Logo V1

0 views
Skip to first unread message

Khaled Abou Alfa

unread,
Dec 24, 2006, 5:29:10 AM12/24/06
to habari-dev
Well I had a little bit of time and I'm playing with the logo idea that
I had. If you're wondering what the significance is, it's a treble clef
that's been stylised to look like an H.

Still early days on this as it was the first idea I got after I saw the
logo you guys had originally, the treble clef made sense to me.


logo_v1.png

Scott Merrill

unread,
Dec 24, 2006, 9:18:40 AM12/24/06
to habar...@googlegroups.com

It's a clever adaptation of the "h" logo that Owen created; but I'm not
really thrilled about it. It's clearly musical, and I don't want people
to mistakenly shrug off Habari because they get the wrong impression of it.

A quick, non-scientific review of some current blog logos shows that
many of them use circles or circular logos. WordPress's "W" inside a
circle; Serendipity's circles; Drupal's water droplet. TextPattern's
logo is blocktext.

I'd love for Habari to have a visually unique logo that one can only
associate with Habari. Creating such a thing is obviously difficult.

--
ski...@skippy.net | http://skippy.net/

gpg --keyserver pgp.mit.edu --recv-keys 9CFA4B35
506C F8BB 17AE 8A05 0B49 3544 476A 7DEC 9CFA 4B35

Owen Winkler

unread,
Dec 24, 2006, 2:31:01 PM12/24/06
to habar...@googlegroups.com

Cool, Khaled. Certainly an A for effort. Still though, I'm with
skippy regarding the musical impression that this gives.

I don't know if the original inspriation for the logo idea I presented
was ever relayed, or if maybe you didn't want to be tainted by knowing
it during your creative process, but here it is...

Basically, we were brainstorming about what the logo should look like
one day. Someone said that maybe it should just be a stylized "H".
And someone else said that when they think of the word "habari" (which
must have been Rich, since the rest of us would likely consider this
our first impression of the word) they think of news ala a town crier.
And in thinking about a town crier, "hear-ye hear-ye" and all, there
was the idea of a bell.

I attempted to smash together a lower case "H" with the idea of a
bell, which might not have come out very clearly from my poor artisitc
skills, but that was the intent. It's supposed to look like a bell
and also be an "h". I hope that you can see what I was attempting now
that I've explained it. Like a joke that needs to be explained, it's
not quite as good as when the punchline is obvious. ;)

So it's not a bell from the perspective of making music (although one
could argue that the project has some musical qualities), but the
perspective of being a tool for someone announcing news, which is what
"habari" is all about.

I'm sure that if you were to ply your considerable design skills to
this sentiment, you'd come up with something much better than my
meager effort. I just wish I had written some music software that
started with "h". :)

Owen

Rich Bowen

unread,
Dec 25, 2006, 1:37:58 PM12/25/06
to habar...@googlegroups.com

On Dec 24, 2006, at 09:18, Scott Merrill wrote:

>
> Khaled Abou Alfa wrote:
>> Well I had a little bit of time and I'm playing with the logo idea
>> that
>> I had. If you're wondering what the significance is, it's a treble
>> clef
>> that's been stylised to look like an H.
>> Still early days on this as it was the first idea I got after I
>> saw the
>> logo you guys had originally, the treble clef made sense to me.
>
> It's a clever adaptation of the "h" logo that Owen created; but I'm
> not
> really thrilled about it. It's clearly musical, and I don't want
> people
> to mistakenly shrug off Habari because they get the wrong
> impression of it.
>
> A quick, non-scientific review of some current blog logos shows that
> many of them use circles or circular logos. WordPress's "W" inside a
> circle; Serendipity's circles; Drupal's water droplet. TextPattern's
> logo is blocktext.
>
> I'd love for Habari to have a visually unique logo that one can only
> associate with Habari. Creating such a thing is obviously difficult.

I thought Owen did a great job of creating just such a thing. The h
looks like a bell, which is the handbell of the town crier. Viz, NEWS.

I'm unclear what the treble clef signifies. Can you elaborate on what
this has to do with Habari?

--
Rich Bowen
rbo...@rcbowen.com

Broken Kode

unread,
Dec 27, 2006, 9:12:03 PM12/27/06
to habar...@googlegroups.com
To address a couple of things, Owen thanks for the explanation regarding
the thought process about what the original logo was, I've got to admit
I completely missed that. My first thought about the logo however was
that it didn't work for the medium that we're using. It's a blog CMS,
therefore the logo is going to be displaced in the majority on the web,
not on bags, tshirts etc, and so it's got to play well within some
specific constraints.

At the same time I definitely didn't think that the stylised h that I
came up with was the answer. My thought process behind the treble clef h
was really that I wanted a stylised H in the first place. I came up with
the treble clef, partly because of the first logo which is what it
reminded me in the first place and what I thought you guys were trying
to achieve in the first place, I understand now that I was clearly
mistaken with my thought track. However I still feel that the stylised h
can be used in a way. I've attached my second attempt. I fully
understand that the colour and logo will effectively define how we go
about things and how we portray ourselves to the outside world and I
totally appreciate that we're going to be going through this loop a few
times until we've nailed it, but I also know that there is NO WAY I'll
be able to saticfy every single person on this list, much less every
single person that sees the logo. We've got to decide upon something
that we think portrays the message across and also works within the
constraints of being used on the net predominantly.

The attached cut sheet should get some form of discussion going.

Logo_V2.png

Scott Merrill

unread,
Dec 27, 2006, 10:20:02 PM12/27/06
to habar...@googlegroups.com
Broken Kode wrote:
> The attached cut sheet should get some form of discussion going.

I really like the iconic bell.

One thing Owen has said in IRC on several occasions is that he'd like to
see a "clever" logo. He specifically cites the FedEx logo, with the
hidden arrow. It took me awhile to see the arrow, but now that I see
it, I completely love it. It's subtle, but rewarding to those who see
it. I second this notion, if it's at all feasible.

Could the bell icon be positioned and framed in such a way to produce an
"h" in the negative space around it? I've attached a PNG that (lamely)
illustrates what I'm trying to suggest. If this is what you had in
mind, Khaled, I say go for it, but make the "h" a little less abstract
and more visible.

habari_h.png
Reply all
Reply to author
Forward
0 new messages