Logo / Icon contribution
Tim Cuthbertson
I love vim, but must admit to not being so fond of the fairly old
looking icon. I recently created a new logo for my own use, and would
be more than happy if you'd like to use it for an actual app icon or
logo.
I'm happy to release it under pretty much whatever licence is
required, if people want to modify / improve it.
The icon can be found here:
http://gfxmonk.net/2011/04/25/new-gvim-icon.html
svg: http://gfxmonk.net/images/vim-logo/vim-logo.svg
png: http://gfxmonk.net/images/vim-logo/vim-logo-128.png
Cheers,
- Tim.
tux.
Eustáquio Rangel
Christian J. Robinson
> I love vim, but must admit to not being so fond of the fairly old
> looking icon. I recently created a new logo for my own use, and
> would be more than happy if you'd like to use it for an actual app
> icon or logo.
I like this icon, but my problem is that it looks increasingly poor as
it is scaled down in size. The small size on my taskbar looks
significantly worse than the default icon.
- Christian
--
"When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the
government fears the people, there is liberty." -- Thomas Jefferson
Christian J. Robinson <hep...@gmail.com> http://christianrobinson.name/
Tony Mechelynck
What's wrong with that old icon? Doesn't anyone use low resolutions
and/or 256-colour terminals anymore (even in the deepest of the jungles
where Vim might be in use on 4th-hand computers even if Vista isn't
supported by them)?
I have a 48x48 Vim icon on my desktop and it doesn't look out of place
next to SeaMonkey, Thunderbird, Adobe Reader and YaST.
BTW, the HTML textbooks I have here still mention "safe" GUI colours,
which are colours where the red, green and blue components are each a
multiple of 0x33 (in #rrggbb notation) or of 3 (in "abbreviated"
3-nybble #rgb notation). This means there are 6^3 = 216 "safe" colours.
Best regards,
Tony.
--
HOW YOU CAN TELL THAT IT'S GOING TO BE A ROTTEN DAY:
#15 Your pet rock snaps at you.
Tim Cuthbertson
On May 3, 12:01 pm, Tony Mechelynck <antoine.mechely...@gmail.com>
wrote:
>
> > Hi all,
>
> > I love vim, but must admit to not being so fond of the fairly old
> > looking icon. I recently created a new logo for my own use, and would
> > be more than happy if you'd like to use it for an actual app icon or
> > logo.
>
> > I'm happy to release it under pretty much whatever licence is
> > required, if people want to modify / improve it.
>
> > The icon can be found here:
> >http://gfxmonk.net/2011/04/25/new-gvim-icon.html
>
> > svg:http://gfxmonk.net/images/vim-logo/vim-logo.svg
> > png:http://gfxmonk.net/images/vim-logo/vim-logo-128.png
>
> > Cheers,
> > - Tim.
>
> What's wrong with that old icon?
limited colour use I think are concrete aspects that make the logo
look particularly outdated. And the subjective opinions are at least
shared by most who have participated in this thread (so far).
> Doesn't anyone use low resolutions
> and/or 256-colour terminals anymore (even in the deepest of the jungles
> where Vim might be in use on 4th-hand computers even if Vista isn't
> supported by them)?
minority of users who run their graphical environment in 256-colour,
but I doubt it should be the default.
> I have a 48x48 Vim icon on my desktop and it doesn't look out of place
> next to SeaMonkey, Thunderbird, Adobe Reader and YaST.
icons (~96px, I think). Vim looks extremely out of place. In my
applications list, there is not a single other application that lacks
antialiasing, nor one that sticks to any palette of "safe" colours. So
yes, I'm certainly viewing most of my icons larger than most folk
right now, but the trend is nonetheless for bigger icons.
> BTW, the HTML textbooks I have here still mention "safe" GUI colours,
> which are colours where the red, green and blue components are each a
> multiple of 0x33 (in #rrggbb notation) or of 3 (in "abbreviated"
> 3-nybble #rgb notation). This means there are 6^3 = 216 "safe" colours.
that conservative icons should stick to safe colours only? I haven't
read a HTML book for a long time, but I also don't know any web
developer who still actually sticks to safe colours.
Regards,
- Tim.
Tim Cuthbertson
On May 3, 8:18 am, "Christian J. Robinson" <hept...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, 2 May 2011, Tim Cuthbertson wrote:
> > I love vim, but must admit to not being so fond of the fairly old
> > looking icon. I recently created a new logo for my own use, and
> > would be more than happy if you'd like to use it for an actual app
> > icon or logo.
>
> I like this icon, but my problem is that it looks increasingly poor as
> it is scaled down in size. The small size on my taskbar looks
> significantly worse than the default icon.
>
> - Christian
personal use (I never see it smaller than ~86px), but I expect smaller
variants would need to be created which increased contrast / line
width for better representation at smaller sizes. If required I can
have a go at doing this (or others can, the .svg is the original
inkscape source), but I'd rather not bother if nobody is going to
actually use it.
Regards,
- Tim.
Ben Schmidt
>>> looking icon. I recently created a new logo for my own use, and
>>> would be more than happy if you'd like to use it for an actual app
>>> icon or logo.
I quite like the icon, too. I agree the old one (which in recent times, I've only
seen in Windows), looks a bit dated if nothing else.
Another icon to look at/consider/etc. is the MacVim icon which, likewise, tried to
modernise the old Vim icon somewhat, and I think did quite well. Can't remember
when it was done, who did it, or anything. But it has been rendered at multiple
sizes, and there are scripts that also create document icons with the MacVim badge
and file extension printed on them for different file types. AFAIK, pretty much
everything needed for this is in the MacVim git repository. The icon format is
Mac-specific, I think, but it could probably be converted if other platforms would
like to use it. I'm sure people are free to.
Ben.
Gary Johnson
I do like the looks of your design, but I have no need for large
icons. I cover my desktop with windows. The icons I use are in the
panel/taskbar and measure about 24x24. They need to be uniquely
identifiable and should look nice at that size.
The tiny icon used in the Windows Quick Launch, for example, is
crisp and easy to identify. In contrast, the icon that appears in
the Fedora 11 panel is an unreadable blue-green blob that I've
learned to associate with gvim only through frequent use.
Regards,
Gary
Tony Mechelynck
I suppose it may depend on display resolution. Mine is 1024x768, and all
my desktop icons are 48x48px. My taskbar icons, hm, what size are they?
20x20 maybe? Or 16x16?
>
>> BTW, the HTML textbooks I have here still mention "safe" GUI colours,
>> which are colours where the red, green and blue components are each a
>> multiple of 0x33 (in #rrggbb notation) or of 3 (in "abbreviated"
>> 3-nybble #rgb notation). This means there are 6^3 = 216 "safe" colours.
>
> Is your point that there are plenty of safe colours to use, or simply
> that conservative icons should stick to safe colours only? I haven't
> read a HTML book for a long time, but I also don't know any web
> developer who still actually sticks to safe colours.
>
> Regards,
> - Tim.
>
Well, nowadays I suppose it's no crime to "stray" away from these
so-called "safe" colours, and in fact most of the pictures I see use
colours outside these 216. OTOH, when creating flat-colour designs (or
selecting text background and foreground colours) with only a few
different hues, I try to stick to "safe" colours if I can get a nice
result that way (call me conservative if you wish); of course for
photographs, or even for drawings imitating round volumes with
progressive shading, the question is different.
Best regards,
Tony.
--
There are no games on this system.
Ben Fritz
which looks like a street sign, and possibly the character spacing in
the text. I do like the gradient on the diamond and the font looks
fairly nice. But I'd probably get used to it if it became standard.
Dominique Pellé
I like the color gradient and antialiasing, but I also find that the
diamond is too rounded (matter of taste of course). I would also
prefer a monospace font for a Vim logo (such as Courier).
Regards
-- Dominique
Andy Spencer
> I love vim, but must admit to not being so fond of the fairly old
> looking icon. I recently created a new logo for my own use, and would
> be more than happy if you'd like to use it for an actual app icon or
> logo.
Overall, I like it, the style is good, I like the background especially.
I do have a couple suggestions though.
Mostly, the V just doesn't seem to stand out as well as in the old logo,
there could be a couple reasons for this:
- The overall contrast of your new logo is much less than the original.
This is a bit more noticeable when looking at greyscale versions of
the logos [1]. The outlines and highlights in particular. Likewise the
bright spot on the background seems almost brighter than the V itself.
[1] http://andy753421.ath.cx/linked/vim-new.png
- The dot on the i, and the top of the im in general, are very prominent
features of your logo. I like the im style, but I don't think it
should be more prominent than the V. On lower res images it might be
worth getting rid of the im entirely, like the how the macvim logo has
been done.
Lastly, the shading on the V just seems a little bit off. It's hard for
me to tell what it's trying to do, is it supposed to be a 3D chiseled
effect? It looks like it except some off the relief on the vertical
doesn't look realistic. I think I like the "raised plate" look from the
macvim icon a little better for that.
Well, that's probably more feedback than you wanted, it does look good
though :)
Tony Mechelynck
[...]
> [1] http://andy753421.ath.cx/linked/vim-new.png
[...]
hm, IMHO with icons of that size the new icon looks better than the old
one, because of the pixelization of the "im" in the latter. Maybe we
should be given the opportunity to see the proposed new icon in various
sizes, starting with all existing sizes of the present icon (the runtime
folder in the source tree includes gif, png and xpm icons at sizes
16x16, 32x32 and 48x48 pixels, plus a "Vim the editor" logo sized 60px
high and 125px wide in various formats; then there still is a rather
good "Vim" logo on the wiki even if nowadays not every wiki visitor may
be conscious of its existence [size 135x155px, maybe including some
margin space]: http://images.wikia.com/vim/images/b/bc/Wiki.png -- I've
looked at the latter at different zoom factors, and it looks very good
from 50% to 150% with no noticeable pixelization; at larger sizes [200%,
300%] pixelization starts being visible but IMHO not disturbingly so).
Best regards,
Tony.
--
Conway's Law:
In any organization there will always be one person who knows
what is going on.
This person must be fired.
Vince Negri
The original icon was created years ago by I think Thomas Hopfner, based
on my original "Vim Hot Icon". You can see them here:
http://www.vmunix.com/vim/pics.html
FWIW I like the update, but agree with others who think the diamond
corners ought to be less rounded. It looks like a "freshening" of the
concept rather than a revolution, which is a good thing :)
Vince
Tony Mechelynck
> Hi All,
>
> The original icon was created years ago by I think Thomas Hopfner, based
> on my original "Vim Hot Icon". You can see them here:
>
> http://www.vmunix.com/vim/pics.html
Hm, for some reason my browser displays "broken image" placeholders for
the first six icons after the "Vim - Icons and Logos" title on that
page. Reloading the page (with or without cache) makes no difference.
>
> FWIW I like the update, but agree with others who think the diamond
> corners ought to be less rounded. It looks like a "freshening" of the
> concept rather than a revolution, which is a good thing :)
>
> Vince
Best regards,
Tony.
--
Religion has done love a great service by making it a sin.
-- Anatole France
solsTiCe d'Hiver
There is the conservative camp of course that hold it back.
The logo is almost the only graphical element of vim, so why not give it a freshening ?
I like the logo submitted by Tim Cuthbertson