I did these kinda quickly and I agree, there's a lot more to be done. My sketchy doodles clearly don't quite cut it. Also, the Gak thing was a joke over the fact that I put the Twilicane in one of them and it was a gag on it being either one meme or another. The first one is meant to be a bag of coins; I'm not that bad of an artist. I'll poke somepony with vectoring experience to tart these up a little more. For now, if you must discuss this, please do it elsewhere.
Wowee its been a long time since I've been here. Thought I'd pop my head back in and this was obviously the first thing I saw. Might as well throw my thoughts in... I have to agree that the original idea of the site went against donations and stats/rewards but that's changed so much over the past few years. I mean, we didn't even want ads at first lol If that's what has to be done to get money then I think its what has to be done. However I don't really think the best way to get those titles or emblems or whatever you're going to have is to just throw a competition. And maybe they shouldn't even be flashy at all. Maybe just a small insignia next to your title? You'd still get the recognition and it would be more professional. Just my thoughts on the matter...
I'm late to the party as usual, but I must say I agree here, on both points. Giving someone an image on their signature/next to their avatar is not even as much as we could do. We COULD give them a whole separate part of the forum just for them, or something stupid like that. I'd say an image is literally the LEAST we could do, barring doing nothing, and doing nothing isn't showing much gratitude.
*SQUEEING INTENSIFIES* I miss you Fluttershy! ;__; Also, isn't that basically what they are right now?
Miss you guys too ;~; And not really. I mean, the emblems are really bulky and the "DONATOR" sign or whatever is really big too. First of all its aliased, which is bad enough, then its too big height wise to seem fluid with the rest of the site. The gradient is also highly unnecessary as the 3D sort of look that it tries to make just seems out of place and, one again, bulky. I may not be staff here anymore (or active, lol) but I'm still majoring in graphic design and I'd be happy to help if you'd want me to. Half the site still uses my graphics anyways lol Also as a side note, if it was possible to use a gif a VERY SLIGHT animation to a small title would look nice.
You're majoring in Graphic design? I know some people that want to go into that field, and it looks really cool. I'm taking a game development class and we have some guys from a GD class that helps us with some things. So that's really cool! :3 Also, I see what you mean now, and that would a good idea to make it less bulky and smaller. I can talk to the rest of the staff about it, and see what can happen.
Aaaaand there's the discussion I was looking for. *huuuuuuuuuuuuhhhhhhh* I win. ...Now for my actual opinion. I agree with Fluttershy's idea; if you absolutely must do this, a giant DONATOR image looks pretty crass. I would go with a small emblem, perhaps a star (or the EP site bookmark emblem maybe?) right under the name and before that persons' personal title. Nothing that would be bigger than 14pt font.
If your willing and able, please go right ahead. Poke me on Skype or something, we can try to come up with something far better than my 10 minute jobbies.