Free People Design-A-Bag Contest – Winner!

Congratulations to our Free People Design-A-Bag Contest winner, Olivia Wendel of Marina del Rey California! You can look for the bag with her design to be in use at the stores in January!
Also, most of the entries have been uploaded to our Flickr account, so check them out!
We want to send out a HUGE thank you to everyone who participated! And if you didn’t win, don’t lose heart! There are more contests on the horizon, so stay tuned!

0 0 vote
Article Rating
Subscribe
Notify of
12 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
15 years ago

It was so much fun participating in the contest! Thanks so much for the opportunity. I definitely will participate in your next contest since I’m such a huge fan of you guys. : )

15 years ago

Congratulations Olivia!
I must say, as someone who works for FP, there were so many cool designs submitted. Good job to everyone who entered!

Stephanie Bedsaul
15 years ago

Very pretty!

pruittfpgirl
15 years ago

Well guys, I just wanted to make a quick post to address some confusion that has come up about the winner of the Design-A-Bag contest. There have been a couple complaints that the winner seems to have used more than 3 colors in her design, though the requirements for the contest were 3 colors or less. I wanted to assure everyone that there were in fact, only 3 colors used in the winning design – Green ink, pink highlighter, and purple highlighter. I do think though, that perhaps the small version of the design which I have used on the post is misleading, and looks different in small resolution from how it actually looks. For example, some of the green ink looks kind of black on the scan, but in real life, it is clearly green.
I wanted to point this out because we would never want to be or appear unfair in judging a contest! We loved all the entries we got, and it was so hard to pick a winner! I just wanted you to know we did it fairly and within the rules of the contest. We love you guys!

papillon529
15 years ago

That is cute! Anyway you guys can make that into a tee as well?

alexis
15 years ago

Congrats Oli!!! I’m so happy and excited for you and i can’t wait to own my very own bag by olivia. It’s an amazing illustration- xx

jung
15 years ago

Hi there. Although the winner of the bag contest did come up with a very cute bag…I don’t believe free people has followed their own contest rules. It clearly states..”using the colors green AND blue”. Where in the winner’s bag is there blue??? It’s very apparent in eveyone else’s bags that the main colors that stick out are indeed green and blue. I think that the judgement was absolutely unfair. The contest rules are plain as black and white and I feel they were followed by the winner or the staff at free people.

pruittfpgirl
15 years ago

Hello Jung and Others-
I and Free People are terribly sorry that you feel the judging was unfair. I don’t believe the contest rules were as plain as black and white though, and while this is where I believe the contention lies, I feel awful about it. I do see that the first line in the original post is as follows: “Using the colors green & blue, create a design…” If I could go back and change it I would. However the first guideline in the list of guidelines is as follows: “Use no more than 3 colors in your design, and try to stick to cool colors. Green and blue are what we are looking for most.” I did feel that this made it more clear that we were looking for cool colors in general, not necessarily green and blue both having to be in the design together. Also, if you read the comments on the original post, (which there were many, because numerous people had questions,) one girl asked if her chances would be squashed if she did not use green. The response was “…your chances would not be squashed if you didn’t use green, but they would be squashed if you didn’t use cool colors. For example, if you don’t want to use green but used blue or purple or black etc, that would be fine.” Finally, if you look at the official legal rules, it points out that there are four guidelines by which the entries were judged: (i) Creativity – 25%; (ii) Appropriateness to the Free People brand image – 25%; (iii) Aesthetic Merit – 25%, and (iv) Adherence to design guidelines – 25%.
Again I feel awful that you feel the design contest was judged unfairly, and I do feel at fault for having the ‘and’ in the first line of the rules which shouldn’t be there. However I do strongly believe that the contest was judged fairly and according to the rules. The winning entry had 2 out of it’s three colors as cool colors. One was even green. It was spring-esque, brand appropriate, creative and beautiful.
All of the entries were absolutely beautiful, and we loved, as we always do, receiving beautiful creations from our customers. We just thought this would be something fun for everyone to enjoy, and we never ever wanted to cause unhappiness or make people feel there was unfairness.
However I do truly believe the contest was judged fairly and correctly, according to the guidelines and the legal rules.

Brooke
15 years ago

Hey everyone…i guess whats done is done…but i have to say..those colors sure do look like purple, pink and black..lol…i do feel like other extremely good entries were cheated. It just doesn’t remind me of ‘springtime’ whatsoever…but hey,i don’t know a thing about ‘fashion’ anyway. I have a suggestion for the next contest like this. I think the judges should pick their top 5 entries, post them on flicker or somewhere, and then have the contestants or customers vote on their favorite one..an open to the public type thing, that way everyone is happy! Just a thought…
laterz

pruittfpgirl
15 years ago

Hey Brooke!
Thank you for your suggestions, I will pass them along!
The Flickr for the contest actually is up, you can find it here, or at the link in the post above.
We did get a lot of beautiful entries, and it was hard to pick a winner, but I am certain that once everyone sees the design on the bags, they will love the winning design as much as we all do!

Carolanne
15 years ago

I was just wondering why my design wasnt uploaded onto the fliker thing?

pruittfpgirl
15 years ago

Hey Carolanne!
Some designs weren’t uploaded to Flickr because we received them in a file format that Flickr doesn’t accept. However, if you send your last name to blog.freepeople@gmail.com, (so I can find your entry) I can have a look at it and try to tinker with the file type, if you would like.