[Nix-dev] Logo improvement ideas

Tue Aug 25 18:16:25 CEST 2015

Hi Tim,

Very interesting designs! There was some talk at FOSDEM this year
about brushing up the design/branding in general. I was really hoping
we could get a designer on board to help with that although it fell
through (but maybe you are a designer?). Before updating the logo, I
wonder if we should step back a bit and think about what the logo
should communicate. I added a stub of a page to the wiki to develop a
style guide, but I haven't done much with it since:
https://nixos.org/wiki/Style_Guide . Would something like that be a
good place to start?

BTW, The issues with the overlapping lambdas in the current logo
should be solved in this version:
https://github.com/NixOS/nixos-artwork/blob/master/logo/nix-snowflake.svg

I'm pretty sure we can get help with the colors from
http://opensourcedesign.net (I've asked them about it before, but
figured we should work on the style guide first).

Personally, I'm really fond of the current logo, although I would
really like if we decided on a standard font (I'm a fan of Varela
Round, to go with the current logo). Most of all I'd love if we could
have a style guide, and have templates everyone could use for flyers,
posters, t-shirts etc. I'd really love if NixOS could be themeable
from configuration.nix too, but that's another story :D

What do you think? Perhaps we could have some kind of a video
conferencing session with anyone who's interested to get the ball
rolling?

Cheers,
Cillian

2015-08-25 7:25 GMT+02:00 Tim Cuthbertson <tim at gfxmonk.net>:
> 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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