Well heres my entry and I am suprised to see not alot of designers jumpin on the vector route for this...
Design Rationale: When creating this I thought , well, #1 this site has to make money and be pleasing to the eye on repeat visits...not have the user blown away with a million pics and flashy colors. So I figure this design will be pleasing everytime round.
Because of the subtlety of the design itself...any banner or image in any article should poke the user in the eye. For a higher CTR.
Both ends of the header are static, from which a small 5 px gif can be made from and stretched to both sides.
Drop downs can be your regular run of the mill drop downs SAME WIDTH AS BUTTON.
Silver buttons can be used throughout the whole page. Silver appeals to all ages...and ethnic groups...youngun's like it as well as the steel grey soldier...Article photos and advertising again will step up...
None-the-less the design is fully customizable to any size or color.
the whole thing has a Vector Mama file ready to serve.
I can do flash really well, I would probably run a "shine through the (L.A.) skylinefrom left to right. Since thats the flow of a users eye..nice clean and simple.
I decided to enter this contest "Last Minute" so this thing took me 2.5 hours from start to finish...I was going to enter right away but I was impressed by Maxims logo...threw me for a loop...that logo is hot. The first thing I thought was that male symbol... it was perfect, good job to Maxim ...hats off;) beat me to it
I still like his logo better than the existing one but refuse to use that symbol on my header out of respect for the quick draw of Maxim.
Anyways...good stuff by all