Dear Backers,

We have winners for both the Novena logo competition and the Novena hash competition! (The Novena hash competition was a bit of covert fun… watch the campaign video closely to find a hint.)

First, we have a logo! It’s logo 015 in the original list of submissions and was submitted by Francisco Gonzalez-Blanch:

Francisco will be receiving a Novena desktop computer and a t-shirt with the new Novena logo he designed.

It was a gut-wrenching process to pick a winner, but we felt that this logo was the best blend of being iconographic, artistic, and manufacturable while avoiding other existing logo designs (at least that we know of in this market segment).

To bunnie, the logo spoke of PCB footprints, particularly with the "pin 1" locator motif. We could see implementing this using copper and soldermask on the PCB directly, instead of silkscreen. xobs notes that the logo looks good both right side up and up side down, an important attribute for something that may be printed on the lid of a laptop, where proper orientation depends on if you think you need to see the logo with the lid closed, or with the lid opened.

There were many other honorable mentions. We liked 031; it was artistic but bunnie likes socket cap screws, not cross-head screws. The symbolism in 048 was very nice, but unfortunately the complexity of the design doesn’t lend itself to printing on all surfaces. Logo 076 is the kind of thing we’d want to print on a big sign and hang on the wall; it’s extremely artistic and we liked the way the open hardware logo is portrayed as a neuron wired into a lead frame, but unfortunately it’s not very practical for printing and difficult to make into an icon. Thanks to everyone who participated in the logo competition and made our life difficult picking a winner!

As for the hash competition, user lunixbochs came out on top with 147 points. How exactly lunixbochs won the competition is a fascinating tale, but we’ve been sworn to (well, asked politely for) secrecy, but hopefully there will be an in-depth posting about this soon. lunixbochs will be receiving a Novena laptop.

Thanks to everyone for participating in our campaign and making it so successful! We’ve had a blast so far and expect more of the same in the days leading to the end of the campaign, which is this Sunday at 11:59PM PDT, and beyond as we actually manufacture the Novena and get it into your hands. We’re very close to hitting two more stretch goals: the $350k mark for a free general-purpose breakout board and the >200 desktop + laptop + heirloom unit count mark for a free MyriadRF software defined radio (SDR) board. Thanks for all your support so far and please spread the word to help us achieve these next two goals before the campaign ends on Sunday!

bunnie and xobs