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We recently entered public beta, so we need to get word out to the rest of Stack Exchange about Open Source Stack Exchange. One of the best ways of doing this is with Community Promotion Ads.

Here is part of the canonical spiel given on meta posts on graduated sites where we submit our ads for voting1 (six upvotes and our ad is shown on the site), repurposed for a different use:

What are Community Promotion Ads?

Community Promotion Ads are community-vetted advertisements that will show up on the main site, in the right sidebar. The purpose of this question is the vetting process. Images of the advertisements are provided, and community voting will enable the advertisements to be shown.

Why do we have Community Promotion Ads?

This is a method for the community to control what gets promoted to visitors on the site. For example, you might promote the following things:

  • the site's twitter account
  • useful tools or resources for physics research
  • interesting articles or findings for the curious
  • cool events or conferences
  • anything else your community would genuinely be interested in

The goal is for future visitors to find out about the stuff your community deems important. This also serves as a way to promote information and resources that are relevant to your own community's interests, both for those already in the community and those yet to join.

Why do we reset the ads every year?

Some services will maintain usefulness over the years, while other things will wane to allow for new faces to show up. Resetting the ads every year helps accommodate this, and allows old ads that have served their purpose to be cycled out for fresher ads for newer things. This helps keep the material in the ads relevant to not just the subject matter of the community, but to the current status of the community. We reset the ads once a year, every December.

The community promotion ads have no restrictions against reposting an ad from a previous cycle. If a particular service or ad is very valuable to the community and will continue to be so, it is a good idea to repost it. It may be helpful to give it a new face in the process, so as to prevent the imagery of the ad from getting stale after a year of exposure.

Image requirements

  • The image that you create must be 220 x 250 pixels
  • Must be hosted through our standard image uploader (imgur)
  • Must be GIF or PNG
  • No animated GIFs
  • Absolute limit on file size of 150 KB

For more information, see What's the best way to create a community ad for a beta site?.

I invite everyone to submit ideas for our ad as answers, following the above guidelines.

1 Note: The sites on which the ad is posted must be related to our site's topic. Seasoned Advice would not be a good choice.

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    It might seem rather early to bring this up, but I've seen threads like this be quiet for a while, with few or no suggestions. It's probably best to have a couple of ideas ready before we enter public beta, rather than be scrambling a bit. That day will be an important one, and we need to be prepared.
    – HDE 226868
    Jun 24, 2015 at 15:24
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    Actually, no, it would be better to wait until the site's scope has settled before we run community ads on other sites. As long as the site's scope and guidelines are still in flux, it's best not to grow too fast.
    – Gilles 'SO- stop being evil'
    Jun 24, 2015 at 17:16
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    Ads should usually be tailored to their target site. You don't advertise open source in the same way on Android Enthusiasts and Ask Different.
    – Gilles 'SO- stop being evil'
    Jun 24, 2015 at 17:16
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    @Gilles My bad; I should have included that last bit.
    – HDE 226868
    Jun 24, 2015 at 17:17
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    I'm closing this as a duplicate mostly because this thread isn't really "usable" any more, and also because we want all answers to be redirected to the linked dupe :)
    – Zizouz212
    Jan 19, 2016 at 15:07

17 Answers 17

Reset to default
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This ad has reached the 6-vote threshold and has been posted on Gaming and Game Dev.

This is based upon street art by some unknown artist. I created it as the counterpoint to the communist poster. The idea is to say that Open Source and Free Culture liberates capitalism (here represented by Rich Uncle Pennybags).

enter image description here

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    lol, This is pretty good. It would probably be a good fit for gaming related sites.
    – Zizouz212
    Jul 25, 2015 at 15:21
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This is my take on the "Open Source opens doors" idea, first floated by Zizouz212 in this design.

enter image description here

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    Oooooooooh. I love it. I'm not sure about include all the logos though.
    – Zizouz212
    Jul 26, 2015 at 22:42
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This ad has reached the 6-vote threshold and has been posted on Programmers.

This one is based upon an idea floated by Martijn in the bikeshed. The Lessig quote is typeset with white typewriter font on a black background, similar1 to the style Lessig used on his slides in one of his best TED talks.

enter image description here

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    Decent idea! But the anti-aliasing seems pretty rough. Maybe the font size of the black text could be raised a pixel or two? It's also not horizontally aligned perfectly...
    – curiousdannii
    Jul 31, 2015 at 12:32
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    I'll spend more time on tuning it if it is selected for use. Given that this one currently outscores my design 5 to 2, I don't think it is the quality of anti-aliasing or alignmenet that gets most votes here.
    – Free Radical
    Jul 31, 2015 at 12:39
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    I can't explain why that biased (and not particularly attractive) thing has to many votes! Probably just because it was one of the first.
    – curiousdannii
    Jul 31, 2015 at 12:40
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    What's the font used in the footer? I have P22 Typewriter on my machine, so I can remake this and edit one with the right font in.
    – ArtOfCode
    Aug 4, 2015 at 16:25
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    @ArtOfCode The font in the footer is Berthold Akzidenz-Grotesk Bold. It is the same font as CC uses for its logo.
    – Free Radical
    Aug 5, 2015 at 19:04
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    @FreeRadical All done. I've edited the new one in.
    – ArtOfCode
    Aug 5, 2015 at 19:50
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Yet another WWII-poster makeover, this one British. The design is in the public domain.

enter image description here

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    Keep calm works for anything :)
    – Zizouz212
    Jul 26, 2015 at 22:47
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This is a bit tongue in cheek. It is a reference the Bill Gates 2005 interview were he said (referring Creative Commons and Open Source):

“There are some new modern-day sort of communists who want to get rid of the incentive for musicians and moviemakers and software makers under various guises.”

It is based on Soviet-style constructivist poster created by Jaime Morrison and published on Boing-Boing. All the stuff on Boing-Boing is supposedly made available under CC BY-NC-SA 3.0, but use in a Community Promotion Ad may be considered commercial use, so it is probably a good idea to secure permission from Jaime Morrison if this is going to be used.

enter image description here

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    I'm not too sure about this one: it seems control and govermentish...
    – Zizouz212
    Jul 26, 2015 at 0:00
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This is just a concept; I'm not sure it's polished enough to be a production ad. That said, I'd love feedback on whether people think this is good concept, or could be improved in some specific way.

I've also played with the idea of a tagline at the top, like "Forking, Philosophy, FLOSS" or something.

enter image description here

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    I don't think that GNU split into CC and OSI. And Copyleft is not coming from OSI, it is a FSF concept.
    – user490
    Jul 8, 2015 at 12:46
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    @EricGärtner Perhaps I should scramble the symbols more (or possibly just have some blank nodes?) to make it clear that I didn't actually intend for this to be an authoritative history of philosophies. That may be an inevitable interpretation, though. (Certainly I don't think that the concept of attribution somehow did a metaphorical pull request on the concept of ShareAlike, either.)
    – apsillers Mod
    Jul 8, 2015 at 12:49
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    I also have to note that the text at the bottom needs more anti-aliasing.
    – ArtOfCode
    Jul 8, 2015 at 14:08
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This one is based on the the famous WWII "We Can Do It!"-poster, produced by J. Howard Miller for Westinghouse Electric in 1943.

I like the activist phrase "Free Culture!" (as in "Free Nelson Mandela!"), and this illustration seemed perfect for it.

enter image description here

According to the notice on Wikipedia Commons, the original is Public Domain (at least in the USA).

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    I'm not sure I completely like this one: It seems to be advocating the release of something that has been completely hidden from society: culture.
    – Zizouz212
    Jul 25, 2015 at 15:20
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    I really like this one, it's pretty nice.
    – Mnementh
    Aug 4, 2015 at 17:21
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Not entirely sure about this one... again, it could be seen as a little restrictive and not demonstrative of our full scope. However:

enter image description here

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    I actually think this is really good! :D Great work!
    – Zizouz212
    Aug 4, 2015 at 17:05
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    It's too unclear what it is - if you're not very familiar with the CC logos you won't recognise them.
    – curiousdannii
    Aug 10, 2015 at 0:31
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    @curiousdannii That was one of my issues with it
    – ArtOfCode
    Aug 10, 2015 at 0:33
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Here's another -> It's clean, don't worry :)

Closed Doors

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Since my first attempt at creating a hippie-themed community promotion was a criticized as hostile (chill out, man - peace and love), I've made another one:

enter image description here

Please understand that there is no hostility towards Jim Morrison, Ray Manzarek, Robby Krieger, John Densmore or even the women of L.A. in this design. It is "doors" as in "hinged barrier to a building" - not "Doors" as in "psychedelic rock band".

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    Thanks for the clarification, I almost got triggered there. In all seriousness, I think the problem here is that opening doors carries good associations.
    – overactor
    Jul 28, 2015 at 14:57
  • I agree with the positive association open doors have. I'd take the "hippie" motif in a different direction - how about something like "open source, open minds"?
    – Mureinik
    Dec 29, 2015 at 9:21
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enter image description here

The text is cheap, but it can be improved. It can increase some awareness and people can start to see the benefits of using open source from the different perspective.

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    I like the concept behind this idea, but the Open Source message box is incredibly small and hard to read.
    – Zizouz212
    Aug 20, 2015 at 21:16
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    @Zizouz212 Think of a better comment/text, so I could change it and resize it at the same time.
    – kenorb
    Aug 20, 2015 at 21:36
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FSF

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  • I like the idea, but if the goal is to promote this SE site, shouldn't we have a link to it instead of fsf.org?
    – Mureinik
    Dec 31, 2015 at 8:51
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    Pandya, these ads aren't displayed on this site, but the purpose of this post is to create ads so that we can advertise this site on other sites. Probably a misunderstanding.
    – Zizouz212
    Jan 12, 2016 at 21:04
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Downvote... Doesn't matter. I'm having fun, and no one can take that away :D

I'm just going to say a couple things:

  • Hand drawn on my computer (using an application I'm writing right now)
  • It will appeal to at least 365 people, and approximately 44 239 people know about the love for unicorns - Especially on Stack Exchange.
  • It has excellent colours, and extremely amazing artistic talent.
  • It has the appearance of professional artwork. Thankfully, I am not charging for the reuse of this -> I place it into the public domain :D

Tell me I can't do this, and ha! In your face

Unicorn Ad :D

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    I like the idea, but... the reasons why this likely won't become an ad for our site should be fairly obvious.
    – ArtOfCode
    Jul 14, 2015 at 17:30
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    (also, that application better be open source ;) )
    – ArtOfCode
    Jul 14, 2015 at 17:31
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    Lol, i'm still writing it, but I will probably release it as open source when I'm done :D
    – Zizouz212
    Jul 14, 2015 at 17:32
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    Hey! How could one give two down votes to a professional drawer, using excellent, vibrant colours, and professional [soon to be] open source programs! THIS IS DISCRIMINATION TOWARDS UNICORNS!!!!! :P
    – Zizouz212
    Jul 15, 2015 at 2:12
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    This doesn't look like unicorn at all, more like a green rabbit or a happy condom.
    – kenorb
    Aug 20, 2015 at 14:31
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    What a lovely way to start my day! Thanks @kenorb :P
    – Zizouz212
    Aug 20, 2015 at 17:35
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Come to Open Source SE!

This one would likely appeal to users on Stack Overflow and Programmers.

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How is this?

enter image description here

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Here is a remake of a WWII poster:

enter image description here

I don't know who created the original, but since the work was commisioned by US govt. it should be in the public domain now.

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After a stint of remakes of WWII posters + a Soviet-inspired constructivist poster, I felt we also should have a hippie-themed community promotion ad:

enter image description here

(The slogan: "Open Source, Not Windows" is of course inspired by: "Make love, Not war".)

Edit: To avoid any misunderstandings. There is no reference to any Microsoft product in this design. It is "windows" as in "an opening in a wall, fitted with glass" - not "Windows" as in "GUI copied from Xerox PARC designed in Seattle". I you think otherwise, blame your mind, not me. Free your mind and your software will follow. The kingdom of heaven is within. Freedom is free of the need to be free, etc ... (apologies to George Clinton)

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    I really love this one, but I think "Windows" is problematic here. Not only does it seem hostile against microsoft, it's also a bit confusing.All I can think of as an alternative though is "legs" and that is not really better.
    – overactor
    Jul 26, 2015 at 10:16
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    It might be a misunderstanding, but if people interpret it as such, it might not be a good idea
    – Zizouz212
    Jul 26, 2015 at 22:46

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