Hello, seeing the logo, this network forming the silouette of a gnu, sparked excitement in me. This is an improvement to the current logo. And it motivated me to play a little bit around with its relationship to added writing. Here's the result: https://abload.de/img/gnunetlogo-sketchesk5u5g.png
My initial impulse to start this was, that I didn't like how the writing was designed in relationship to the logo: The serifs made the writing appear so antiquated. And that's exactly not what the project needs. The project needs refreshment. A timeless, modern, slick look, a look mirroring what the GNUnet is: Hot shit. Additionally it was inappropriate: Serifs have a function. They make it easier to read huge masses of text. That's why books, especially romans, are using typos with serifs. But what we have here is not a book. It's an image with maybe 1 word under it. So, no need for applying this function. Additionally, when the logo is very small, the serifs of the writing below the logo are just unnecessary shape vanishing or blurring in the eye of the beholder. Second point: A big competition for attention arises between the logo and the writing. The gnu silouette form of the logo and the horizontal form of the writing are next to each other like 2 foreign objects. They have nothing to do with each other. They do nothing with each other. They are ignoring each other. Additionally, the difference between the white and the colors of the logo including the black background made the writing so loud. Well, and with this starting point, I've made a 1st variation: Simply changing typo: Switching over to using typo's variation without serifs - GNU FreeFont, which is licensed with GPLv3orlater by itself - https://www.gnu.org/software/freefont/index.html . This aspect has it's charme, it additionally mirrors the spirit of the GNUnet. And I kind of liked the outcome. It improved some of the mentioned aspects. But not all. It was still loud. So I've made variations 2 and 3, both aiming at dimming the writing down, harmonizing image and writing more. It was kind of nice. Both prefereable to variation 1, if you ask me, but I quickly went over to something I was more excited about: Doing a variation 4, a variation based on 2 intuitive sketches I've made right away after reading this thread: Transforming the horizontal form of the writing into a T-form, which is like the space form of the gnu silouette form of the logo, and putting the writing into the logo. The charme of it was that it mirrors the image in its double meaning and additionally is efficient by saving a letter without losing completeness. It was surprising to me, that the outcome was a typical example of 'nice in the head, but not so nice in real life'. The T-space in the logo is relatively small, so you have to scale down the size of the writing. And that to a degree making the outcome too small and puzzle like for practice. This complete outcome up to this point lead me to variation 5, which is my final logo recommendation: Just use the image, and that's it. Let it speak for itself, because it can. Leave the writing under it away. Not only is that the best solution to the mentioned points, it's also something which can be pulled thanks to 2 things: Firstly, how self-explanatory the logo as such is, and secondly, the environment in which the logo is faced in general. The name of the GNUnet project consists of 2 parts: GNU and net. Both motives are perfectly blended in the logo. You have a network, and this forms the silouette of a gnu. You don't need prior knowledge to understand it. You don't need to speak a certain language to understand it. It's acultural, it's self-explanatory. And it shows what the project does: Networking. But you do need prior knowledge to get what that gnu is all about. But the same applies to the writing 'GNUnet': You can have it written down letter by letter, but if people don't know that GNU stands for the free software movement and what's that all about, then they don't understand the writing, either. So, no point of difference regarding this aspect between image and writing. In addition to that, in what context, in what environment, the logo appears most of the time? We look at a screen, seeing it in logical connection and close to something, which contains the writing 'GNU'. Maybe it's the URL in the address bar, or the hashtag of a social media message, or a keyword within a text the GNUnet website or gnu.org. Feedback regarding the website: The website has to get more to the point, and the design has to support that by how it divides spaces and shapes them with colors, images, and writings. If you want to place 5 bullet points, you better take the whole white space, and devide it into 5 parts, each designed differently custom made, individual and tasty just for that one bullet point they are supposed to introduce. Additionally, you want to keep up interest of the audience through the whole site, instead of welcoming them with a structure, saying that 67% of the website is not of interest for them and that they're better off with focusing their attention to this one third, which is targeted specifically to them. The content, the bullet points, have to be in the center of attention, not a meta structure sorting the audience into 3 different groups. Of course, certain aspects of the GNUnet are more attractive to a certain group than others, but there are ways to generalize those points to such a degree, that they're also better accessible to other groups. At least to such a degree that they understand the value of those points. A very good reference for all of this is this website: https://www.zeronet.io/en The only problem with that is that it's kind of like a visiting card. Another reference, which is good, is this website: https://freifunk.net/en/ Additionally, what the second website makes better than the first reference, is that it's not just a visiting card. It strongly interacts with the audience. It gives impulse to click on videos, zoom into maps dynamically displaying what's going on in the free wireless network that this project Freifunk is all about. One last word to the topic 'website text': 'ethical internet' ? Good intentions, but too vague. At the bottom GNUnet has 2 values: empathy and emancipation - it embodies empathy to help other people, and it embodies emancipation by facilitating freedom/liberty, it embodies emancipation to help other people living their lives in freedom. If values are put into the center of attention, the best thing one can do to be understood and help the values as such is naming them explicitely and concretely. I think it's a very good idea to mention the values of the GNUnet, because it helps people without technical understanding to understand what drives the GNUnet. But then at least additionally some technical key features, bullet points, should be dropped: Things like 'distributed', 'anonymous P2P', 'Filesharing', 'creating a anonymous and distributed replacement for the old insecure Internet' - it's just something early adopters expect to be faced with, are looking for, and get very attentive and attracted to. It's okay, if these drops are pretty bold and ambitious, because they make clear what the project strives for to be or become, and that attracts people who want the same, building up momentum into the desired direction of the project. Greetings, Bastian Schmidt Le ven. 26 janv. 2018 à 1:07, amirouche <address@hidden> a écrit : Héllo, I got into creating a new logo for gnunet and work on the new gnunet website. I did not study a lot the current website and based the mockup on what is in the www.git repository @ https://gnunet.org/git/www.git/ My first impression is that the learning curve is rather steep, because it's start in the first paragraph with various acronyms that I don't know myself. The introduction goes into deteails of what and how Internet is broken. Starting up with the Internet is broken is not very positive and most likely people coming to the website already know that. We should first deliver a short explanation of the guiding principles of the gnunet stack (or framework?). I think about: ethical, energy efficient, secure and anonymous. Maybe that must be the headline. Maybe: ethical Internet is enough. Let's be creative, the current headline seems like a buzz word bingo parade: Decentralized, Secure, Privacy-preserving, Distributed Application Framework ipfs use the following: IPFS is the distributed web. That is a bit strong and surf on the _web_ frenzy. A misleading statement. Serving static files over the network is an old trick. I think we should focus on delivring a short explanation for three kinds of potentially interested users. - end users: What are gnunet-based applications? What are the advantages of using gnunet compared to other approaches in particular the blockchain, ipfs and bittorrent (e.g. gnunet offers the possibility to stay anonymous which avoids the need to use vpn (which is not really anonymous) and that gnunet offers better performance than tor (which has known issues)). AFAIK this section will be empty without gnunet-gtk and gnu taler. - developpers: What are the advantages of using gnunet? What are the distinctive features of gnunet? What are the available bindings? What is their status? Explain in layman terms that most the regular network stack is replaced by a secure version. Explai from top to bottom (I think it's easier to understand but I am just a webdev) what are the different services. - researcher: explain that gnunet is based on several research papers and that it was published in various places, link to the bibliography. How someone should cite gnunet if they use it in their work? bibtex? I replaced the term 'stack' with 'framework' in the headline, is it ok? logos and mockup at https://imgur.com/a/ZOjNU I attached the svg source. WDYT? _______________________________________________ GNUnet-developers mailing list [email protected] https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnunet-developers
