topic Re: Community Badge Design Competition in Discussions & Feedback

Community Badge Design Competition

Anonymous — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 12:03:06 GMT

Hi guys,

Because we've recently seen some fantastic badges in the community, we thought it might be fun to do a badge design competition. The badge that receiving most kudos will win and get a special mention in the community highlights and the announcement box.

Here's how you create a custom badge:

• Use the right piece of software: I would recommend Photoshop, Gimp or Paint

• Create a new image: Size-wise, 170px by 195px should do the trick

• Design your badge: You can add images, borders, effects, etc.

• Choose a profile badge & upload your background image: You can do all that here

• Add an avatar if you want: You can do that here

All done!

Let everyone know you've got a new badge by posting in this thread. The one with the most kudos will win eternal fame.

Here are a few examples of some fantastic badges:

http://prntscr.com/rn1qg
http://prntscr.com/rn1ri
http://prntscr.com/rn1sh

Good luck!

Leonard

Re: Community Badge Design Competition

version7point0 — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 14:37:42 GMT

Great idea Leonard.

Depending on the entries you may entice me to design a new one

Re: Community Badge Design Competition

MI5 — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 14:39:52 GMT

As many of already have one, I assume this is to entice people who don't.... Not ready to change mine just yet

Re: Community Badge Design Competition

Anonymous — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 14:52:11 GMT

You could always do a temporary badge - I still need one

Reason for doing the competition was just to have a bit of fun.

Re: Community Badge Design Competition

jonsie — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 14:56:22 GMT

Pity my PC skills aren't up to designing skills, heck I've only just learnt to type! Anytime I try to change the background image it just appears with a thin border, hence the boring present badge!

Re: Community Badge Design Competition

MI5 — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 15:28:54 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
I still need one

OK - A quick one for you....

Re: Community Badge Design Competition

Anonymous — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 16:16:58 GMT

Made one, but it seems to have been tiled rather than added as is. did do it 170 x 195

Re: Community Badge Design Competition

Anonymous — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 16:19:43 GMT

Very creative, MI5

@Pablo, it might be that I was wrong with 170 x 195. I stole those dimensions from another Lithium forum.

Re: Community Badge Design Competition

Anonymous — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 16:25:59 GMT

I made the image larger this time and the same thing happened. Can see it with another few where the image seems to repeat itself. Its called a tiled effect but doesn't really look right.

Re: Community Badge Design Competition

Anonymous — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 16:25:44 GMT

Nice one. It looks like the bottom part is still tiled. I'm going to try and find a bit more info on dimensions.

Re: Community Badge Design Competition

Anonymous — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 16:47:32 GMT

I've just measured the different badges. It seems the width is 146 px and the height is 286px, 301px, 308px or 321px, depending on the badge.

Could you give 146 x 301 a try, Pablo? I'll update the original post in a sec.

Re: Community Badge Design Competition

Anonymous — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 16:58:04 GMT

I will have a play around later, this could be fun.

Need some practice with Inkscape so gives me a reason to play around.

Re: Community Badge Design Competition

Anonymous — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 17:10:56 GMT

Ooooh! Mine is an example WOO! I'm pretty chuffed with that I might make a new one shortly

I think the size depends on the information you put in your badge (Posts, kudos, etc).

Re: Community Badge Design Competition

Anonymous — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 17:27:15 GMT

I just created some blanks to test it and without changing any other settings, I found that 146 X 195 fit perfectly - however - given that the "background" can be stretched, shrunk or just have part of it shown, if you just want it as "wallpaper", you can use almost any size you like.

Also, I can't say if it makes a difference to how they appear in the forum itself but the preset templates provided appear to have varying dimensions and even the small, inset avatars vary in size and shape - so it's not really possible to create full-blown template.

Regardless - here's a "blank" which may be useful (give me a minute or two after posting this so I can double check that it doesn't get scaled or other altered after posting)

Edit - just checked and right-clicking and using "save image as..." in Firefox downloaded a copy at the same dimensions as the original.

If someone wants to try that and let me know if it works and fits correctly - that would be useful.

(Now to try and get my animated Minky back :))

Re: Community Badge Design Competition

Anonymous — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 18:18:40 GMT

Okidoke....

Played around a bit and it seems that 146 width is a fraction too much - 145 seems to be right.

Height is not straight forward - about 193 works BUT only if you don't select any of the options to display "additional information" such as kudos, solutions etc - if you want to display any of those, the overall box height is increased but your backdrop image isn't stretched, it's tiled.

So - if you want a "wallpaper" effect where tiling is okay, don't worry too much about the sizes - but if you want to show a specific image in full, you'll need to make one that fits your personal settings - there's no "one size fits all" template.

And the other part that may confuse...

There are four basic templates on the forum - those determine the placement and format of your text but they also superimpose graphics over your image. Both "splat" and "moder tech" superimpose opaque graphics - and will hide your background image. "Tokyo Madness" superimposes transluscent, rectangular boxes where the text and avatar appear - which may or may not work with your backdrop image. "Bayfrog" has the least imagery - just the grey box with blue "hashing" on the centre section.

Also note - when you upload your backdrop, the "sample" you see on the screen is nothing like what you'll see on the forum itself - a correctly sized image will appear on there as too small and is repeated. Trick - have another tab open showing one of your posts. Upload your blackdrop then save your new image - go back to that other tab and refresh the page to see what your new badge actually looks like.

Hope that helps

Re: Community Badge Design Competition

Anonymous — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 18:42:30 GMT

Okay, here's mine I am by NO means, a very creative person

It's VERY simplistic and it works. It DOES cut off a few pixels early bit I like it :).

Needs to have all the options checked but it works well with the text and the phones background which is o2's wallpaper that I photoshopped (with paint :smileytongue:) onto some high-res images of the Z10

A quick tip to you all, because the image doesn't stretch, sometimes you'll get another tile under or next to the picture. To avoid this, either stretch it yourself OR if you don't want to do that, add white space around your picture. It doesn't matter how many pixels that white space is because it just goes over :).

Re: Community Badge Design Competition

Anonymous — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 19:22:31 GMT

I messed around and think I'll settle for the green blob I knocked up - all done with basic Photoshop tools and just a bit of tweaking to get it looking right (such as adding a slight "glow" to make the username stand-out a bit more - and a "button" for my pengi to sit on :)).

Re: Community Badge Design Competition

Anonymous — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 13:38:38 GMT

Some fantastic badges already, guys. Nice one!

How is everyone else getting along?

Re: Community Badge Design Competition

Anonymous — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 13:44:07 GMT

Meh - Mine is pretty boring but I quite like it

Re: Community Badge Design Competition

Anonymous — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 17:50:39 GMT

I'm going to play around with it tonight.