Contest: Design Challenge #2: Valentine's Zen Garden

We've got another contest for you! The theme for this one isn't quite so impossible. Since valentine's day is only a month away we're going to use that as our theme. You must design an online valentine or valentines related site (template provided). The design must use the colours pink and red and general design themes associated with Valentine's Day.

Contest Process

1. Entires must be recieved by 4:30 PM Eastern Standard Time on February 14, 2006. You may submit your entry by posting it in the Contest Entires thread (available on or around February 11th) or by sending it directly to Megan by Private Message (not by email). Include the URL to your design and a title for it (if you don't include a title Megan will make one up for you)
2. After entries are closed, Megan will choose 5-7 finalists (judging criteria below)
3. The five finalists will be put into a poll for voting by the forum community at large.

Prizes

• Free advertising on the forums: One month free banner ad one year in the “filler” sponsor ad area (these are the Opera/Advertise here/Opera ads that rotate in the remaining sponsor spots).
• Team100 128Mb MP3 player donated by andy206uk
• $100 Cash, donated by demonhale and TWF via Roo (who donated it back to the community after she won the last contest)

Prizes will be distributed to the top 2 or 3 winners in the poll results. I will use my discretion on this - it depends on the distribution of votes and the quality of the entires.

The Template

Not sure what to make your page about? Renegade and I made up a template from the Wikipedia article on Valentine's day. You may use this for your design.

The code is very bare bones. You may add additional mark-up if needed. However, it could be a challenge to design this without extra markup

Here is the basic template, or you can try Renegade's version with additional markup.

You may also come up with your own content and mark-up. If you want to do something silly, here's an idea

Judging Critera

Submissions will be judged based on the following critera

1. Use of the design theme (in this case, Valentine's day)
2. Attractiveness and quality of design
3. Level of difficulty (i.e. Do you take the easy route or do you make it more challenging?)

Extras:

• Theme, topic, and content (if you develop your own content)
• Quality of HTML code (if you write your own or make modifications to the provided template)
• Quality/difficulty of your CSS - do you do something interesting & challenging or do you use the same old basic elements?

Rules

• All TWF members are eligible, including moderators (Megan and JeevesBond are not exempt; entries will be judged on community input)
• Maximum of two entries per person
• Any site content, including images, that is against the against the general TWF content regulations will not be allowed
• You may submit a single-page design, a full site, or a CMS/blog theme (implemented). It must be coded in HTML/CSS (no graphic mock-ups)
• Your work must be original. Any submissions found to be derivative works will be immedately removed from consideration. Should the winning entry be found to be derivative work the prizes will be immediately revoked.
• Your design does not have to work in IE (version 6 or 7). This will open up some possibilities and opportunities to experiment with more advanced CSS. It must work in Opera 9, Safari 2, and Firefox 2.

How to enter

A new thread entitled "Contest Entires" will be posted on February 11th. Contest entries will not be publicly accepted before then - just so you don't influence the other entrants. If you prefer, you can send entries to me by private message any time before the contest deadline. All entries should be received by February 14, 2006 at 4:30 PM Eastern Standard Time.

Any Questions??

Please post