Debian Logo *Idea* Contest! (Delay for painting contest required)
Laurent PICOULEAU
On Thu, 18 Feb, 1999 à 12:23:43PM +0100, Andreas Tille wrote:
> Hello Debian deveolopers and friends,
>
> this day is the first I started thinking about the importance of
> a Debian logo. Someone will say it is to late for a maintainer who
[...]
> Debian Logo Idea Contest
>
> Wy do we need such a contest. The mails of Joey have shown, that
> there is the problem of "no-unique-concept" for the logo. Friends
[...]
> So let us define first, *what* we want to show on our logo.
> This is always the first step in software related things. Wy did
> we step over it??
>
Well, that a difficult task for these reasons :
- We probably have different ideas of what symbolize debian
- Most of these ideas are abstract concept
- As far as I'm concerned I do not make a neat distinction amongst
linux and debian, so what I could suggest pertains as much to
linux than to debian.
Here are two suggestions addressing the first points.
My ideas of debian/linux (without any significance in the order) are :
freedom, power, cooperation.
What animals symbolize these ? (and don't forget it's a cultural issue,
dragons are considered as dreadfull in occident and benevolent in asia)
freedom : flying birds (Johnatan Livingston the seagull...)
power : big and strong animals (elephant, bear, buffalo, whales)
cooperation : social insects (ants, bees, termites)
Problems : none of the animals meets two of the ideas, birds are already
used (penguin of linux and the actual debian logo is a stylisized red
bird that I like BTW), all of the powerfull animals are in danger of
extinguishment, I don't think the idea of an insect appealing.
So animals don't appears as a good solution.
What else is possible ?
To illustrate the idea of freedom we could represent an escape : sheets
(bed) hanging from jail window with filed bars.
Strong points : It's easy to draw, easy to resize, easy to identify.
easy to simplify for an icon. I thought of a nice slogan for it :
"Debian: free your computer and your mind". It's important to fit the
logo and the slogan as the name (debian) is already choosen. Red hat fit
well with RedHat, gnu fit well with GNU, pyramid fit well Kheops (a
french society localizing Slackware and RedHat) but the names and the
logo where chosen at the same time (perhaps not for GNU ?).
Drawbacks : Jail is not a positive concept, it could enforce the
confusion of hackers with pirates, it doesn't illustrate cooperation
easily (perhaps knotted sheets allowing escape from two cells), I don't
see how it could evocates power. Nevertheless, I do like this idea, so if
a painter wish to give it a try, i'll will be glad to have collaborated
in this way to debian.
>
> Idea no. 1: Orca for Debian
My first impression about orca is that it's a terrible predator.
>
> Why do I think that an orca whale is exactly what we need for our logo:
> - often logos are animals
Not so often, stylized letters or words came first then stars and
circles/spheres are quite numerous.
> - let us choose an animal which stands for freedom
> - there are many animals which fit this fact, but many of them
Not so much I think, unless that you consider that any wild animal is
free in such a way none is the symbol of freedom.
> are occupied by governments of countries
> - we shouldn't stik on any sign of a certain country
> - lets take an orca whale
> - everybody knows the "Free Willy" story ... I don't want to say
^^^^^^^^^
No ! I'm definetly convinced that less than 10% of the world population
has seen the movie.
> anything about the quality of this film, but the general idea is good
> - it has something in common with our ideas:
> * we want to bring software to freedom --> its a *process to get free*
> * Debian is big, as well as an orca whale
> * it has big tooth to fight against commercial software developers
I agree with your two first points but the third one is a drawback in my
opinion.
> - it could be a strong logo (may be it could have something in
> common with the "world-idea" of Joey, because orcas live in all
> oceans of our world which may or may not be expressed in the futur logo,
> thats a design question which I don't want to deal with
true
> - we can brofit very much from the popularity of the whales in our
> day! ... we want to have popularity and we need to have popularity
Probably not. What let us recognise gnu as GNU and cameleon as S.u.S.E.
is that they're not overseen. I fear that a whale would be just an other
whale amongs a lot.
> - a good designer cold paint a *funny* orca -- as funny as the penguin
> and other ones
It's a strong point for animals : they are easy to make funny and
sympathetic. I think of linux logo, particulary of extrem linux or
drawings of Bruno Bellamy.
[technical good points for orca]
>
> OK, lets assume these ideas are good or someone has a better, its
> just a suggestion.
Same remark applies to my ideas.
Last point, opposing to Joey, I do think that the word Debian should be
integrated in the logo, for example if the idea of the escape is taken,
the bottom of the sheet could be merged in the "i" of Debian.
Andreas, I hope that my mail won't appear to you as too critical, my aim
was to signal some weakness of some of your points and to try to give an
example of a non animal possibility.
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Martin Schulze
> Well, that a difficult task for these reasons :
> - We probably have different ideas of what symbolize debian
Which is good. If people would draw what they think Debian is
and it fits the logo rules we would be able to choose from a large
set of possible logos. Wonderful idea.
> - As far as I'm concerned I do not make a neat distinction amongst
> linux and debian, so what I could suggest pertains as much to
> linux than to debian.
Which is fine as long as it doesn't result in a penguin or a gnu. :-)
> My ideas of debian/linux (without any significance in the order) are :
> freedom, power, cooperation.
Sounds like elephants to me.
> What animals symbolize these ? (and don't forget it's a cultural issue,
> dragons are considered as dreadfull in occident and benevolent in asia)
> freedom : flying birds (Johnatan Livingston the seagull...)
> power : big and strong animals (elephant, bear, buffalo, whales)
> cooperation : social insects (ants, bees, termites)
If you - or others - could turn this into draft logos we would have
another set to choose from.
> So animals don't appears as a good solution.
No problem of using something else. Please let your mind fly and
come back with some drafts.
> Last point, opposing to Joey, I do think that the word Debian should be
> integrated in the logo, for example if the idea of the escape is taken,
> the bottom of the sheet could be merged in the "i" of Debian.
Well, you're allowed to have a different oppinion than me, however
this wouldn't fit logo rules.
Think of
0-------0
0 0
0 logo 0 Debian GNU/Linux - the universal operating system
0 0
0-------0
0-------0
0 0
0 logo 0
0 0
0-------0
Debian GNU
Hurd
Such positions of letters won't be possible. As top of a web page
you'll probably want to use the first one, but for logos on t-shirts
letterheads and stuff you'd like to use the second one.
Regards,
Joey
--
GNU does not eliminate all the world's problems, only some of them.
-- The GNU Manifesto
Please always Cc to me when replying to me on the lists.
Marcus Brinkmann
> Marcus Brinkmann wrote:
> > This is silly. You are ruling out a hell lot of possibilities without
> > technical reasons. I think both is possible, a logo without "Debian" and a
> > logo that plays with the letters "Debian".
>
> My examples may be bad but one of the requirements (not made by me)
> was that the logo needs to look good with and without the Debian
> words. I fully agree to this that the logo is something different
> than a letterset. The letters may be added afterwards but the logo
> shouldn't contain them (except it is some abstraction like Ean's
> DG).
You are wrong. The original rules were written by Wichert Ackermann, and did
not contain this inappropriate limitation. The text was actually crippled by
the person who put the rules on the gimp page, probably because he though
that this would be obvious. (unfortunately, this is not the only thing that
happened along the way. The person who put the text on the web page did drop
some other important information, too, originally).
Here is Wichert's original wording:
* works both with and without text at the bottom (can be ignored if the text
`Debian' is part of the logo)
You can read the full text in
Message-ID: <199902011...@cs.leidenuniv.nl>
Please stop making the claim that the logo must not contain the word Debian
at all.
Thank you,
Marcus
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E.L. Meijer (Eric)
> No problem as far as you don't expect me to draw these drafts ;-)
> BTW does anybody understand what made the success of the gnu or the
> penguin as logo ? They're not associated with some nice quality. The
> penguin drawn by Larry Ewing is nice and fun but the gnu ???
The gnu really isn't such a big success as a logo as the penguin is. It
is nice because it is both an animal and a recursive acronym. There is
something to tell about this logo. I'd prefer that to a high level of
cuteness, which is what the penguin relies on.
Eric
--
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Eindhoven Univ. of Technology | tel. lab. +31 40 2475032
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