Six Apart, Adobe and Style Mas­ter spon­sors The Style Con­test. So what is it exact­ly about? Well, plain and simple—because “Design mat­ters.”

Design­ers are the unsung heroes of the blo­gos­phere. Their work allows users to express a char­ac­ter, theme and per­son­al­i­ty with their blogs.

The Style Con­test was cre­at­ed to enable the design com­mu­ni­ty to indulge and explore the con­tri­bu­tion their exper­tise makes to the qual­i­ty of blog­ging tools and the user expe­ri­ence.

The con­test spon­sors share this sen­ti­ment, and have reflect­ed their com­mit­ment in the prize pool val­ued at over $17,000.

Designers—-this con­test is for you. To thank you. To rec­og­nize you. To reward you.

But alas, it is most­ly for MT, Type­Pad and Live­Jour­nal users (or those with expe­ri­ence with the three I’m guess­ing). To get more info about the what-when-where-who-how, you can check out the con­test rules over here. So get those chick­en-scratch going and pen­cils sharp­ened up, the dead­line has been set for 15 May, 2006, 10:00 pm PST.

For those par­tic­i­pat­ing in CSS Reboot on May 1st, you might as well jump in as the con­test is said to have a total sum of $17,000. Not to men­tion, every con­tes­tant wins!

Update: 5/10/06
Sub­mis­sion Dead­line Extend­ed to June 5th