Designs Posted: 36
Designs Received: 84
Pageviews: 251,807 up from 244,605
More Info: Finalist Leaderboard
These six entries earned the most stars from readers, and they'll move on to the final round of our Design Showcase next week. Two winners will then be chosen (1 judge favorite and 1 crowd favorite) and each given $10k in advertising on our network and daily emails. Further details below the jump.
Design Showcase Finalists
1. Rotator Rod (1002)
2. The Cat Hammock (943)
3. Bottles of Hope (913)
4. Quandry Table (781)
5. Skyscape Quilts (774)
6. BRANN Pendant Lights by Jeremy Pickett (734)
FINALS VOTING: WEEK OF 9/27
• 3 finalist entries will be posted on Monday, 9/27 (no voting yet)
• 3 more finalist entries will be posted on Tuesday, 9/28 (no voting yet)
• VOTING BEGINS on Wednesday, 9/29 at 11:30 am EST with an announcement
• VOTING CLOSES on Friday, 10/1 at 5:00 pm EST
• WINNERS ANNOUNCED on Friday
FAQ: FINALIST SELECTION
How were the finalists chosen?
- Every entry had a 4-day voting window that began when it was first posted. The six finalists are those that earned the most stars from voters. Stars were weighted (3 stars counted for more points than 1) and there were no negative votes.
Though entrants were allowed to ask their friends and family to vote, only one vote was allowed per person. If we had found that any voting had been hacked and that one person had voted numerous times, we reserved the right to either throw out the votes we could identify or discount the submission entirely.
What were the submission rules?
- For a detailed account of the contest rules, click here.
When I tried to vote, I got a message saying "An error prevented us from casting your vote. Please try again later."
- We received a few complaints about readers getting errors when they tried to vote. Here's what happened. Voting was only open for each contest entry for the first 4 days after it appeared up on the site. After those 4 days, the voting form was supposed to close and just display the results.
Unfortunately, a bug in our new contest code made it seem that voting was still open, even after it had closed. So, after voting ended, it still looked as though voting was open, but when someone actually tried to vote, they would get the error above.
The good news is that no votes were lost. We believe the problem has been fixed, and voting should function normally during the finals.
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well, i'm disappointed. it seems to me that there was an advantage to later entries. the things that made it into the finals are mostly from later entries, and a lot of really good, clever, intelligent material got squeezed out for stuff like cat hammocks. I mean, really, over the convertible table?
I agree with redqueen. I think the projects featured early on got a lot less visibility because the momentum of the contest has picked up a lot since the voting closed on those early pieces. It's hard to judge fairly when you can't see the whole field.
This competition lost my respect after learning about the finalists. Design shouldn't be judged this way, I can't believe that the cat hammock is even one of them! Ugh! So not worth it...
i think this competition is a great way to motivate and bring together designers, but am disappointed in how it was executed this year. the selection of the 6 finalists seemed unfair, based on a significant increase in page views later in the competition and no input from design judges in selecting the final 6. i am quite surprised by some of the top 6 designs. in my view, there are a couple entries that deserve to be finalists; however, some of them seem more suitable for as-seen-on-tv ads than apartment therapy.
Another disappointed reader here... the lake log lamps and media center from the first grouping were my favorites, and it seems like they didn't stand a chance.
I mean, the rotator rod is clever, but compared with some of the other handcrafted pieces here, which combine form and function beautifully, well... let's just say I'm a little sad to see a curtain rod at the top of the list.