Hi,
after seeing the new "powered by MediaWiki" button, I got motivated to rework the existing tournesol logo a bit. Mainly because the use of photos in logos is often discouraged and the path version looks a bit "friendlier" as well.
What do you think of it?
Fullsize: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mediawiki_logo_reworked.svg 135px ($wgLogo size): http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/30/Mediawiki_logo_rewo... Mediawiki_logo_reworked.svg.png
Leo Koppelkamm wrote:
after seeing the new "powered by MediaWiki" button, I got motivated to rework the existing tournesol logo a bit. Mainly because the use of photos in logos is often discouraged and the path version looks a bit "friendlier" as well.
What do you think of it?
Fullsize: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mediawiki_logo_reworked.svg
Not a huge fan of the shadow. Looking at the other project logos (http://www.wikimedia.org/), it looks like Wikinews is the only other project that puts a shadow behind at least part of the logo.
The muted colors are a nice start, but I think the yellow still really sticks out when the logos are presented as a family. Maybe the petal color could be changed?
MZMcBride
On 11 November 2010 19:55, MZMcBride z@mzmcbride.com wrote:
The muted colors are a nice start, but I think the yellow still really sticks out when the logos are presented as a family. Maybe the petal color could be changed?
I think this not being a photo does not make it better than the photo version. It's entirely unclear there's enough of a problem to be solved here.
- d.
On Thu, Nov 11, 2010 at 9:07 PM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 11 November 2010 19:55, MZMcBride z@mzmcbride.com wrote:
The muted colors are a nice start, but I think the yellow still really sticks out when the logos are presented as a family. Maybe the petal color could be changed?
I think this not being a photo does not make it better than the photo version. It's entirely unclear there's enough of a problem to be solved here.
I think it does look better than the older version, nice work.
Marco
On 11/11/2010 21:37, Marco Schuster wrote:
On Thu, Nov 11, 2010 at 9:07 PM, David Gerarddgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 11 November 2010 19:55, MZMcBridez@mzmcbride.com wrote:
The muted colors are a nice start, but I think the yellow still really sticks out when the logos are presented as a family. Maybe the petal color could be changed?
I think this not being a photo does not make it better than the photo version. It's entirely unclear there's enough of a problem to be solved here.
I think it does look better than the older version, nice work.
+1
I think this is already an improvement, though more could be done (e.g. get rid of the shadow completely, maybe use a slightly warmer yellow or more of a colour fade). For comparison: I recently re-designed the SMW logo completely, picking up the MW flower theme. The result is at:
http://semantic-mediawiki.org/wiki/Logo
No shadows there, but more heavy bordering lines. Essentially two colours. Some prominent colour transitions and blur to add some life.
Markus
Markus Krötzsch <markus <at> semantic-mediawiki.org> writes:
On 11/11/2010 21:37, Marco Schuster wrote:
On Thu, Nov 11, 2010 at 9:07 PM, David Gerard<dgerard <at> gmail.com> wrote:
On 11 November 2010 19:55, MZMcBride<z <at> mzmcbride.com> wrote:
The muted colors are a nice start, but I think the yellow still really sticks out when the logos are presented as a family. Maybe the petal color could be changed?
I think this not being a photo does not make it better than the photo version. It's entirely unclear there's enough of a problem to be solved here.
I think it does look better than the older version, nice work.
+1
I think this is already an improvement, though more could be done (e.g. get rid of the shadow completely, maybe use a slightly warmer yellow or more of a colour fade). For comparison: I recently re-designed the SMW logo completely, picking up the MW flower theme. The result is at:
http://semantic-mediawiki.org/wiki/Logo
No shadows there, but more heavy bordering lines. Essentially two colours. Some prominent colour transitions and blur to add some life.
Markus
Based on the input, here's another draft: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mediawiki_logo_reworked_2.svg
The shadows are gone (as well as the black outline of the petals) and the whole thing more simplified to better fit the "basic shapes look" of the other logos.
I tried a version with red petals (as red is the only realistic color out of red, blue & green) but I'm not a huge fan of it. It would as well mean giving up the tournesol aspect (as there are no red tournesols) The red version is here: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mediawiki_logo_reworked_2-red.svg
Leo
Firs let me say, especially with this 2nd version, good work on this! I've personally worked on revising this logo about 3 times, trashing my work after a bit because it's such a difficult logo to get right. I would like to see a few of the other artists in our community also take a stab at revising it. The typical process is to collect a few different versions and take a vote, we should probably just follow suit with that.
As for the colors - I think there's no reason for MediaWiki's logo to conform to the WMF color scheme. MediaWiki, like Wikipedia has it's own community of which some WMF staff are a part of - it's totally reasonable for them to have their own identity.
That said, Yellow is a difficult color to work with and get right, so I will be interested to see if much can be done to improve this at all, or if we've essentially peaked already.
Perhaps we can start a page somewhere around http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:MediaWiki_logos to perform this process?
- Trevor
On 11/12/10 10:45 AM, Leo wrote:
Markus Krötzsch<markus<at> semantic-mediawiki.org> writes:
On 11/11/2010 21:37, Marco Schuster wrote:
On Thu, Nov 11, 2010 at 9:07 PM, David Gerard<dgerard<at> gmail.com> wrote:
On 11 November 2010 19:55, MZMcBride<z<at> mzmcbride.com> wrote:
The muted colors are a nice start, but I think the yellow still really sticks out when the logos are presented as a family. Maybe the petal color could be changed?
I think this not being a photo does not make it better than the photo version. It's entirely unclear there's enough of a problem to be solved here.
I think it does look better than the older version, nice work.
+1
I think this is already an improvement, though more could be done (e.g. get rid of the shadow completely, maybe use a slightly warmer yellow or more of a colour fade). For comparison: I recently re-designed the SMW logo completely, picking up the MW flower theme. The result is at:
http://semantic-mediawiki.org/wiki/Logo
No shadows there, but more heavy bordering lines. Essentially two colours. Some prominent colour transitions and blur to add some life.
Markus
Based on the input, here's another draft: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mediawiki_logo_reworked_2.svg
The shadows are gone (as well as the black outline of the petals) and the whole thing more simplified to better fit the "basic shapes look" of the other logos.
I tried a version with red petals (as red is the only realistic color out of red, blue& green) but I'm not a huge fan of it. It would as well mean giving up the tournesol aspect (as there are no red tournesols) The red version is here: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mediawiki_logo_reworked_2-red.svg
Leo
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
On 12.11.2010, 21:45 Leo wrote:
Based on the input, here's another draft: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mediawiki_logo_reworked_2.svg
The shadows are gone (as well as the black outline of the petals) and the whole thing more simplified to better fit the "basic shapes look" of the other logos.
I tried a version with red petals (as red is the only realistic color out of red, blue & green) but I'm not a huge fan of it. It would as well mean giving up the tournesol aspect (as there are no red tournesols) The red version is here: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mediawiki_logo_reworked_2-red.svg
Frankly, I don't like it. The current logo has the advantage of looking *alive*. The new design looks plastic and dead, the sunflower is less recognisable. Is there a problem with our current logo? Why using a photo in a logo makes it an automatic show-stopper?
On Fri, Nov 12, 2010 at 4:29 PM, Max Semenik maxsem.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
Frankly, I don't like it. The current logo has the advantage of looking *alive*. The new design looks plastic and dead, the sunflower is less recognisable.
This.
I'm not opposed to refreshing the logo if we can come up with some good alternatives (a community vote with several finalists like Trevor mentioned would be best). Give the choice between sticking with our current one or using this, I'd stick with the current logo.
-Chad
Op 12 nov 2010, om 22:33 heeft Chad het volgende geschreven:
On Fri, Nov 12, 2010 at 4:29 PM, Max Semenik maxsem.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
Frankly, I don't like it. The current logo has the advantage of looking *alive*. The new design looks plastic and dead, the sunflower is less recognisable.
This.
I'm not opposed to refreshing the logo if we can come up with some good alternatives (a community vote with several finalists like Trevor mentioned would be best). Give the choice between sticking with our current one or using this, I'd stick with the current logo.
-Chad
Visually, I agree with you two. I like the current one the best as well. However, technically speaking, I agree that having a version that is a scalable vector graphic does have advantages.
So how about keeping the current logo but trying to make a Vector version that looks as much as alike as possible (a little abstraction is likely required, but shades and gradients are possible in Vector too!).
Altough it looks like an automated pixel-to-vector conversion, the idea is quite clear in the following file: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:MediaWiki.svg
-- Krinkle
On 12 November 2010 21:29, Max Semenik maxsem.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
Frankly, I don't like it. The current logo has the advantage of looking *alive*. The new design looks plastic and dead, the sunflower is less recognisable.
Yes, that's what I don't like about the proposal.
- d.
"Max Semenik" maxsem.wiki@gmail.com wrote in message news:97939612.20101113002905@gmail.com...
Frankly, I don't like it. The current logo has the advantage of looking *alive*. The new design looks plastic and dead, the sunflower is less recognisable.
I agree, although I think it's because the new version uses less vibrant colours than the current; it could gain a lot of 'life' from upping the saturation and putting some texture back into the flower centre. I very much dislike the red one; almost unrecognisable as the flower.
Is there a problem with our current logo?
Can we have a swear-box for whenever someone says "please volunteer don't donate your time to X because it's not-broken-so-doesn't-need-fixing"?? While I'd say having the logo in vector form is very desirable, even if it weren't that's still no reason to try to dissuade someone if they think they can improve something. By all means argue that their modifications are *not* improvements (currently, I agree with you, although I think it has potential); but even if you think they're wasting their time, it's entirely theirs to waste.
--HM
On 13/11/2010 00:36, Happy-melon wrote:
"Max Semenik"maxsem.wiki@gmail.com wrote in message news:97939612.20101113002905@gmail.com...
Frankly, I don't like it. The current logo has the advantage of looking *alive*. The new design looks plastic and dead, the sunflower is less recognisable.
I agree, although I think it's because the new version uses less vibrant colours than the current; it could gain a lot of 'life' from upping the saturation and putting some texture back into the flower centre.
+1
The current version lacks "life" mainly because it is slightly too simple and yet not fully abstract. It is a good basis to build a logo on, but it still more like a first drawing that still needs to be "coloured" to come to life. I don't think this is a question of vector vs. bitmap, or old vs. new. And it certainly is no reason to discourage further work on this topic.
I very much dislike the red one; almost unrecognisable as the flower.
Is there a problem with our current logo?
Can we have a swear-box for whenever someone says "please volunteer don't donate your time to X because it's not-broken-so-doesn't-need-fixing"?? While I'd say having the logo in vector form is very desirable, even if it weren't that's still no reason to try to dissuade someone if they think they can improve something. By all means argue that their modifications are *not* improvements (currently, I agree with you, although I think it has potential); but even if you think they're wasting their time, it's entirely theirs to waste.
again, +1
We should be able to agree that the MediaWiki logo, while doing a good job for many years, has still a very hand-crafted, home-made look to it. This actually extends beyond the logo to the MediaWiki web site as a whole. I think saying so does in no way diminish the great work that past contributors have done in creating what we currently have -- but this must not stop us from looking into possibilities for future improvements.
It is quite normal that one likes the things that one got used to over the years. Any new proposal that is similar to the existing logo will have to compete with our mental inertia that makes us feel like "it should look different, somehow" (namely, more like the old logo that we expect to see).
It takes some effort to step back and try to take a fresh view on the whole thing. It helps, I think, to compare the logo and general "branding" of other popular OSS projects. Consider:
* http://www.mozilla-europe.org/en/firefox/ * http://www.ubuntu.com/ * http://wordpress.org/ * http://rubyonrails.org/ * http://drupal.org/ * ...
There is a long way to go for MW here, and we better encourage anyone who feels like taking up even a small part of this effort. Revising the logo would be a step to get closer to this (and why not? we could have just as cool/pretty/welcoming website as any of the above!). And it cannot be assumed that each step in this process will improve every aspect -- some things will have to be given up.
Maybe the current logo does really not improve by careful redrawing (e.g. since yellow is an inconvenient colour, yet the only one that fits this flower image). But even if this was true, should we really tell contributors to make their work look more like the old logo, or even to give up and accept what we have? I think the opposite reaction is needed: actively encourage fresh, experimental proposals -- we can still reject them if they don't get anywhere. Be bold!
Just my 2 cents.
Markus
On 11/11/10 20:32, Leo Koppelkamm wrote:
after seeing the new "powered by MediaWiki" button, I got motivated to rework the existing tournesol logo a bit. Mainly because the use of photos in logos is often discouraged and the path version looks a bit "friendlier" as well.
I like your work but I tend to the colourful and real tournesol. Did you know the picture comes from Anthere ? :b
Maybe a SVG work that looks like a real flower would be better. It is a bit more work though.
On 11/13/10 12:09 AM, Ashar Voultoiz wrote:
On 11/11/10 20:32, Leo Koppelkamm wrote:
after seeing the new "powered by MediaWiki" button, I got motivated to rework the existing tournesol logo a bit. Mainly because the use of photos in logos is often discouraged and the path version looks a bit "friendlier" as well.
I like your work but I tend to the colourful and real tournesol. Did you know the picture comes from Anthere ? :b
So much better to stick with real life rather than choose plastic (pouah)
Florence
Maybe a SVG work that looks like a real flower would be better. It is a bit more work though.
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