Vandelay Design

Blog Design Madness: Round One

Published March 24th, 2008 in Competition

The Blog Design Madness competition is now officially underway! There are 64 blogs that have been chosen, and the participants are all listed in this post. Because each competition requires a separate poll, I decided to break up the first round into 2 parts. There are 16 matchups in this post involving 32 outstanding blog designs, and the second half of round one will come in a few days (but I did list the other 32 participants at the end of this post for those of you who are curious).

Each matchup includes a poll, links and a screenshot of both blogs. Please vote for as many of the matchups as possible (if you’re reading in an RSS reader or in email, you’ll have to click through to the post to be able to vote, as you’ll see below). Voting will be open for 24 hours (until 9:00 PM Tuesday, Eastern time – US).

Thank you to everyone who voiced their opinion over the past few days by nominating blogs for the competition. I apologize to the last few commentors because I set the participants yesterday before your comments came in.

I initially said I would seed the competitors, but I quickly realized that was not feasible. So, I separated a few of the “favorites” and tried to balance them out so they could meet up against each other as late as possible, but for the most part the matchups are fairly random. If you’re interested in seeing a bracket, I created a makeshift Excel sheet that will be updated as the tournament goes.

Just a reminder, the winners from each round will move on to face each other. Enough talk, let’s get to the voting.

Note: This competition ended a while ago and the polls have been removed.

GROUP 1

Freelance Switch

Freelance Switch

Mark’s Digital Farm

Mark's Digital Farm


Vocino.com

Vocino

You the Designer

You The Designer


Pro Blog Design

Pro Blog Design

Tim Kadlec

Tim Kadlec


9513

9513

Webstock

Webstock


Grand Sierra Magazine

Grand Sierra

Elitist Snob

Elitist Snob


The Big Noob

The Big Noob

Blog Design Blog

Blog Design Blog


Reflections

Reflections

TrailerFlick

Trailer Flick


David Airey

David Airey

Kollermedia

Kollermedia


GROUP 2ProBlogger

ProBlogger

Sully’s Design Studio

Sully's Design Studio


Artico

Artico

Young Go Getter

Young Go Getter


Cult Foo

Cult Foo

N. Design Studio

N. Design Studio


Robert Beerworth

Robert Beerworth

Noupe

Noupe


Laura Alter

Laura Alter

Loon Design

Loon Design


Rob Goodlatte

Rob Goodlatte

A List Apart

A List Apart


Josh Spear

Josh Spear

Mostly Lisa

Mostly Lisa


PSDTuts

PSDTuts

Bart-Jan Verhoef

Bart-Jan Verhoef

The rest of the participants will get in on the action in a few days. These blogs will finish out the second half of round one (images will be included when the voting occurs).

30 Responses to “Blog Design Madness: Round One”

Erika March 24th, 2008

Wow… this will be tough! Aside from the competition, it’s really a wonderful and inspirational post. Great work!

Vandelay Design March 24th, 2008

Thanks Erika. I put in a lot of time getting this together so I’m glad it’s good for something!

Myo Kyaw Htun March 24th, 2008

Nice list! I had like to see my one too :)

JamieO March 24th, 2008

I voted in each. If the poll were below each set of photos, the scroll + vote + move on would be easier than scroll past vote, scroll past entries, scroll back up, vote, scroll past entries a 2nd time.

Vandelay Design March 24th, 2008

Good point Jamie. Thank you. I’ll change that for the next set.

Tay - Super Blogging March 24th, 2008

Excellent work, Steven! This was a truly amazing idea and will probably generate plenty of attention and bring loads of inspiration. I’m going to try to vote for them all, but at the moment, the polls are taking a pretty long time to register my votes.

Thanks for this excellent source and keep up the good work!

Pavel Ciorici March 25th, 2008

Liked very much Gradn Sierra & Loon Design

Vinh Le March 25th, 2008

Great idea Steven, just wanted to let you know that the voting worked fine for me since some people seem to be having a problem.

Also thanks for including my blog amongst the other great ones. I am disappointed we didn’t get to see the match-up beforehand so we can place our bets. I mean that is what march madness is about right?

Edwin March 25th, 2008

Nice thing to start my day with :) Really interesting poll :) It’s sure exciting, I think you placed the competitors good together. I wonder how this will go on in the next days…

pablopabla March 25th, 2008

Voted! It’s interesting to see that some blog designer’s blog design have not fared as well on 1-1 based on the results as at time of voting.

Biodun March 25th, 2008

This a great work! its quite interesting, voted.

Scott Fillmer March 25th, 2008

I voted but some of those were about impossible to choose between. Very nice list though.

Karthik March 25th, 2008

Phew! Just finished voting – I’m glad one of my entries (rsspieces.com) was chosen!

Vandelay Design March 25th, 2008

Everyone,
Thank you very much for voting, I appreciate it.

Tay,
Sorry you had some problems with the speed. There are so many images in the post, plus the poles, it’s not optimal.

Vinh,
Yeah, I thought about doing a post ahead of time just listing the brackets, but I really had no idea if subscribers would enjoy this or feel intruded if there were too many posts on the competition, so I opted for less posts.

NJ WebGuy March 26th, 2008

Now, this is a fun idea! I can’t wait to see how this turns out; Quite a few of my favorite designs are featured, besides so many I haven’t seen before.

Unfortunately, I missed out on the voting by a few hours. I knew there would eventually come a reason to never step away from the feed reader.

I have my finger on the trigger for the next round, though.

Six Revisions March 26th, 2008

What an excellent collection. The person who put down the initial designs, thumbs up on your excellent design taste, because if I were to make a list of blog designs, most of these will have been on it.

Fun competition indeed, though I’d vote your very clean blog design anytime!

Cheers,
Jacob

Vandelay Design March 26th, 2008

NJ,
Sorry you missed this part. More will be coming very soon.

Jacob,
Thanks for commenting. I have been enjoying your blog recently as well.

Mostly Lisa March 29th, 2008

Oh no! I wish I’d known about this competition. definitely could have gotten some serious votes for MostlyLisa.com. aww shucks! lemme know next time.

Xacur March 29th, 2008

I have just enlarged my RSS feed list, very cool sites.

lukxiufung March 30th, 2008

wow .. I am in!!! hehe..thanks a lot!

clarklab April 1st, 2008

How in the world did Big Noob lose? Thats one of the best designed blogs on the net.

Vandelay Design April 1st, 2008

clarklab,
I was a bit surprised by that myself.

khenzo April 2nd, 2008

Thank you for inserting artico in your contest but you did not send me any email about your initiative so i was not able to tell to my readers to vote for my design/blog. Good job guy!

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