Winning (easy for me to say)

To answer the big question, I believe I won. I was ahead by a decent margin (12+%) at the end, which generally means victory. However, as I haven’t received an official “you won!” notice yet, nor are final results up on the Internets, anything is still possible. Once I know the votes are certified and official, there will be an announcement and a ton of “woo-hoos!” Until then, I’m trying (and mostly failing) to stay mellow.

That said, a huge thank you to everyone who voted and to everyone who encouraged other to vote for me as well. The outpouring of support was unbelievably fantastic (I got votes from as far away as Paraguay!), and I can’t even begin to express how much I appreciate it.

I did want to take a moment, however, to say something about the contest. I found a message board post by another finalist (and I genuinely like their design—I would have voted for them were I not involved) who was disappointed that the vote was a popularity contest, rather than, say, awarded by a panel of experts.

To which I respond, you kind of missed the point.

As a designer/marketing guy, I recognize that the goal of the contest isn’t to reward the “best” design (though I think mine is); the goal is to sell shoes. The big winner here isn’t me (assuming I won), though I do look forward to knowing officially that I did win and I so totally want the rewards for doing so. But no matter who won (and this is easy for me to say because it was likely me), the biggest winner is John Fluevog shoes.

There were a number of people who emailed me (or emailed those who were helping get out the vote) and said something like “I’d never heard of Fluevogs before you asked me to vote, but I went and voted and then looked at their shoes…there are some cool shoes there!” That’s the point. The design (or the designer) that brings the most eyeballs to the Fluevog site (that’s the most “popular”) wins, because more eyeballs means more Fluevog exposure to more people.

I think it’s a brilliant idea, frankly. So does the Globe and Mail. And, as an added bonus, they published my art.

Yay!