[Dwarf-discuss] OTHER or arguably ENHANCEMENT: Logo

[Cary Coutant]

Ben,

Thanks for forwarding these.

Simplification and minimization is the hot new trend in logo design.
(Well, maybe not quite so new today.) Everyone's doing it, from
Starbucks to Burger King, Shell, MasterCard, and Pringles, to name a
few.

I like the dwarf in #3, and the font in #1. I think simplifying the
logo is a good thing, and I like the simplicity of these examples, but
I think the feet (as in #1 and #3) are important. I agree with David
and Ron that a tool would be better than a weapon.

Before we can do anything with this, though, we'd need to make sure
your wife is willing to put her design under a Creative Commons, or
similar, license. I think Creative Commons is the right choice, as
that's what we've been using for other content recently. The standard
itself is Gnu FDL, but the website itself (at least more recent stuff)
is CC-BY.

(Personally, I always thought our current mascot looks more like a
Tasmanian devil wearing a Viking hat.)

-cary

On Wed, Mar 22, 2023 at 1:01 PM Ron Brender via Dwarf-discuss
<dwarf-discuss@lists.dwarfstd.org> wrote:
>
> FWIW, the "master" in the DWARF .git distro is an .eps file not .png--not that that really matters. I don't know
> where it came from other than Michael gave it to me to use. The .eps does contain some Copyright lines, namely
> % Copyright (c)1992-98 Corel Corporation
> % All rights reserved.     v8.0 r0.15
> I suspect it came out of some WordPerfect sample graphics selection which he tweaked for DWARF use--my speculation.
>
> None of which really addresses the question of replacing it. I am OK with considering a replacement but not eager to
> spend much time on it.
>
> I don't much care for any of the quickie examples offered by Ben. The stylized DWARF is no fun and certainly doesn't
> look like a DWARF. The others are too much text and not enough little guy. And I agree with David that the Dwarf
> should be holding a tool (the suggestion of a blacksmith hammer is cool) and not a weapon.
>
> Such are my thoughts at the moment...
>
> Ron
>
>
> On Wed, Mar 22, 2023 at 1:52 PM David Blaikie via Dwarf-discuss <dwarf-discuss@lists.dwarfstd.org> wrote:
>>
>> FWIW, I like the idea/reckon it's worth a revisit.
>>
>> I'd shy away from equipping the dwarves with weapons/combat imagery -
>> maybe a smithy's hammer (or pickaxe) would be more suitable for
>> tooling? (this sort of thing:
>> https://www.kctool.com/picard-1c-blacksmiths-hammer-with-ash-handle-1800g/
>> - has a simple/clear outline, square on one end, tapered on the other)
>>
>> As for version-specific logos, as fun as it might be, practically I'd
>> be happy to settle on a consistent way to render versions - putting a
>> number in the upper right corner, perhaps (have the dwarf hold the
>> tool in their right hand, so would appear on the left of the image -
>> or swap version/tool around as folks see fit).
>>
>> In general my personal font choice is more around example (4), but the
>> thick/sturdy-ness of (2) is probably more in keeping with the theme.
>>
>> On Tue, Mar 21, 2023 at 2:44 PM Ben Woodard via Dwarf-discuss
>> <dwarf-discuss@lists.dwarfstd.org> wrote:
>> >
>> > It has been kind of tense around here for a while; let's have some fun.
>> >
>> > The DWARF logo is quite old. There are many problems with it as a logo.
>> >
>> > It is a png and though there appears to be several versions of it at different sizes it is a raster and so it doesn't scale well
>> > The image itself looks scanned and then colored. This leads to some built in aliasing on a pixel level which show up badly when printed.
>> > The color choices are not really ideal for printing and if we were going to use it on anything other than on a web page like a shirt or a sticker there would be problems.
>> > If you look at it up close, it is not really clear.
>> >
>> > I could probably go on and if people would like additional justification I will but with the new administration and the push to DWARF6, I think that we should consider a new logo. My wife happens to be a graphic designer https://cyansamone.com/ and one of the things that she does is logo design. When she came into my office and the DWARF5 standard was up on my screen and she cringed for about the 50'th time at the logo, I asked her to put together some ideas. In a few minutes, she came up with some options. http://www.bencoyote.net/~ben/DWARF_logo_1.png
>> >
>> > The fonts (all free as in beer) and images are mix and match and any other ideas are more than welcome. They are vector art and so they can be scaled. This was just a quick mockup.
>> >
>> > I also thought it might be fun to have a DWARF6 specific logo that we could put on tools as they become capable of handling the new version of the standard. Another idea that I had but she hasn't drawn yet is the 6 dwarves chasing a bug. She said that drawing that would take more than the 5 minutes she had at the moment because she would have to figure out what the dwarves look like in profile. http://www.bencoyote.net/~ben/DWARF_6_draft.png
>> >
>> > Yeah I know that it isn't the most important thing in the world of DWARF but in relation to all the other miscellany that needed to change, I thought that we should toss this on the list.
>> >
>> > -ben
>> >
>> >
>> >
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