[Foundation-l] Along with Vector, a new look for changes to the Wikipedia identity

[Gregory Maxwell]

On Thu, May 13, 2010 at 12:43 PM, Austin Hair <adhair at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, May 13, 2010 at 6:32 PM, phoebe ayers <phoebe.wiki at gmail.com> wrote:
>> I think you missed it because it wasn't really discussed before as
>> part of the vector update... right? I admit I didn't read all the
>> announcements, but was this discussed/announced earlier?
>
> That's the point I was trying not to be a jerk about—I'd like to think
> that I'm fairly attentive to this, particularly since the logos are a
> special concern of mine, but I don't remember any kind of public
> discussion or request for comments beforehand.  Now that I look at the
> relevant wiki pages, it clearly wasn't any kind of secret, but I can't
> help but wonder if it was deliberately not made widely known.

My response to Jay's message was to post links to the two image files
in the hope that someone else would complain, I'm really honestly
tired of being so negative.

I like every concept in the discussion of the new logo. I think the
font change looks fine.  But the loss of contrast and definition is
unfortunate— at least on my eyes and system the new image looks
somewhat blurry and indistinct.

But before expressing this view I went and conducted an informal taste
test on my system at my office:  Four our of four people prefer the
old image, and while they had certainly seen the old logo before none
of them are Wikipedia regulars.

I am less confident about unbalanced.  The old logo could also be said
to be visually unbalanced and perhaps we're just used to it?   None of
my test subjects raised imbalance as an issue, they all commented that
it was "less clear". One comment was "forgettable".

Oh well— at least we've got something to complain about and improve.