Last step: help us pick a color for the F# logo!

[Mathias Brandewinder]

F# Nation!

Our effort towards designing a nicer logo for F#, the language we all love, has been long and epic, but we are happy to say that we are now extremely close!

Thanks to all of you in the community who have voted and shared your feedback. After the last round of voting, we have a very clear winner. Concept 3 won, by a large margin. So... we have a logo!

We have one last decision to make, though. We need you, the Community, to help us decide the right color for our logo.

After working with the designer and the board, we narrowed it down to two options. We took great care in considering multiple aspects, such as how it looks on dark or light background, how it compares to existing logos, whether it works in print in black and white or grayscale, or what meanings the color have, especially in an international context, and ended up with the two following possibilities, which we feel are the strongest:

- a blue-and-orange combination, 

- a combination of two shades of blue.

Blue was chosen as the primary color because it suggests "professionalism", "integrety", "authority", and "success". This is partly why it's one of the most common colors for logos of large international corporations, banks, and governments.

Orange was chosen as the second option, partially because it also suggests "innovation", "modern thinking", "fun", and "approachability".

So... now we need to hear what you prefer! We opened a survey on SurveyMonkey here:

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/fsharp_logo_color

Votes will be open for a very brief period, so that we can move quickly and finally release our logo. So please go vote now, and spread the word!

Also, while you might be tempted to use the current images already, pretty please hold off for a couple more days. We'll make sure to have the logos available soon to everybody, in high quality versions.

Thanks again for all your support and your help - as always, the F# Community has rocked, and we couldn't have done it without all of you.

Mathias, Reed, Paul and Lincoln

[Lain-]

Good job everyone! Looking forward to the official release!

Personally, the Orange + blue combination wins it for me. Blue + blue is nice... but over the years used by large corporations, banks and governments it has become too familiar and may even carry some bad stigmas with it. The color Orange provides a nice break from that, as you said it represent "approachablility", "fun", "innovation" which will certainly help for a new language such as F#. Also the warm orange go along with cold blue looks nice and "balanced" - cue to the multi-paradigm nature of F#.

If I can have one minor nitpick, that would be I wish the orange would be a little more distict and bright. But all in all I really looking forward to it. Once again great work everyone and thanks for making this happen!. :) 

[Jerold Haas]

Voted, and my opinions were voiced in my vote at SM. When can I make an order for an extra-large sticker to adorn my laptop with this beautiful logo? :)

[Don Syme]

Hi all,

 

After some reflection my preference is for the second option (blue/blue).

 

For me, the blue/brown option has a few problems. First is “brown”. People keep telling me that it’s “orange”, but for me and the others here it’s definitely “brown”. Perhaps with the tiniest bit of orange.  Maybe different people perceive the colour differently though, or perhaps it renders differently on different devices.

 

Second, the use of two highly contrasting colours makes the logo feel “split in two” (at least for me). I’ve tried repeatedly to let that feeling go away, but each time I go back to it I just think “that’s two halves stuck together awkwardly”. It’s as if the two sides are pulling apart from each other. I end up thinking “what are the two halves for?” and “why are they pulling in different directions?”.  This feeling is surprisingly strong and distracts me from the content.

 

In contrast, the blue/blue gives me a sense of unity and integration.  I know some people find it a bit “corporate” but I think a sense of unity is better than a sense of dissonance.

 

In any case, that’s my feeling after thinking about it for a few days, I’ll add that as feedback to my vote J

 

Cheers!

Don

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[Niels Berglund]

+1

<Sigh>, how I wish I could have expressed it as eloquently!!!

Niels

[Lincoln Atkinson]

Personally, I don't see a problem with there being multiple color schemes. Perhaps there is a canonical/official color pair that gets used by fsharp.org, and on most of the stickers, mugs, etc.  But people can customize the logo for their own sites or projects with whatever colors they like, and that can be part of the identity of those projects. (e.g. "deedle is the one with black and red")  There's no way to stop folks from doing this, anyways.

A quick image search for "Haskell logo" shows a variety of color schemes, ranging form black & white to shades of grey to a rainbow of color combinations.  Maybe others think this is a negative, that it diminishes the identity of the logo, but I think it's kind of cool.

[Reed Copsey, Jr.]

I'm very happy to see people discuss the color options openly.  Please keep the comments coming!

Also, in case you are not aware, note that until the survey is closed, you can come back and change your vote. If something in the discussion changes your opinion, feel free to do so!  (Please let us know in the comments why you've changed your vote, though, if you don't mind - it'll help all of us in the future if other similar issues arise.)

That being said, I personally really like the orange.  It adds some warmth and excitement, and makes the logo more recognizable at a glance.  I feel that it highlights the "F" and interest of the internals of the logo itself, while preserving the overall character.  However, I am very excited and really like both versions, and will be extremely happy to get this finished and have our final logo decided!

-Reed

[Lincoln Atkinson]

I do happen to like having a brighter, contrasting color.  Agree that current orange is maybe too dark, but I would not have called it "brown."

In my mind, all-blue just makes the logo blend in with so many other heavily-blue icons and logos.  My taskbar right now has mostly-blue icons for Outlook, Powershell, Remote Desktop, Lync, Word, and mspaint, and it's common that it takes that extra second for my eyes to differentiate the program I need when its icon blends in with others.  On the contrary, icons like Bing (bright orange), Chrome (bright red/yellow/green), VS (purple), and OneNote (purple) stand out easily.  The small-size renderings in the survey demonstrate this for me -- the blue/blue ones are hard to distinguish from so many other small blue icons.  Blue/orange looks unique and easily identifiable.

I guess I just worry that an all-blue F# logo will never catch the eye.  When you see the Python logo out of the corner of your eye, that distinctive blue/yellow combo registers right away.

That said, let's not make it electric blue and neon orange or anything :-)

[Ryan Riley]

I really like the complementary scheme. To my mind, it reflects the idea that F# may complement other parts of your code base. Most companies are not building all their software in F#, but F# can easily be introduced to any program or system and work nicely alongside existing components. (This came to me after reflecting how I might introduce the logo when I present.)

I also have fond memories of using complementary colors in my high school art class. :)

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From: Lincoln Atkinson
Sent: ‎9/‎27/‎2014 3:35 PM

To: fsharp-o...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: Last step: help us pick a color for the F# logo!

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[wez...@gmail.com]

Somehow, I find the colour schemes slightly familiar...

(I hope my attempts at adding pictures to this post where successful, otherwise it won't make any sense.)

[Isaac Abraham]

I actually voted for the all-blue one – guess I’m in the minority here but the multi-coloured one just didn’t do it for me!

 

From: fsharp-o...@googlegroups.com [mailto:fsharp-o...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of wez...@gmail.com
Sent: 28 September 2014 20:23
To: fsharp-o...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: Last step: help us pick a color for the F# logo!

 

Somehow, I find the colour schemes slightly familiar...

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[Art]

I only have one criteria --- its got POP ... I can "see" it. blue/blue

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[Reed Copsey, Jr.]

Greetings F# Nation!

We have a new logo!  After tallying the votes and weighting for contributions, the color combination with two shades of blue won!

A pull request for fsharp.org has been submitted. It includes detailed usage guidelines, high resolution versions of the logo, as well as variations of the logo intended for composing into other project logos and imagery.

Work is being done to update the twitter and other social media images ASAP.

We are also planning, and will announce here, options for purchasing T-Shirts and other related merchandise, with proceeds to benefit the F# Software Foundation.  We'll post back here as soon as that is ready, which will hopefully happen shortly.

Thank you, everybody!  All of us really appreciate all of the hard work that's gone into this, and are very grateful to you all for participating, providing feedback and suggestions, and, in general, being an amazing community!

Reed, Mathias, Paulmichael, and Lincoln

[Rodrigo Vidal]

\o/

  Rodrigo Vidal

  www.rodrigovidal.net

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[James D'Angelo]

Awesome! Glad to see it come to a close with something iconic. Thanks to everybody who put this together and supported it!