[Nix-dev] Logo improvement ideas

[Cillian de Róiste]

Woops! ... I sent this directly to Tim rather than to the list:


2015-08-26 2:09 GMT+02:00 Tim Cuthbertson <tim at gfxmonk.net>:
> On Wed, Aug 26, 2015 at 2:16 AM, Cillian de Róiste
> <cillian.deroiste at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 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?).
>
> Unfortunately not, I just played one in high school ;).

Ah, well that may be the closest we've got :D ... although I think
kmicu on IRC has some design experience too.

>> 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?
>
> It certainly might be, but I'm not really sure of the composition of
> folks working on Nix / NixOS - are there designer types that could
> help with this? Personally I do a bit of graphic design as a hobbyist
> (thus my interest in the logo), but don't have much to contribute
> outside that in terms of branding / figuring out style guides. So this
> is a good idea, but will only go somewhere if there are enough people
> wanting to contribute to it.

Ah, fair enough. I think we could get help from the
opensourcedesigners gang, but we don't have anyone at the moment. It
would be awesome to get someone on board for this. One thing they
suggest is to add a github ticket and label it "design". Perhaps you
could kick this off with your work on the logo and see if it catches
anyone's interest?

>> 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 afraid I don't see it - this looks identical to the current logo
> to me. Maybe that's the point (I'm not sure what "overlapping" you're
> referring to),...

Yeah, they look identical, but in the original each lambda overlaps,
and there's an extra shape which masks the first lambda. In this
version they are cut at the intersections. If you open the file in
inkscape and ungroup the lambdas and move one, I think it will be
clear ... at any rate it's just a detail.

> but I find it hard to spot the lambdas in this version
> for two reasons:
>
>  - they're not separate enough. Aside from being different colours,
> there is no gap or other obvious distinction between each
>
>  - (I think) the lack of any upright lambda makes it less likely you'd
> notice, as well.
>
>> 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
>
> Yes, fonts are important too, and I haven't done too much work there
> other than flipping through my installed fonts to pick one which
> didn't look awful ;)
> Varela Round certainly matches the current logo's style well, although
> I suspect it might be better to have a font which doesn't match the
> logo's form quite so well (if the whole logo is made of rounded
> sticks, that could get a little bland).

That makes perfect sense, thanks! I'm sure your sense of what doesn't
look awful would already be a great improvement on what we have at the
moment :D ... Myriad Pro is used a bit, and is nice but it's not Free,
so that's a problem.

>> 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?
>
> Yeah, collecting interested parties is certainly a good idea (although
> video conference might be hard to organise timezone-wise). I'm not
> entirely sure how to solicit that - anyone else on the mailing list
> interested?

FWIW, I'm free on Sunday (except early morning, UTC). I could see if
anyone from the opensourcedesigners would be interested in helping out
too. Would that suit anyone? Naturally, it will be entirely up to the
foundation to decide whether or not they are interested in adopting
any suggestions we might come up with.

Cheers,
Cillian

2015-08-26 2:09 GMT+02:00 Tim Cuthbertson <tim at gfxmonk.net>:
> On Wed, Aug 26, 2015 at 2:16 AM, Cillian de Róiste
> <cillian.deroiste at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 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?).
>
> Unfortunately not, I just played one in high school ;).
>
>> 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?
>
> It certainly might be, but I'm not really sure of the composition of
> folks working on Nix / NixOS - are there designer types that could
> help with this? Personally I do a bit of graphic design as a hobbyist
> (thus my interest in the logo), but don't have much to contribute
> outside that in terms of branding / figuring out style guides. So this
> is a good idea, but will only go somewhere if there are enough people
> wanting to contribute to it.
>
>> 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 afraid I don't see it - this looks identical to the current logo
> to me. Maybe that's the point (I'm not sure what "overlapping" you're
> referring to), but I find it hard to spot the lambdas in this version
> for two reasons:
>
>  - they're not separate enough. Aside from being different colours,
> there is no gap or other obvious distinction between each
>
>  - (I think) the lack of any upright lambda makes it less likely you'd
> notice, as well.
>
>> 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
>
> Yes, fonts are important too, and I haven't done too much work there
> other than flipping through my installed fonts to pick one which
> didn't look awful ;)
> Varela Round certainly matches the current logo's style well, although
> I suspect it might be better to have a font which doesn't match the
> logo's form quite so well (if the whole logo is made of rounded
> sticks, that could get a little bland).
>
>> 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?
>
> Yeah, collecting interested parties is certainly a good idea (although
> video conference might be hard to organise timezone-wise). I'm not
> entirely sure how to solicit that - anyone else on the mailing list
> interested?
>
> Cheers,
>  - Tim.
>
>> 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.
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> nix-dev mailing list
>>>>> nix-dev at lists.science.uu.nl
>>>>> http://lists.science.uu.nl/mailman/listinfo/nix-dev
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> Nicolas Pierron
>>>> http://www.linkedin.com/in/nicolasbpierron - http://nbp.name/
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> nix-dev mailing list
>>>> nix-dev at lists.science.uu.nl
>>>> http://lists.science.uu.nl/mailman/listinfo/nix-dev
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>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> NixOS: The Purely Functional Linux Distribution
>> http://nixos.org



-- 
NixOS: The Purely Functional Linux Distribution
http://nixos.org