[Nix-dev] Logo improvement ideas

[Tim Cuthbertson]

Nicolas,

You raise a very good point about the print-appropriate colours. On
reflection, I think the blues I've chosen are possibly among the worst
for print reproduction ;)

Regarding the gradient, I think it's common enough to have a
full-color digital logo (including gradients / shading), with a flat
colour version for print.

So I've added a "print options" file, with what I think are more
print-appropriate colours. TBH I don't have much experience here - I
used CMYK colour selector, but outside that I'm not quite sure how to
make sure a colour is good for printers - should I be looking at
pantone colours or something?

It's also testing against different backgrounds, and in different
shapes (i.e circular sticker, popular for laptops). I'm not sure if
it's bad form to put your wordmark inside your logo, but it's
otherwise quite awkward to put a big circular thing _and_ some
additional text into an outer circle.

https://github.com/gfxmonk/nixos-logo-ideas/blob/master/exports/logo-print-options.png

To be honest, the print works well enough we could drop the gradient
version if we want to keep it simple. But I do still prefer it myself.

Cheers,
 - Tim.

On Tue, Aug 25, 2015 at 5:36 AM, Nicolas Pierron
<nicolas.b.pierron at gmail.com> wrote:
> Thanks Tim,
>
> I think we definitely need a new logo, for at least 2 reasons:
>  - The overlap of the lambda does not render correctly in all software.
>  - The colors are not industrial printers friendly.
>
> All your proposal are well addressing the first issue, by removing the
> overlap and adding extra transparency between the lambdas.
>
> On the other hand, the gradient might be worse than the current status
> about making the image easy to print (CYMK).  I think we would be
> printing more and more t-shirts / goodies in the future, and this is a
> critical issue that we have to solve with the current logo.
>
> Also, a-part from the shape of the logo, I think it would be
> interesting to see how well the colors of the lambda might render with
> various background colors.  The goal is not to choose a different
> background color, but to make sure that the lambda's color are still
> good, even if printed on black t-shirts.
>
> Personal opinion:
> shape:
>  - "slant" does not feels good and straight, as I would expect from our image.
>  - "hex", "circle", "straight" are fine.
>  - "straight" lambdas' left arm seems to be too-long.
>
> color:
>  - "none" removes the charm, of having something a bit different.
>  - "half" and "feature" sound both good.
>  - "feature" sounds interesting, and makes the lambda too obvious, but
> "half" sounds warmer/more solid than "feature".
>
>
> On Mon, Aug 24, 2015 at 7:58 PM, Joachim Schiele <js at lastlog.de> wrote:
>> looks great!
>>
>>
>> On 24.08.2015 05:14, Tim Cuthbertson wrote:
>>> Hello all,
>>>
>>> I'm a big fan of Nix / NixOS, but I've long felt that the logo could
>>> do with a bit of work. So I toyed about a bit with inkscape, and came
>>> up with a few ideas:
>>>
>>> https://github.com/gfxmonk/nixos-logo-ideas/tree/master/exports
>>>
>>> They mostly keep to the existing logo structure, but with some changes:
>>>
>>>  - Make the lines wider, and remove the rounded caps. The existing
>>> logo feels too thin, as if it's made of lines rather than shapes. This
>>> feels fragile, particularly when scaled down.
>>>
>>>  - Made the lambda structure more obvious. To be honest, it wasn't
>>> until fairly recently that I noticed that the logo was made of
>>> lambdas. I've added gaps between each one so they don't run into a
>>> single shape as much. I've also added some subtle gradients at the top
>>> of each, to turn it into more of a woven structure, rather than a
>>> snowflake.
>>>
>>>  - Rotated the shape so that there's an upright lambda, and the shape
>>> fits better into a restricted-height context (e.g a header bar).
>>>
>>> # Shape variants:
>>>
>>> "straight": More or less equivalent to the current logo, but with
>>> straight (not rounded) edges
>>>
>>> "hex": Blockier in general, and gives the short foot of the lambda a
>>> triangular edge. This aligns all outer points to a hexagon shape,
>>> mirroring the inner hexagon.
>>>
>>> "slant": The lambdas in this one have a fatter head and thinner feet.
>>> This makes the overall structure look more dynamic and organic, but
>>> de-emphasizes the clean lambda shape somewhat. The shapes on this one
>>> may need some tweaking, as the outer shape (made by the feet) still
>>> seems a little disorganized still.
>>>
>>> # Highlight variants:
>>>
>>> "none": every lambda has the same shading
>>>
>>> "half": every second shape is darker (as in the current logo)
>>>
>>> "feature": the right-way-up lambda is the only darker shape. This
>>> makes the repeating lambda structure more obvious, but obviously
>>> affects symmetry.
>>>
>>> I haven't done too much experimentation with the colours, but feel
>>> free to crack open the svgs (in the parent directory) and try whatever
>>> you like.
>>>
>>> Let me know what you think!
>>>
>>> Cheers,
>>>  - Tim.
>>>
>>
>>
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>
>
> --
> Nicolas Pierron
> http://www.linkedin.com/in/nicolasbpierron - http://nbp.name/
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