GNU MediaGoblin logo

[Jef van Schendel]

We need a great logo.

[William Theaker]

wip.svg

[William Theaker]

Jef van Schendel wrote:

    We need a great logo.


What direction are you looking to take the logo? I mocked up
something basic and cartoony. Any preferred style guidelines,
possibly GNOME or Tango?

[Christopher Allan Webber]

Thanks for starting this ticket. I've been giving this serious
consideration. I also had a conversation with Bassam Kurdali about
this over the phone on my lunch break today... let's see if I can
type up those thoughts as fast as possible without going over on
lunch ;)

So first of all, William I appreciate the general direction you're
taking this, and it gave me a lot more thought of what could be
done if we did go that direction. Currently it might be a bit
problematic though, as the design looks very close to the current
BSD logo, or maybe the GIMP's logo, etc.

I've been wondering a lot whether or not the original goblin I drew
should be our logo or part of our logo or not. I really like him,
but I'm not sure how well he fits in the upper left hand corner of
our current design style, especially without possibly clashing with
serious, non-cartoony work (I hate bringing this example up but
it's such a good one, what happens if you have a serious picture of
your grandparents' funeral?). But also in talking with Jon
Phillips, he's pointed out that our current direction is fairly
unique, interesting, and appealing with our goblin design. So I
don't really want to drop it either.

What Bassam said on the phone really gelled with me: maybe our
goblin should be our mascot, but not our logo. Look at McDonalds,
which has both a mascot (Ronald McDonald) and logo (golden arches)
as branding, but uses them differently. We could and probably
should do the same thing: maybe the mascot belongs on some pages
(maybe some welcome! and etc pages, more discussive introductory
material type pages) and the logo belongs in the upper left hand
corner and etc.

That doesn't get us any closer to knowing what our logo
**should be**, but it's still useful to think about as in terms of
branding, I think.

[Christopher Allan Webber]

This conversation has moved on-list, but here's a summary of the
last mail sent bridging some offline discussions onto the list.

::

    I started a conversation offlist which was originally me reaching out to
    Thorsten Wilms for some input and possibly assistance, and later
    included a number of other people, and before I knew it we had a
    conversation that was going offlist thar really should have been
    onlist.  So here's my attempt to bring that discussion back on-list so
    we can all discuss the future of awesome logo-ness.
    
    First let me quote Thorsten on some points of guidance we should reflect
    on, with some comments inline:
    
    <thorsten_discussion>
    > Maybe I can help with just some guidance.
    > 
    > Who's your audience? (it often helps to think about who isn't your
    > audience.)
    
     - Artists
     - Photographers
     - Amateur photographers just sharing family photos
     - Initially, probably more free-as-in-freedom type people, but I'd like
       to expand beyond that base
     - The type of people who want to post to flickr (and eventually
       youtube, etc)
     - People who want federation initially and know what the hell that means
     - I'm hoping eventually we can just be the best option and push
       federation to people who don't even know it's the best option.  How
       can we avoid getting entrenched in *only* the FaiF and federated
       people?  (Probably by just being the best, and also marketing outside
       of the FOSS circles until MediaGoblin is the obvious choice?)
    
    Who isn't our audience?  Well I'm not sure.  Who isn't interested in
    flickr / youtube type services these days?
    
    > How will people learn about your project, what's your general strategy?
    
    Our strategy is to first focus on FOSS'y type audience who want these
    kinds of services.  I think this will be important because a) this is
    the audience who really knows that this matters b) we need things to be
    pretty well tested by an audience that can be forgiving about things not
    being the best initially, which realistically they won't be (but then
    will be!)
    
    So we're going to simultaneously try and get as many people to run their
    own instances as possible, but a few of us are looking at running a
    large instance knowing that most people won't run their own.
    
    > what will be the context of use?
    
    The infrastructure is set in stone so we'll be able to handle multiple
    media types (images, video, audio, ascii art, your deepest darkest bad
    poetry in PDF format), even though we're only handling images so far.  I
    think this will be a big feature... even though it's on the horizon.
    Nobody else is providing an interface to do all these things that still
    runs and works nicely.
    
    That said, for now we're just targeting image galleries.  At the 0.1.0
    public alpha there won't even be an API for mobile devices, but soon
    after we'll hopefully get one.
    
    Even though I think the content of DeviantArt is a bit too oriented
    toward just cartoony, anime-ish type artwork generally, I admire the
    kind of discussion and collaboration that happens there.  I'd like to
    see that kind of coordination happen here, but across federated
    instances.
    
    > What do you want to say about the project, what's the desired image,
    > your message? The desired tone (think of the seriousness of a bank vs
    > the fun-factor of a travel agency, for example)?
    > 
    > Analyze your competition in light of these questions.
    
    First of all, we've got the name MediaGoblin.  I think it's kind of fun,
    and I enjoy the silliness of it, but yes, I don't want it to interfere
    too much with the type of content people put on here.  I've had a bunch
    of conversations with Bassam Kurdali and Jef van Schendel about this.
    
    Example cases of where the theme/logo applies to media being uploaded:
     - Something fun and fitting with a playful environment, like something
       you might see on deviantart
     - Pictures of a grandparent's funeral
    
    Our theme actually went through quite a bit of adjustments to be able to
    be okay for #2 actually, and I think we're doing okay for that, but back
    to this.  So we've talked about having both a mascot and a logo, similar
    to the way that McDonalds has both (Ronald McDonald and the Golden
    Arches) but uses them in different situations.  Similarly on most parts
    of the site the mascot might not come into play but in certain parts or
    promotional materials maybe it will.  It certainly won't be there for
    peoples' images or galleries, but maybe it will on the registration page
    or the about us page.
    
    But back to what we want to say.  I actually really admire Google in
    this regard.  Google's brand has generally been recognized as playful
    and fun, but never seems to get in the way of people being serious.
    Nobody says "Don't use Google, that's not for serious searching or
    work."  I'd really like to have that same balance for our project if
    it's at all possible.
    
    > The logo should be a defining part of your visual identity. You might
    > want to handle the look of your project pages and that of your product
    > differently. Because the later will have to serve as context, almost a
    > canvas, for user-provided media. You might want to make it very calm,
    > neutral, minimal because of that. A logo that resembles a head or face
    > might be a problem, then, attracting too much attention. The project
    > pages could afford to be bolder.
    > 
    > Independent, or maybe even in spite of such considerations, the first
    > priority of the logo is to be recognizable as a specific symbol, so it
    > can stand for the project similar to how a name does. The true meaning
    > of the logo will come from what it stands for and the connection is
    > established in context.
    > 
    > The second concern is general attractiveness, the impression of
    > balance and control. Only then should you care about symbolism.
    </thorsten_discussion>
    
    Lastly, a couple of other points:
    
     - We currently have that "eye in the media" design but everyone seems
       to agree that it isn't quite enough.
     - We almost cerainly won't have GNU in the logo, though we'll continue
       to advertise ourselves as a GNU project. (Not unusual, see
       http://lists.gnu.org/images/mailman/mailman.jpg )
     - We'll probably separate out our mascot from our logo... see above
       for discussion on this
     - Aside from this, we don't really know!
    
    I guess the next step is to start working on some mockups that reflect
    the discussion above.

[Jarred de Beer]

character.svg

[Jarred de Beer]

Hi there,

I'd been playing around with doing a vector version of the Goblin
character - somewhat blind to this thread, so please take the image
lightly :) - it probably falls more inline with the mascot side to
things.

It should also be noted that I feel the attached image is about 60%
complete from where i'd like to see it, and requires polish. But it
would probably be better to get feedback at this point before doing
that, if you think it might be at all useful.

[Christopher Allan Webber]

Retargeting at 0.0.4. We should try to get a logo, or something
close to the final, by the end of the month.

[Will Kahn-Greene]

We release 0.0.4, so I'm bumping this to 0.0.5.

[Jarred de Beer]

Hi there,

Attached is a vercotized version of the logo of the top right of
the 'logo\_derivatives' image, with ears skewed more towards the
third from the top on right and 404 page image...

Please let me know if you'd like to see some changes,


-  Jarred

[Jarred de Beer]

logo_derivatives.svg

[Jarred de Beer]

File attached... :)

[Christopher Allan Webber]

I've experimentally committed something that combines Thorsten's
handwritten text from
`http://thorwil.wordpress.com/2011/07/25/media-goblin-logo-3/ <http://thorwil.wordpress.com/2011/07/25/media-goblin-logo-3/>`_
with the SVG rendering of the logo Jarred submitted. :)

[Caleb Davis]

chrome_v_ffox.png

[Caleb Davis]

I'm getting this extra "-" between the logo/MediaGoblin and the
submit media button. It is there in chrome but not in firefox. This
isn't the first time I've seen it, but I can't recall if it's gone
away in the meantime. If I still see it after this issue is closed
I'll open a new one.
|image0| -
`http://i.imgur.com/RdJiZ.png <http://i.imgur.com/RdJiZ.png>`_


.. |image0| image:: /attachments/download/74

[Christopher Allan Webber]

Try now, Caleb!

[Caleb Davis]

I'm still seeing 832751, "Experimentally putting logo in place," as
the latest gmg/master commit. Am I missing something?

[Christopher Allan Webber]

Forgot to push. Derp. Try now.

[Caleb Davis]

yup, that took care of it!

[Christopher Allan Webber]

So not much as in terms of updates on the bugs, but we did plenty
elsewhere.

Basically in the end we ended up using Thorsten's text for the logo
and decided that actually looked best.

Thorsten says he's happy with the state of his logo also, and so
I'm closing this ticket.

[Will Kahn-Greene]

The original url for this bug was ​http://bugs.foocorp.net/issues/358 .