Logo LISP
Xah Lee, 2006-12
Ken Tilton wrote:
«Small problem. You forget that Ron Garret wants us to change the
name of Common Lisp as the sure-fire way to make it more popular (well,
hang on, he says it is necessary, not sufficient. Anyway...) I do not
think we can safely pick a new logo until we have our new name.»
Changing a language's name is not something that can be easily done,
and is unnatural and takes concerted effort, and is very difficult for
it to be successful.
However, creating a (universally recognized) logo for the language, is
easily done, and in fact the use of a logo or some representative image
is inevitable and wide-spread, willy-nilly.
For example, although there are no official logos for lisp, but as you
know, there are several logos or images of various forms that are
already used widely, either to represent lisp the language family, or
to represent the Common Lisp language. And, for various Scheme
implementation, they almost all had a logo of their own. Example:
above: The “twisty AI font” LISP logo. Used by http://lisp.org/ as
early is 2001.
above: The “earth in parenthesis” logo, used by http://lisp.org/ as
of 2006-12.
above: Conrad Barski's “alien technology” lisp web-badges (source
↗), which appeared in 2005.
above: Manfred Spiller's “lizard” lisp web-badge (source ↗),
which appeared in 2005.
As these examples shows, that the use of a logo is needed in practice.
However, it wouldn't help if there are one hundred different logos to
represent the same thing. The point of logos, is to have a memorable,
graphical representation. In modern, capitalistic, societies filled
with information, the use of logos is inevitable. Just look around you
at this very moment, you probably can identify tens of logos, and for
each logo, you probably recognize what they represent. Logos, is merely
a graphical representation of a entity, whose textual analogous
counterpart are names.
Since there is a need for logos, we might as well get together and
agree to have one official logo for lisp the language. That way, it
solidifies the purpose of the logos in use.
Note that, although we have the beautiful “lisp lizard” and
“alien technology” graphics, but because of their graphic content
and in particular the embedded slogan, they do not fit as a logo, but
more as web-badges.
Web-badges serve slightly different purpose than logos. It is more for
the purpose of promotion, than representation. For the same reason,
there are mascots. For example, Java the language, has a official logo
of a smoking coffee cup, but also has a mascot of a penguin named
“Duke”.
above: The official Java logo, and its mascot.
The World Wide Consortium organization (http://www.w3.org/) also has a
logo, and it has various web-badges for its various web technology
validation services.
above: The official logo of the The World Wide Consortium organization,
and the web-badge of its XHTML validation.
The history of Python community's logo is a good example of the
eventual recognition of a need for a unified, official logo.
above: Old, widely used but not officially blessed logo for Python,
used up to 2005.
above: Various logos, application icon, and badges that has been used
for Python.
above: Official Python logo of “double snakes”, inaugurated in
2005.
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Xah
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