Welcome to the third bi-annual GUI Championship contest.  The previous two times we were called the GUI Olympics but for trademark purposes we have renamed it to GUI Championships.  For the past 6 years, leading graphics designers from around the world have come to this specially created site to compete for thousands of dollars in cash and prizes and to show off their skills.  Many past winners have gone on to create user interface designs that have been used by such companies as Alienware, Warner Brothers, Nintendo, Microsoft, Blizzard, and countless others.

When the first contest began, it was put together by a handful of relatively new sites that were emerging as leaders of their particular niche.  Those sites included deviantART.com, Neowin.net, Betanews.com, WinCustomize.com, and Lockergnome.com.  Today, those sites have grown to receive millions of visitors per day and have become highly influential not just in a niche but for the entire technology industry in their own way.  Despite their success, they come together once again to help bring to you this inter-website contest.

This year's GUI Championship will have 3 categories that will provide a challenge to graphics designers of all kind. The first category is the WindowBlinds skinning competition. WindowBlinds is a program that can apply user interface designs created by anyone. It is flexible enough that users can move buttons, change border sizes, etc.  This gives designers the opportunity to present their own visions on how the desktop user interface might look like.  The second category is icon packages.  Icon designers will compete to put together their own alternative set of icons for Windows. Using the icon design tools of their choice and packaged together with IconPackager, designers can display how they think the OS icons could look. The last event is a bit more light hearted -- wallpapers. What makes a good wallpaper? Almost anyone can create one but it takes true skill to create an image that one would use as their background. 

A panel of 5 judges will then select the top, second, and third in areas of most original, most usable, and best overall.  Users of this site will be able to vote on skins themselves to help us narrow down the most promising entries.  The winners will receive a share of the over $12,000 in cash and prizes including Xbox 360s, software, and some special high end prizes that we will be announcing in the coming days.

Good luck to all and if you have any questions, please comment here.