All companies were start-ups at some point and some remember their roots better than others. We’ll be at SXSW this year, hoping to help some other companies get their roots planted. Upstack has partnered with building43 to offer a start-up prize package to a lively entrepreneur with an idea that rocks!
We call it The Awesome Start-up Giveaway. You know why? Because it’s a giveaway… er… because it’s awesome.
To enter:
Just record a video telling us what you want to build or what you’re building and submit it to the contest page at http://upstack.com/sxsw. Record it on your own OR if you don’t have a camera or anything like that (aren’t you adorable), you can come by our booth at SXSW where we’ll be ready to hook you up. Record your brief video at our booth and be our movie star for the day.
So, what exactly is in this Awesome Startup Giveaway?
To sum it up: Here’s the truckload of stuff the winner will get… with a little help from our friends.
Upstack:
Custom graphic design Logo, website, stationery design and 2-year domain registration.
Rackspace Cloud:
$500 credit for Cloud Servers.
Freshbooks:
1 year of Shuttle Bus invoicing service
Pear Analytics:
1 year Site Juice SEO Monitoring
PSD2Live:
PSD to XHTML conversion and Wordpress integration
MailFinch:
1 year snail mailing service.
It’s just about everything you could need to make your idea into a reality.
In case you’re wondering what the video ’should be’… not this. 
**For the record, Pablo and Katelyn rocked this video! Thanks guys!
The second round of the BACON Awards is now over and we have determined the winner. As always, thanks to all who submitted their designs into the contest and to everyone who voted. We’re having a blast seeing the designs you come up with.
With a resounding margin, our winner for the second round of BACON with the best typography logo as determined by 49 springs is LogoGuppy’s design “Chameleon.” Straight awesome:
Congratulations, LogoGuppy! We’ll be in contact with you shortly about your spoils.
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There are few things that bring unbridled joy to all. The BACON Awards fall in that category. Is it the promise of scrumptiousness? Is it the anticipation of that which can only be obtained by partaking in the crispy promise of BACON? The answer is: no. The reason why the BACON Awards are such a joyous occasion is because it gives the designers of Brandstack a chance to show off their skills and have a bit of fun while doing it. But you all already knew that. Out of holiday spirit, we decided to start the second round of BACON now and give designers the opportunity to get a head start on the competition over the holidays.
Just look at how festive that pig is up there. How could you not want to get in on that?
So, let’s get down to business. This time we’ve chosen to make the theme for our BACON Awards competition about typography. We want to see your best attempt at creatively/cleverly incorporating typography as the focus of a logo design. Starting today and lasting until January 5th, amass springs to become the supreme typography BACON champion. Submit as many designs as you’d like and let the BACON bits fall where they may.
If you participated in the last round of BACON, you already know the deal. For the rest of you, here are the details:
I. THE CONTEST: Typography
The BACON theme this time will be typography. Show us your very best attempt at creatively using type in a logo design. For a few examples and inspiration, see our recent blog post 50 Typography Logos with Letters (They’re Good, Too).
II. THE RULES
•Upload your design just as if you are going to sell the design. The design must be new to Brandstack (not uploaded before December 22, 2009)
•Place the design in at least 2 categories: BACON and another. This is very important! As soon as the contest is over, all entries will be removed from the BACON category. They will remain in the other selected categories.
•Place the logo FOR SALE.
•Wait for approval. BACON logos will go through the same approval process as any other upload.
•Hunt for Springs!
Tell your friends, tell your networks, tell your parents (especially your parents) to Spring your logo.
•The logo with the most Springs on 12:00 Noon CST January 5th wins!
III. NOTES
•We will remove all logos from the contest that are not BACON worthy.
•Designs will remain for sale on Brandstack at contest’s end (so everyone wins).
RECAP
Design a logo with creative use of typography using the BACON category. If your design gets the most springs in that category by 12:00 Noon CST January 5th, you win.
What else is there to say about BACON? We like it. You like it. Let’s do this thing. BACON!
The first BACON Awards have drawn to a close today. As always, we’d like to thank everyone for participating and submitting their awesome designs to us. We knew you guys would impress us with your negative space logos, but wow.
Before we conclude this contest, we’d like to remind you all that this is only the first in a series of contests of the same nature. So, without further ado, we’d like to announce the winner and recognize the top 5 BACON negative space designs.
The community has spoken and William © 20009’s design “Natura” is our winner with 74 springs. You really only have to take one glance at this logo to understand why it won. Simply beautiful.
Congratulations to William. It is quite the distinction to win a BACON award. We’ll be in contact with you shortly about your reward.
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You can never go too long without news about BACON. For this very reason, here’s an update on the BACON Awards. (If you’ve been in a cave, here’s some info on BACON).
We’ve received a great response from you guys. As of the writing of this blog, there have been about 50 approved submissions of logo designs with creative utilizations of negative space. We appreciate all the submissions and invite those who didn’t get theirs approved to keep trying. There’s just under a week left in the contest so here’s where we currently stand.
View and Spring all of the BACON entries. The top 10 designs as of right now:
It is the time of year where we like to do something special for our designers. That isn’t to say that we aren’t always trying to provide something special for you, as I think you might have noticed from our constant efforts to get our site working in your favor. It is with that in mind that we bring you B.A.C.O.N.: Building Art & Creativity Over Nations.
So what exactly is BACON? BACON is our way of giving you the opportunity to show off as designers within the context of selling your designs on Brandstack and maybe break through some of the creative block you’re fighting. We will provide you a specific theme, you’ll design with that theme in mind, and the design which gets the most springs will wins. (If you remember IncSplosion… this is a better, updated version. To be perfectly clear, the pig ate IncSplosion!)
What do you get if you win? Pride. You’ll also get a free month of Premium Seller membership, the very prestigious BACON badge on your design and on your profile, and a spot in the BACON Hall of Fame.
How do you participate? What are the rules? OK, I’ve got you covered.
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We’ve had our random drawing for the winner of our #BrandMurder contest. For transparency’s sake, here is a video of the drawing:
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So, congratulations, @MzAttitudePrblm! You are the winner of 2 of the new iPod Nanos with video. Thanks to everyone for their participation and go to BrandMurder.com for a chance to win a ton of stuff (MacBookPro, XBox 360, Wii and more).
BrandMurder. It sounds scary. And it is. You should be very afraid, but on top of that fear, you should be excited. “Fearcitement,” I like to call it. 10 of the world’s most recognizable brands have been murdered at BrandMurder.com. “How horrible!” you say. Yeah, well they had it coming. Who did this? Why? We did it, and here’s why:
BrandMurder is a contest for designers where you get the chance to show off your skills and vote on other peoples’ skills. According to BrandMurder These brands’ are dead as doornails already, but we’d like you to play the part of the undertakers. Redesign logos for brands like Apple, Nike and Pepsi among others and have the opportunity to win a prize package which includes a Macbook Pro, Xbox 360, Wii and much more.
CONTEST DETAILS
1. Head to BrandMurder.com
2. Sign up
3. Submit your designs
4. Win if your design gets the most votes
Competition ends October 21st
BrandMurder is ready to accept your designs. So what’s stopping you? Designers, start your Illustrators.
We’ve noticed that you’ve noticed that some egg-themed logos have been selling well lately here on Brandstack. We have not noticed, however, why this is. But we have noticed that this is pretty funny, all of you trying to capitalize on the eggceptional (I’m so sorry) possibility that eggs are the latest craze. Who knows? Maybe you guys will make it the latest craze. Eggs here. Eggs there. Eggs everywhere. You are the eggmen. You are the walrus. All the king’s men etc., etc. I mean, if your egg-designing friend, Humpty, jumped off a wall, would you jump off, too?
This has gotten us thinking, though… What if we provided you guys with a theme or idea like the egg thing and see what everyone comes up with? After seeing the hilarious and awesome results of you guys designing for something as innocuous as eggs, we think this could be a lot of fun. It would be reminiscent of the Incsplosion contests of yore.
So here’s the deal. We’ve been kinda contest crazy lately, we know, but we just can’t help it. Since we currently have the Brand Murder contest(s) going on right now, we’re going to hold off on launching this one, but we’d like your opinions on it now as well as your opinions and ideas concerning possible themes. So here’s a poll of four themes we’ve come up with. Vote for your favorite and comment on this post to let us know how you feel about the whole thing.
We have a competitive side that is always pushing us to better ourselves, and we’d love to share that drive — and the gratification that comes with it — with you.
We’re giving away two of the new iPod Nanos! Hot off Apple’s announcement, we’ll be giving away two free Nanos to a random person who helps spread the word about an even bigger contest we have in the works. Follow @BrandMurder on Twitter and tweet using #BrandMurder to be entered to win the iPod. It’s that simple, as it always is when we do nice things for you.
It doesn’t really matter to us what you say in your tweet as long as it includes #BrandMurder. If you need something to tweet about, just tweet about wanting to win an iPod from us or you can click here to get a ready-made tweet.
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