activity stream logo favicon

[Peter Reiser]

Hi - Is there an official (or unofficial) logo/favicon for activity
streams ?

Regards
Peter

[Chris Messina]

Not yet! I've attempted a few, and asked some friends, but if you have a proposal, I'm open to it!

Chris

--
Chris Messina
Open Web Advocate

Personal: http://factoryjoe.com
Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/chrismessina

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[Peter H. Reiser]

ok - lets see if I can motivate on of my designer friends :-)

Peter

[Peter Reiser]

HI - Here are some activtiystrea.ms logo/fav icon proposals
http://www.mprove.de/script/09/activitystreams/index.html
Thanks a lot to Matthias Mueller-Prove for the design work.

I have created a wiki page to discuss the logo http://activitystreams.pbworks.com/logo

Feedback welcome

Regards

Peter

[mprove]

Dear Activity Streams Community,
Hi Chris,
Hello Peter,

Peter has asked me to come up with an icon proposal for Activity
Streams. Tough job, because I think we have to offer something that
lives up to the widely adopted RSS icon. Here we go, have a look at my
first draft sheet at

http://www.mprove.de/script/09/activitystreams/index.html

cheers,
Matthias

On Sep 22, 6:00 pm, "Peter H. Reiser" <peter.rei...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Chris Messina]

Hi Matthias,

I actually quite like this initial approach! Using the "stream" metaphor is clever, and the three bands relate to the RSS chicklet as well.

This is certainly a good start, and in light of something better, would probably be good to use for now. I think the green needs some tweaking — it's a bit bright and perhaps not consistent enough with the RSS icon — that is, it might be worth considering how the orange looks next to an activity streams green (or perhaps blue?)... but again, thanks for taking a stab at this...! Something that is certainly needed sooner than later!

Chris

[Steve Ivy]

I'll just ditto Chris here - I love the streams idea!! It does need a
little tweaking color-wise and a few pixels here and there, but it's
the best idea I've seen to date. Good job!

--Steve

--
Steve Ivy
http://redmonk.net // http://diso-project.org
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[Joseph Boyle]

The stream icon is right on target and I hope we adopt it, but three
vertically flowing streams would be better than horizontal.

1. Activity stream items are usually read vertically down a page.

2. Horizontally, the icon looks more like still water. Vertically
looks more like a flowing stream.

3. The Chinese/Japanese characters for stream, river, water are all
three vertical strokes, and this logo vertically would be a close
match to the ancient non-squared versions of these.

[gb]

Thanks for a great start!

+1 for trying a vertial-ish orientation

> >http://redmonk.net//http://diso-project.org

[Matthias Müller-Prove]

Hi Joseph et al.
just some comments inline before I create some more variations.

On Wed, Oct 7, 2009 at 12:43 AM, Joseph Boyle <boyle....@gmail.com> wrote:

The stream icon is right on target and I hope we adopt it, but three
vertically flowing streams would be better than horizontal.

1. Activity stream items are usually read vertically down a page.

Well, I suppose they run line by line from bottom to top. Much like tweets or blogs, the newest item on top. But I am not yet familiar with activity stream clients.
 

2. Horizontally, the icon looks more like still water. Vertically
looks more like a flowing stream.

To me vertically is more like a water fall or rain. But you are right, vertical wave lines are more calm than "falling" lines.  I prefer the calmness to prevent the impression of information over-flooding.
 

3. The Chinese/Japanese characters for stream, river, water are all
three vertical strokes, and this logo vertically would be a close
match to the ancient non-squared versions of these.

Interesting. I did not know that.  However, the lines of Chinese and Japanese run top/down and fill the page from right to left. That means that the river lines have the same orientation as the line of signs itself.  For left-to-right (eg English) and right-to-left languages (eg Hebrew) vertical lines would be 90 degrees stoppers. 
 
I'll give it a try anyway.
Thanks for your kudos and comments.
Matthias

[Matthias Müller-Prove]

Hi,
click  http://www.mprove.de/script/09/activitystreams/index.html#icon

I find the vertical waves (#2) less expressive than the vertical waves (#1). It could also be "steaming water - lunch is ready" -- or "a Jeep was here".  :)

cheers
Matthias

[Jonathan Coffman]

FWIW I do think of "microwave oven" when I see the vertical icon.

[Steve Ivy]

Matthias,

Thanks for trying out the vertical orientation - until I saw it I
thought I would prefer it, but I definitely prefer the horizontal.
Vertical starts to look like "S"s. I also really like the green with
the slight gradient in the background.

My only critique at this point would be that in the small icon, the
ends of the "waves" feel like their crowding the edge of the icon.
Perhaps bringing them in by a pixel (or even a half-pixel via
anti-aliasing) would help?

Thanks again for your work! I've already used the 16x16 icon in a
small project I'm working on, and its looking great!

--Steve

[Steve Ivy]

One more note: on the gradient green, you might try using the darker
green at the top, and a slightly darker green at the bottom - it
might make the streams pop a little more.

On Wed, Oct 7, 2009 at 6:17 AM, Matthias Müller-Prove
<mmp...@googlemail.com> wrote:

[Phil Wolff]

Let me suggest widening the design brief.

While the water imagery refers to the word "stream" it really doesn't connect to the idea of what activity streams are and do. Water is fine, but it's a very broad and overused symbol, semantically abstract. the "activity streams" name may change too (there was at least a year or two when everything was orange RSS and XML protocols and "syndication" until sensible marketers reduced them to "feeds").

imho, the activitystream icon (not to be confused with the project's team logo) should visually suggest...

ASs broadcast lives. "I did this!" "We did this!"
in little moments. (each thing we do)
ASs connect people through those updates, Relationships are a string of various updates over time.
ASs sync systems. So my view of you is accurate, fresh and complete wherever I see you. .  
Immediately/urgently/now. The opposite of the static web page; Now is the new Five Minutes Ago.
AS's tell life stories. Biography: we are what we do.

So that's the stream itself. What about from the view of someone looking at the feed icon? clicking on an AS icon you may...

Peek. See the latest information behind the feed.
Get. Subscribe to the feed.
Ask. Get permission to subscribe.

- Phil

[Peter H. Reiser]

+1 for horizontal version 

[Kevin Marks]

⼮ is the kangxi radical for river - 0x2f2e

[Steve Ivy]

you know, what about three shallow arrows, like Kevin's symbol but
reversed so they point right? It doesn't have the water theme, but
it's got the idea of repeated actions...

[Joseph Boyle]

Kevin - here are screencaps from Wieger's "Chinese Characters", 1915. 

http://books.google.com/books?id=odrkZvbqJQoC

[Joseph Boyle]

It would be nice to communicate all this, but this is a lot to squeeze
into a little favicon.

The ubiquitous RSS logo itself doesn't explain everything that RSS is
and can do - it only directly communicates the idea of broadcasting.

The icon doesn't and can't explain the whole concept - it functions as
a tag and reminder for viewers who have to learn more about the
concept from other sources.

The proposed Activity Streams icon communicates indirectly by its
resemblance to the already widespread RSS chicklet, that this is
something similar to the RSS the viewer already knows about.

[Joseph Boyle]

"What's cooking" or "What's hot" is not an inappropriate association for an activity stream either. :)

I agree the vertical draft looks a bit like S'es - I would suggest having them wave in the other direction (in fact simply rotating the horizontal draft icon gives the other direction) and maybe reducing the curvature slightly.

It is true that Western text reads horizontally, but the progress from item to item is still vertical in most UIs, and it's the stream of items that we're highlighting.

[Phil Wolff]

Dandelions blowing in the wind might be a nice visual metaphor.
http://photos.jibble.org/albums/Dandelions/dandelion_seeds_being_blown.jpg
http://images.google.com/images?q=blow%20dandelion

[Matthias Müller-Prove]

Hi,
to me the three lines do not symbolize three activities that are displayed by a client. In that case I would have proposed a scroll or sheet of paper with lines. From my point of view they stand for three different kinds of activities (read: verbs, read: many). The subscriber is free to read one kind of activities from the stream while letting the others pass by.
I have lots of scribblings with pen on paper. Most of them are too complicated to fit into 16x16 and keep a resemblance to the RSS icon. I am still convinced, that these simple lines have the potential to catch on.
If you prefer dandelions, show me how to fit them into 16x16. No, I start again: If you prefer dandelions, then use them on your slides as a visual eye-catcher in your presentation on Activity Streams. The waves can still be the wind that carry them into the world.

BTW_ I just assigned the CC0 license to my activity stream icons. They are now free to use and modify without attribution. I hope this is the best way that others feel free to create glossy animated 3D versions.

           http://www.mprove.de/script/09/activitystreams/#icon

cheers,
Matthias

--
Matthias Müller-Prove :: http://www.mprove.de

[Steve Ivy]

here's a super-fast variant of the streams icon as a follow-up to
Kevin's comments...

[Phil Wolff]

given i am not an illustrator, here's an RSS interference pattern. With a little tweaking it works at 16x16

[Jonathan Dugan]

One thing to remember is that about 10% of males cannot see pure green
well. When we are looking at colors, we may want a green that is
rather dark or high contrast or has some blue or other hues in it.

/J

[Phil Wolff]

Whoops. here's the link: http://www.flickr.com/photos/philwolff/sets/72157622416293417/ Interference pattern and dandelion. Not proposed art, just sketches to share the idea.

[Monica Keller]

Awesome I have spoken to product to use this one

http://www.mprove.de/script/09/activitystreams/_media/asicon16-blue.png


On Oct 8, 3:22 am, Matthias Müller-Prove <mmpr...@googlemail.com>
wrote:

[Ian Kennedy]

I seems like we're converging on a fixed design but let me just float
this one by y'all.

I have this vision of Activity Streams as data that can be harnessed
to drive further transactions. For example, if I update my avatar
image, that Activity event could kick off a series of events which
cause my social network to retrieve and update your profile with the
new avatar image.

The vision is Activity Stream as a modern cog. My son even chipped in.
It's lready downloadable and ready to go.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/clankennedy/sets/72157622425502231/

Ian

[Chris Messina]

I like the blue one that Monica picked:

http://www.mprove.de/script/09/activitystreams/_media/asicon16-blue.png

I think that we can tweak it a bit and run with it... at least for an icon. I like that it symbolizes a "stream" — and the blue both complements the RSS orange (and reiterates the "stream" idea — of flowing water).

I like Ian's concept, but fear that gears take us back towards the mechanical, whereas the stream is more natural, and conversational.

Jesse Thomas and I actually did a bunch of mockups for Diso and Activity Streams identities awhile back (http://flic.kr/p/764XXi), and I'd be remiss to not mention the work he did on this. I didn't surface it at the time because it wasn't quite ready and we never really finished the concept sketches, but I'd be interested to know what he thinks about this current direction...

[ronin691]

Here's me reporting in from left field, politely stating that activity
is not well represented by water icons ( too literal ) or gears.

"discovery: and "Revealing the hidden" is the value being offered, and
it is my opinion the iconography should reflect that.

Will post some visuals soon.


Todd

[Monica Keller]

Well we already decided on stream as the concept that depicts the flow
of activities so I am hoping we dont have to reinvent everything for
the icon

We have a practical need to have an icon can we just have a deadline
for icon submission and a vote per publishing entity ?

Posted 1 second ago via iPhone

[Marty Alchin]

I don't care much for logo discussions like this, but with regard to
the vertical icon, I'll just provide a link:

http://images.google.com/images?q=push+button+receive+bacon

Vertical squiggles like that have long been used to indicate heat, so
I'm not sure it's a good idea to repurpose it for a stream metaphor.

-Gul

[Hung Tran]

+1 for horizontal and green. Keep it simple for easy adoption/replication across different mediums.

-hung

On Wed, Oct 7, 2009 at 1:44 PM, Peter H. Reiser <peter....@gmail.com> wrote:

[Marty Alchin]

On Thu, Oct 8, 2009 at 11:17 AM, Steve Ivy <stev...@gmail.com> wrote:
> here's a super-fast variant of the streams icon as a follow-up to
> Kevin's comments...

Unfortunately, I think now we're getting into other
already-established territory.

http://images.google.com/images?q=sergeant+stripes

That's certainly the first thing I think of when I see it, anyway.

-Gul

P.S. Yes, I am trying to come up with something myself, rather than
just shooting down other ideas. I just haven't come up with anything
better yet.

[Phil Wolff]

A note about haste: first, learn from the dataportability project's pain about logos and trademarks/symbolmarks. Find something novel and markable lest we get sucked into IP injunction hell.

Also, we could be stuck with this logo for ten years as a consumer brand, not a geek brand. A billion people could see the icon. 1,000,000,000 people. So we need an icon that's iconic, distinctive. A graphic whose meaning aligns closely with what we stand for.  A visual statement that works in many sizes, media, cultures.

We don't have that yet. Soon.

Meanwhile:

[Stephen Garcia]

Hey folks,

At the last meet-up I shared a version (see attached) of the logo that one of our illustration team members created. The general feedback was good and folks liked the blue more than the green. We've created a few different versions to be used in different situations (2 color, gradient, various sizes, pdf, etc).

One of the action items from the meeting was to run the logo through a trademark search. I've kicked off this process at Yahoo! with the attached version. We agreed that the homework should also be done by some folks at Google and Microsoft.

We'll send more info to the list once the trademark search yields some results.

Great discussions at the meet-up. Looking forward to the next one.

ciao,
Stephen Garcia
Yahoo!