On Tue, 25 Mar 2008, Joost Verburg wrote:
I'd like to have "the bird" in one way or the other. Smoothing edges,
adding something in the background or similar I can live with...
A good logo should be recognized immediately. The bird is the only one
here that is somewhat unique. I don't know how it represents the "LyX
brand" and it may be more a mascot than a logo, but in my opinion we
should not change the logo unless we get one that is really
professionally designed.
I agree. My girlfriend had a suggestion, could we get some design student
to do a project related to this? According to her, such students might be
looking for projects as part of their studies. Does anyone have
connections to design schools or design students?
About the logo, her reaction to the current logo were along the following
lines (I have to translate):
* toys, playground, childish
* unstructured
* many different elements and colours => unclear
* home made
She suggests we should think about what kind of words the logo should
inspire, and also think about who the "customers" are. I guess this would
be words and concepts such as:
* WYSIWYM
* Strutured/semantic document creation
* Academic/scientific users
She also asked me about what's unique with LyX, and suggests this should
be somehow represented in the logotype.
In the meanwhile it may however be a good idea to stick to a single logo
instead of the current logo and banner. If the bird is combined with the
word LyX I would prefer the typeface to be more simple instead of the
rotated/colorful letters of the banner. Just as an example, I attached a
splash screen design with the logo that I think looks more professional.
I think it's certainly an improvement. According to my gf, it's a drawback
that it's not clear what part is the logotype, and what part isn't. Also
the font appearance of 'The Document Processor' and 'version 1.6' should
either be the same, or clearly not the same. Here they are for instance
almost the same size, but not exactly the same size which is bad. The text
"Copyright ...", placed in the lower left corner, becomes too important in
comparsion to other parts. If placed in e.g. the lower right corner, we'd
not get the same effect. She speculates that you placed the text there
because of the gradient, as a way to "complete the square".
She gives the old splash screen a grade of 1 (out of 5), and yours get a
grade of 3. So it's certainly an improvement!
Anyway, writing down her comments I've certainly learnt a lot. Most
importantly that there can actually be some thinking involved in creating
stuff like this!
/C
--
Christian Ridderström, +46-8-768 39 44 http://www.md.kth.se/~chr
