Pro.

The word cabspace originally came from "cabinet space", following the lines of "rackspace" regarding data center space. We feel the site falls in between rackspace.com and myspace.com, offering both paid hosting and aspects of a free community environment. We have currently embraced the Cab / Taxi association with the site, but are very open to more universal logos and imagery as well.

The site is located here http://www.cabspace.com.

The logo will be used as the header of this site primarily. It needs to contain CabSpace, Cabspace or CabSpace.com We will also need a version of the logo with Pro added to it, for cabspacepro.com

- Logo will be used as header for http://www.cabspace.com
- Needs to include CabSpace, Cabspace, or CabSpace.com
- Easy brand recall
- In the end, we will need a second logo that incorporates Pro into it, for upgraded 'pay' services
- We are looking for something on the fun side, that still seems somewhat professional. Not too 'cartoony'.
- Needs to be inviting to a very wide demographic of people
- Try to leave a space for a tagline. If you feel creative, you can add some simple slogans suggestions. We'll take them into consideration.
- In most circumstances, we prefer simple over complicated designs.
- The more versatile the design (usable on more mediums, etc) the better

We know that creating a logo, and choosing a design are always difficult tasks. We have also watched some of the designers on SitePoint put in a lot of effort to try and please different clients. We've included a 2nd and 3rd place reward to add a little compensation for the non-winning individuals.

We will do our best to give constructive feedback through out the process to each entry.

2006-12-17 CONTEST UPDATE!

Thanks everyone for putting the effort in, and making this a valuable experience all around. This has been the first contest of this kind that we've put on, and it's been very intersting to see all the different ideas people are coming up with. We apologize for any delays in getting feedback to you. Sometimes it's overwhelming, and sometimes it just takes a minute for a design to sink in. Even if we're a little late, we will be sure to get feedback to you for all your submissions.

This is going to be a tough call on our part, choosing who get's the prize. There are a lot of people putting some solid effort, and to show our appreciation we upped 3rd prize a little bit, and added a fourth place prize of $10.

With CabSpace, we regularly have user created/submitted banners, that we post on our site for others to use. When the contest is over, we would like to make as many of your submissions available online as well. For anyone that is willing, we will post your submission, along with a link of your choice to your portfolio or your profile at SitePoint, or whaterver. This is more of an extracurricular project, and I cannot verify how fast it will actually happen. But it lets us give users some additional content to work when creating banners/buttons, and it gives each of you some additional exposure, and one more link on the www. I'm interested to hear any of your thoughts regarding this.

DESIGN RELATED - In dealing with our CabSpace and CabSpacePro sites, we recently ran across the following two sites, and I think we are going to follow a similar path. http://www.mozy.com and http://www.mozypro.com Please view them, not necessarily for the logo, but for the colors and feel of each one. I believe we are staying with Yellow for CabSpace, and CabSpacePro will be orange, or green, or possibly blue..but preferably another taxi like color. I'm presenting this info to you, because we will need a logo that works with both. I know all of you can change your yellows out to another color, but I want to let you know the scope of things so it might help you in the long run.

So far in the context, simplicity is winning. Personally, I'm being drawn to the simple checkerboard patterns with good outlines. They're simple, look good in any color, and are still a little abstract. I'm not saying I'm in love with checkerboard, and I'm not the final decision maker, but that's where the top spots are currently leaning. I am still looking for something that stands out from everything else.

I hope this gives you an idea of where we stand overall. Thanks and good luck going forward!

Chad