From: Jason Foreman <threeve.org@...>
Date: 2005-05-12T00:06:16+09:00
Subject: Re: Redesign 2005, Round Two

On 5/11/05, Michel Martens <blaumag@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 5/11/05, Karl von Laudermann <doodpants@mailinator.com> wrote:
> > Check out some of the icons/logos/emblems/whatever used at the top of
> > these other open source project web pages. None of them are flat,
> > simple geometric shapes, and I'm sure they've all been
> > reproduced on T-shirts and trade show banners.
> > http://www.freebsd.org/
> > http://www.linux.org/
> > http://www.gimp.org/
> > http://www.opendarwin.org/
> 
> Karl, those are examples of bad logos. The Ruby gem is infinitely
> better than that.
> 
> Besides: I don't think that all open source projects should look
> alike, and good design can be found in projects like Firefox, Mozilla
> (http://www.mozilla.org), PostgreSQL (http://www.postgresql.org/),
> WordPress (http://wordpress.org/), etc.
> 
> Michel.
> 
> 

There is a huge difference between a nice image, and a logo.  Many
people make the point that there should not be a Ruby logo, however a
logo has many benefits, the most important of which in my opinion is
instant recognition.  If you're going to go to the trouble of having
an image there at all, make it one that people will remember and
associate with the site/language/community/whatever, rather than just
one that is 'pretty'.

I think the gemstone image fails in that regard.  It's too obvious,
and it has nothing to set it apart from any other image of a ruby.  I
like the links that Michel provides, and suggest also OSI [1], Debian
[2], and even Java [3].  All have logos that I could pick out of a
crowd very easily.  I'm not saying I like the websites themselves,
just the logo.

Also, I still think the gemstone is limited in its use.  I think it'd
be bad on a tshirt or other clothing (never seen a tshirt with smooth
gradients like that, at least not one that lasted more than one wash)
and it'd be bad at smaller sizes because it would lose too much
detail.

I posted some other comments on the blog yesterday too.  I basically
don't like the look of the latest designs much at all...  But I am
certainly in the minority.

Jason

[1] http://opensource.org
[2] http://debian.org
[3] http://java.sun.com