May 1st Reboot Winners and Interview!

In it’s 7th year, the May 1 Reboot is going strong, providing inspiration and a new generation of web eye candy for the discerning design enthusiast. The Judges have made their decisions and the results are in! Their rightful prize, beyond the obvious glory of victory, is (mt) Media Temple hosting for life.

And the Winners ARE!…

Haptic-Data
BurnKit
DeStil
Aeiko
Sumeco
Hejz

We’ve interviewed seasoned organizer and unofficial CEO of the Reboot, Paul Szypula.

Longtime Judge and (mt) Partner, Jens Karlsson and Reboot Organizer, Paul Szypula

(mt) Paul, given this is the 7th production year of the reboot, how many sites have rebooted over the years?

(rb) This is tough to say.

Going by the number of sites in the Participants lists for all of the Reboot sites since it’s inception, there have been 4586 sites Rebooted.

(mt) The reboot is spawn of higher-profile, high-end designer culture and seems to have grown with more of the same. Do these roots give the Reboot the “lasting power” needed to generate the high level of interest each year?

(rb) As it is not a money making endeavor the only real point for it’s existence is for people to find it useful and enjoy the experience. Every year as we see people taking this event more seriously, so do we. The beauty of the event is that it is for everyone, beginners to experts. As there will always be beginners who want to get exposure, and experts who might wanna show off a bit, I can see the event continue with it’s tradition year after year.

(mt) How would you describe the average (if that term is even applicable) style of a site submitted to the reboot?

(rb) I’d say most “average” Reboot sites are portfolio sites. Most are Flash. Some people have suggested that I make the Reboot cater to one medium more then the other, I prefer to let the mediums figure themselves out, and simply provide an arena to showcase new sites.

(mt) How have you seen the entry styles changing throughout the years? Is there one metamorphic trend you could nail down?

(rb) The trend seems to continue to be the “Swedish” style of grid design. While simple in nature, it can sometimes be a tough thing to understand and even tougher to implement well.

(mt) This contest, unlike many many other design contests, does not organize the submission and award processes by categories. Does this open-ended form promote more freedom in regards to designers’ redesigns and promote “style category crossover” if you will?

(rb) I’m glad you pointed this out. I think art ultimately figures itself out. Trying to categorize it can sometimes be appropriate, however, for this event I think it’s important to bring everyone together. The Reboot is about web sites, ANY kind of web site. When it comes down to the contest it’s simple: which web site is best.

(mt) It makes sense that designers use the Reboot as encouragement to take on the daunting, but necessary task of redesigning. Do you see the same people submitting year after year?

(rb) Yes I do. Moreover I see people who have won in previous years come back to participate again the following year.

(mt) What is the judging process?

(rb) The general community is given approximately 1 week following the Reboot in order to vote on the sites they want to vote for. The system is setup so that a user can vote once per site per day. After the Voting phase is concluded the Judges go through all of the sites and pick the ones they like the best. The votes are available to the Judges as a guide if they choose to make use of it.

(mt) Paul, you’ve been the heavy lifter in regards to getting the Reboot produced year after year, who are the other current producers and what are their rolls?

(rb) Everyone in the contact section. The event was born from a handful of creatives back in 2000.

Media Temple (mt) has been, of course, extremely helpful in making sure the web site works in a stable fashion thanks to their server and bandwidth donation. Their customer support has been very responsive and helpful, and higher ups in the company such as Chris Lea and Jason McVearry have made themselves available to handle even the smallest details.

Creatively I want to give a sincere thanks to Simona Lo of seriph.com for the flavor that she added to the 2007 Reboot. Simona also came up with much of the icon ideas and execution that currently lives on the Reboot site. As for the sound of the site, my “goto” guy has been Bob Partridge. I can always count on him to come up with something that just works. I show him the site, he makes the music and sound effects, and suddenly the site has another layer of experience to it.

Technically, it is Drew Millecchia, a past coworker of mine from the days at Dennis Interactive, who donated many many hours to make sure the Flash backend of the site was secure and worked intelligently. Jessey White-Cinis (stolen.la) has also helped out in more recent years with PHP additions and minor upgrades.

As for fonts, we have used 2 as the standard Reboot fonts for the past 2 years. These are Sys TT from Fabrizio Schiavi at FSD.it and Standard from Craig Kroeger at Miniml.com.

Then there are the Judges. These respected members of the Web Design community donate their time year after year and I am very grateful for this generosity.

And of course, it is the Participants who make the event ultimately happen. The sum of all of the efforts put forth by these people every year is truly impressive.