Hi, (please don't CC me) On Tue, 4 Aug 2009 00:06:46 +0100 Roger Leigh <rleigh@codelibre.net> wrote: > On Mon, Aug 03, 2009 at 10:28:33PM +0200, Harald Braumann wrote: > > I must say, I like the current swirl and I would miss it. But then > > I'm maybe just conservative. I never understood the sense of > > re-branding, re-naming, re-designing everything just for the sake > > of it. > > I don't know, while the swirl is familiar and everything, there's > nothing in it that really jumps out at me and says that's a really > great logo that captures what Debian is in the same sense that > (off the top of my head) the VMware (in particular) or > RedHat/SuSE/FreeBSD logos do. Let's see: VMware: I had to go to their web site to be reminded of their logo. And if I would see it without the vmware wording, I probably wouldn't recognise it. RedHat: well that's easy. But the name Debian doesn't mean anything. If you want smth. similar, you'd have to use pictures of Debra and Ian ;) SuSE: how does a chameleon capture what SuSE is? FreeBSD: Granted, Beastie is cool. But the new abstract logo is also only recognisable, if you know where it came from. The conclusion is: most logos are abstractions, and while they might have had an original meaning, this meaning is usually lost if you don't know the history. They become a symbol that stands for the brand itself. Compare e.g. the Adidas stripes: they don't have any meaning of their own, but everyone knows, it's Adidas. So I wouldn't try too hard to create a logo that has some meaning of its own. Somehow you have to implant the connection logo-brand into the peoples' brains. And as Debian probably doesn't have the advertisement budget of Adidas, this process is much slower. Thus it's important to keep the logo for a long time. If you change it, you have to start all over again > There are a lot of similar swirl logos > around which look awfully similar (some even having strangely similar > spiky bits; the last one I saw was on a bottle of drinking water but > in silver rather than red). True. If you put the Debian swirl anywhere, no one would know it's Debian. But if you put it in some IT-context, it's quite unique. > I really liked the personality of the "Debian chicken", though it > wouldn't have hurt to redraw it nicely. Maybe a bit Linux-specific > though. > > I also really liked the black and white GNU + penguin on the old > Apache default index page with the proud and mighty Gnu looking down > gravely towards the small upstart Penguin! I don't know if its just me, but IMO animals as logos always look a bit stupid and childish. Cheers, harry
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