14 DAY TRIAL // The Netherlands-based Nimbuzz instant messaging and VOIP client has announced a new contest challenging graphic designers everywhere to come up with up to five new emoticons for the software. The contest opens today and will run until July 27. The winning entry will be included in an upcoming version of both the desktop and the mobile clients.
“Everyone is invited to participate, so if you are a freelancer, passionate graphic designer, playing all day with Adobe Photoshop or have a friend (or 3 year old sibling) that can create the BEST new emoticon - please share this post,” reads the announcement on the Nimbuzz blog. “This is also a chance to add a design creation to your artistic portfolio, in a live product! With well over 900,000 new people joining Nimbuzz each month, this is your claim to fame to be part of a mobile success story!”
The contest is opened to anyone and to enter you have to send your emoticon in three sizes and, optionally, propose the ASCII version of the emoticon and include a “fake screenshot” of it integrated in the Nimbuzz client. The entries must be new emoticons not different designs of existing ones and the winner won't get much other than bragging rights and recognition.
Nimbuzz was launched in May 2008, bringing multiple chat options across several desktop and mobile platforms. It supports the Skype voice chat protocol, all the major instant messaging protocols, like Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, ICQ, GoogleTalk, AIM, and 23 social networks among which Facebook and MySpace. It is available for Windows and the Windows Mobile and Symbian mobile platforms.
Nimbuzz is completely free and is available for Windows here and for the mobile platforms here.