And I'm rather at a crossroads about the whole thing. There wasn't an entry in the contest that just made me say "oh, that's the clear winner". At the same time, every entry had something that I liked. I liked the use of text in one. I liked a particular bit of cleverness in another, I liked the background in the third, and I liked the color scheme in a fourth.
So here are my options as I see 'em. . .
1. Restart the contest entirely. Keep the existing entries as entries in the rebooted contest, and hope that I'll get some more entries. I'm not hopeful about this, mainly because nobody seemed to think that the timing of the contest was a problem. I didn't get anyone saying "I'd like to enter, but a week just isn't enough time". I fear that running the contest again, be it for another week or another month, will only garner me one or two more entries. People just don't seem enthused by the idea, and I've never been a fan of letting something linger beyond its usable life.
2. Declare the contest over, award the prize to my favorite entry, and get on with my life.
3. Divide the prize n-ways (maybe with a little extra added so no entrants feel they were rooked out of a better prize), post all the entries with comments about what I liked about each one, and then see if I can cobble together a meta-logo that'll be the best of all worlds.
Right now I'm leaning towards number 3. And I'm doing that mainly because I don't like the idea of borrowing an idea from a losing entry without giving the logo (and by extension the entrant) some kind of recognition. If I go with number 3 then everybody's equally disappointed.
And maybe if I post all the entries with the comments about what I liked or didn't like, I can work with the community to come up with a "mashup" that'll become the canonical logo, perhaps by roughing out a logo and inviting people to tweak it.
And finally, I'm not blaming anyone but myself for my own disappointment. I really could've picked a better contest and/or better prizes. It was just a little trifle that I thought might be fun, and it fell on its face.
