We need an official logo

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sliptonic
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Re: We need an official logo

Post by sliptonic »

adrianinsaval wrote: Wed Oct 12, 2022 11:33 am Please let's leave the FC logo out of this or the discussion will go out of hand quickly, focurs on the task at hand.
Exactly!
And if we find a process that works and avoids conflict then (and only then) we could consider doing the same thing for the main logo.

I like pathfinder's idea if it's actually doable.
So do I.
Perhaps we could do the contest in stages. A first creative phase where rough concept ideas are thrown out quickly by anyone. Then a small handful of designers are invited to do a full workup of their idea.
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obelisk79
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Re: We need an official logo

Post by obelisk79 »

chrisb wrote: Wed Oct 12, 2022 12:58 pm It doesn't need it, but it would be nice to have it. And isn't it nice to do every now and then something - nice?
Of course, however, I fail to see why such effort should be pursued. My own work on logo's as a hobby designer set aside, I don't think that the FPA should get a new logo if there will be no movement on refreshing, or updating the actual FreeCAD logo. The design language of it is quite dated and poorly composed/proportioned, however if a contest is pursued, and/or a professional designer gets hired, the FPA would likely end up having a better designed identity than the software it exists to protect and that seems moderately paradoxical on a fundamental level. If, as an active community member, my opinion counts at all then I feel obligated to state my disagreement with this endeavor being pursued in a bubble. The FC and FPA logo's should share a common design language and elements so their relation to each other is 100% clear and obvious. Trying to sandbox them from each other would be folly, in my opinion, this isn't like developing 2 completely independent workbenches.

Also, just for the sake of clarity, the title of the OP is "We need an official logo"
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sliptonic
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Re: We need an official logo

Post by sliptonic »

I'm a veteran of the Logo Wars and I have scars to prove it. My experience has been that attempts to improve the main logo always fail because nobody every proposes a method for a loose community to make a subjective decision that is fair and still achieves a quality result. For some reason, people want to talk about the logo and not the logo process.

What I'm trying to do with this effort is develop that process.

People are far less emotionally invested in the FPA logo. That's good. We can focus on the process without getting bogged down.

Bottom line, let's figure this out with something that doesn't matter as much so that we can repeat it later with something that does.
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obelisk79
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Re: We need an official logo

Post by obelisk79 »

sliptonic wrote: Wed Oct 12, 2022 3:38 pm Bottom line, let's figure this out with something that doesn't matter as much so that we can repeat it later with something that does.
Process is fine, and of course critically important, in which case I'll agree with the suggestion that general concept proposals be submitted in a public contest format.

1. General guidelines for what the FPA wants out of their logo should be presented for designers to operate within.
2. A set number of concept entries, (ie top 3) be selected for further development by their designers.
3. Actual FPA members then deliberate which refined design will be fully adopted by the organization.

What I would further propose is:

This same general process above be followed for a comprehensive logo/identity approach between both software and organization in a singular process as follows:

Guidelines for logo design language:
1. Each logo (FC/FCA) must share the same color palette and present a shade of Red and blue as the dominant colors in the logo (maintaining current branding identity)
2. Logos must be clear in a fully desaturated color-state allowing for printing in black and white and support color-vision impaired individuals.
3. Concepts for FC need to include the use of the capital letter "F" and a gear in either a clear or abstract form. Logos for FPA should be visually similar, but do not require the use of a 'gear'.
4. Logos should be proportioned to fit into a perfect square (FreeCAD) or a horizontal rectangle (some kind of fixed ratio, 1:2 maybe?) for FPA with minimal negative space around the edges.
5. Logos should visually scale well from 24px to 256+px in height.
6. Submissions will be made under the assumption that they are being released under either Creative Commons license or LGPL (whichever is more appropriate)

For the submissions/selection process:
1. Eligible submissions should come from users with forum accounts a minimum of 3 months old (or pick a date like 1Aug2022) and at least 5 or 10 posts.
2. A 30 day window be provided for concept submissions (perhaps place a cap on the number of submissions that will be accepted. ie. submission window will close early if submission count reaches 24). This allows for less active forum members to have a chance to see the contest and design a submission.
3. A community poll will then be created and globally pinned with a duration of 2 weeks.
4. The top 3-5 submissions be accepted as 'finalists' and designers provided an additional 2 weeks to refine/complete their concepts as final entries within set guidelines ie optimize for clarity against light/dark backgrounds, refine contrast, resolution scaling, color palette and vector source files.
5. A panel of FreeCAD founders/FPA founding members deliberate/vote internally which of the top submissions will be chosen.
6. New logos get rolled out across the board in a coordinated manner, website, software, documentation, github etc.
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MisterMaker
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Re: We need an official logo

Post by MisterMaker »

Maybe incorporate a mission statement?
Have a banner + Icon logo?
I see no reason to make the logo square for an icon, also the icon doesn't need to be a logo.
Enough real world examples where an icon is just a part of a logo.
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Re: We need an official logo

Post by pathfinder »

obelisk79 wrote: Wed Oct 12, 2022 4:15 pm 1. Eligible submissions should come from users with forum accounts a minimum of 3 months old (or pick a date like 1Aug2022) and at least 5 or 10 posts.
I don't see the necessity for this. If someone is a good designer and willing to participate, I don't see why you would want to exclude them.

For voting, there absolutely should be restrictions to prevent sybil attacks.
MisterMaker wrote: Wed Oct 12, 2022 7:05 pm I see no reason to make the logo square for an icon
I think the main reason is compatibility with existing designs, like the Gui, website and so on. You don't want to have to rebuild everything where the logo is, so you use the old ratio. Also, the way I understand it, it's not supposed to mean "needs to be square" but more "looks good if the space it occupies is a square", so if it's higher than it is wide, as long as design-wise, it makes sense that there's empty space to the sides, it "fits within a square", if that makes sense.
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obelisk79
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Re: We need an official logo

Post by obelisk79 »

pathfinder wrote: Wed Oct 12, 2022 9:39 pm
I don't see the necessity for this. If someone is a good designer and willing to participate, I don't see why you would want to exclude them.
I've had the same thoughts as you in the past. I added that bit because there has been criticism in the past of drive-by logo submissions. FreeCAD being very community driven, and based on past observations, I made the determination that there would be a desire to keep people who aren't a part of the community away from participating merely for an addition to a portfolio.

Also, I merely outlined some suggestions for a possible process as requested by @sliptonic . I'm not a decision-maker around here. But perhaps what I proposed provides a starting point for better defining this with upfront rules and expectations. Should help with the general emotional strife that often comes about on matters of taste and style.
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Re: We need an official logo

Post by pathfinder »

obelisk79 wrote: Wed Oct 12, 2022 10:08 pm I made the determination that there would be a desire to keep people who aren't a part of the community away from participating merely for an addition to a portfolio.
I don't mind it. If someone is a good designer and able to capture what FC/FPA stands for in a logo, even though they are not part of the community (which is a pretty loose term in regards to open source projects anyway) and can bolster their portfolio with it, I would call that a win-win situation.

I know that it was merely a suggestion on your end. My suggestion is to keep the submissions open for everyone.

Edit: since we all know that the best way to solve a problem is computers, I decided to feed Dall-E and see what happens:

Image
Image

If red and blue are mandatory:

Image
chrisb
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Re: We need an official logo

Post by chrisb »

I am with pathfinder. If some designer develops a logo for his portfolio he will sure make it as good as possible. That’s good for us.

I also agree that only forum regulars (notion to be defined) should vote.
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Re: We need an official logo

Post by onekk »

I agree mostly with @crishb when he say that only "regular users" should vote and probably some "relatively high post count" (100, 200, only veterans, more than 2000posts, more than 4000, it is an hard decision, that should be left to the FPA members) should be chosen to make a vote.

But there is away to make a pool that will block "unwanted votes"?

For the requirement of the logo, probably even an external designer (in sense not a FC) user should be ok, expecially if FPA will make it like a prize, the winner will receive XXX USD, EUR, nuts.

I think that "professional grade" and generally each valuable work should be "payed", eventually if the winner generous he/she could make a donation of the same amount to the FPA.

But some strictly guidelines should be made.

To be clear IMHO in examples submitted by @pathfinder ( apropos: Dall-E is an automatized design software?) some of them could be immediately associated to FC, some other are much loosely related, some other are "completely different" and "sound strange" to every FC user.

I like even the suggestion of taking in account and insert in logo specification, visual impaired needs and "black and white" rendering.

My two cents.

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