On 13/11/2010 00:36, Happy-melon wrote: > > "Max Semenik"<[email protected]> wrote in message > news:[email protected]... > >> 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 _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
