At some point in 2012, I got bored with the stationary header on my site and decided to reach out to some of my more artistically inclined friends, asking if they might want to take a stab are coming up with something better. The proposition was fairly simple….
“If you make a header for my site, it will be used. Even if it’s terrible. (Assuming it wouldn’t be illegal for me to do so.) It may not be used for long, but it will be used. And, while it’s being used, I will run an ad for anything that you want in the right hand column of my site. If you want for me to link to a local abortion clinic, that would be fine. If you want to write something about how much you hate the site, that would be fine too. You can even sell “I Hate Mark Maynard” t-shirts, if you want. Or, you could promote an event that you have coming up. So, if you want to promote a non-profit, or get people to tune into your favorite local radio show, or whatever, here’s your chance to do it. I will, of course, also thank you by name on the site, and buy you ‘one’ happy hour-priced beer at a bar of my choice. All I ask is that it says “MarkMaynard.com” somewhere in the header, so that people will know that they’re on the right page…”
I don’t think I ever made good on the promise of beer, but I kept my word otherwise, and everything submitted went up. I’ve since started rotating some off for a while, in order to keep things fresh, but everything given to me is still being used. Here are a few of the highlights thus far.
[If you want to see what any of them look like full-size, just click on them.]
Chris Sandon:
Dave Miller:
Eric Lagergren:
Patrick Elkins:
Mike Giannouris:
And, of course, not wanting to be left out, I did some of my own:
While I can’t make the same offer to everyone in the audience, as I know that a good number of you are crazy, I am curious to see how others out there might distil the essence of this website into a header. And, with that in mind, I’d like you to submit your ideas… Like I said, I can’t promise to put everything submitted in the rotation, but, if you send me something great, It’ll get up there. And I’ll make you the same deal I made the above friends… If your header runs on the site, so to will your ad for whatever you like.
Here are the specs:
The size of the header is 960 x 300 pixels.
The size of the ad is 300 x 196 pixels.
And, once you have something worth sharing, you can reach me at MarkMaynard11 at Gmail.com. Just be sure to write “header” in the subject line… Now get out there and start peeing my url in the snow!
Good luck.