A new logo?

[Kwankyu Lee]

Hi 

As some of you who tried 

https://github.com/sagemath/sage-binder-env/releases/tag/v10.4

may have noticed, I did a bit creative work on icons. Thus I came up with an idea of a new logo for Sage. Check out the attached png file.

Personally I dislike the current Sage logo, both the icon and the sci-fi font.

As you would notice, the icon, the blue icosahedron, is just the output of a simple plot command of Sage.

What do you think?

[Kwankyu Lee]

The background is actually transparent. 

[Niranjana K M]

Sigmoidal + circles + exponential + Euler spiral

Regards

Niranjana

On Sun, Oct 20, 2024 at 2:55 PM Kwankyu Lee <ekwa...@gmail.com> wrote:

The background is actually transparent. 

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[Niranjana K M]

Reduced height.

Regards

Niranjana

[Niranjana K M]

Increased stroke.

Regards

Niranjana

[Marc Culler]

I think that is an interesting start.  However, I think it would be a good idea (and also very helpful to me)  for you to read this:

https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guidelines/app-icons

(Because I would hope to be able to use the new logo as the Application Icon for the SageMath macOS app.)

- Marc

[Lorenz Panny]

Hi Kwankyu,

nothing wrong with looking at alternatives, of course, but personally
I do like the current logo (both absolutely speaking and in comparison
to the designs suggested here thus far).

Best,
Lorenz

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[seb....@gmail.com]

>  nothing wrong with looking at alternatives, of course, but personally I do like the current logo (both absolutely speaking and in comparison to the designs suggested here thus far).

+1

In addition I think there should be more reasons for changing the logo than just: "I don't like it anymore!". It has been our identification symbol for many years, not only on our website but also in many other places (Wikipedia, Docker Hub, ...) and people are used to it.

[Kwankyu Lee]

On Monday, October 21, 2024 at 2:04:29 AM UTC+9 marc....@gmail.com wrote:

I think that is an interesting start.  However, I think it would be a good idea (and also very helpful to me)  for you to read this:

https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guidelines/app-icons

Thanks. That is a good read. 

The essential part of my logo is the icosahedron (produced by sage itself in 3d), and the "SageMath" in a plain san-serif font.

Of course, other elements (the surrounding cube or colors) may be removed or tweaked.

 

Because I would hope to be able to use the new logo as the Application Icon for the SageMath macOS app.

If the sample would be taken as a real logo, I should convert the png to a vector graphics for scalibility.

[Kwankyu Lee]

On Monday, October 21, 2024 at 5:28:08 AM UTC+9 seb....@gmail.com wrote:

In addition I think there should be more reasons for changing the logo than just: "I don't like it anymore!".

At least I didn't like the sci-fi font from 2009 :-) https://groups.google.com/g/sage-devel/c/yfv23vSAj8E/m/nZn4eKcCxZkJ

 

... and people are used to it.

Note that mathematica constantly changes their logo, keeping the essential element. 

[Michael Orlitzky]

On Sun, 2024-10-20 at 02:21 -0700, Kwankyu Lee wrote:
>
> What do you think?

I somewhat agree on both points,

* The icosahedron strikes me as an instance of "hey give me the name
of a cool math shape" that has nothing to do with sage itself

* The font can be ugly, and if you don't know that it says "sage"
already, it's hard to read

However, we've had the same logo (and font) for a long time, and for
better or worse, they're our identity. There should be a high bar for
throwing them our and starting over from scratch.

A lot of work goes into a professional logo design. Marc already
mentioned the Apple guidelines, which, despite the fact that I'm not
going to read them all right now, look like exactly the sort of thing I
wanted to mention here. You usually need several versions of a logo
that display a low/medium/high resolutions, on light/dark backgrounds,
on screens and in print. These considerations extend to the typography
as well. Some thought should be given to sight-impaired / colorblind
people, etc.

I think a lot of that room for improvement is available with the
current logo. This is one of my favorite takes on it,

https://github.com/sagemath/artwork/blob/master/math.stackexchange/sagemath-stackexchange-ad-2016-nq8.png


although the random math words in the background are chaos, and the
placement of the text makes it impossible to scale down to something
like

https://www.sagemath.org/pix/stickers/sage-sticker-1x1_inch-small.png

which looks much better at 1in x 1in (although the blue is now a
headache-inducing shade).

Anyway, my take is that there's a lot of low-hanging fruit when it
comes to improving these existing marketing materials. I'm not opposed
to a fresh start, it would have to be really well done though.

[Kwankyu Lee]

On Monday, October 21, 2024 at 8:47:02 AM UTC+9 Michael Orlitzky wrote:

* The icosahedron strikes me as an instance of "hey give me the name
of a cool math shape" that has nothing to do with sage itself

The icosahedron in the current logo looks broken to me. I wonder what was the intention. 

* The font can be ugly, and if you don't know that it says "sage"
already, it's hard to read

That is the main reason that I dislike it. 

 

However, we've had the same logo (and font) for a long time, and for
better or worse, they're our identity. 

Depending on how much details of the current logo you think are "our identity", I designed the suggested logo to reflect the identity..

[seb....@gmail.com]

> I designed the suggested logo to reflect the identity.

My interpretation of the existing logo is a visualization of the Euler characteristic formula (pointing out edges and vertices). It therefore represents an example of a connection between Algebra and Geometry, with both representing half of the letters of the name Sage. This seems to be lost in your proposal. It makes sense to improve the quality of the image, but the message should remain.

[kcrisman]

On Monday, October 21, 2024 at 12:08:55 AM UTC-4 Kwankyu Lee wrote:

On Monday, October 21, 2024 at 8:47:02 AM UTC+9 Michael Orlitzky wrote:

* The icosahedron strikes me as an instance of "hey give me the name
of a cool math shape" that has nothing to do with sage itself

The icosahedron in the current logo looks broken to me. I wonder what was the intention. 

Somewhere on this list from years ago there is a description - I can't remember enough search terms to find it now, William may remember.  It is not an icosahedron.  (Plus, the Mathematical Association of America has that as their logo, so probably not get even closer to that.)

 

* The font can be ugly, and if you don't know that it says "sage"
already, it's hard to read

That might be fixable, even within the "old" style font.  A lot of work went into this a while back so maybe some of the people who made it nicer about a decade ago will weigh in.

[Kwankyu Lee]

On Monday, October 21, 2024 at 3:12:50 PM UTC+9 seb....@gmail.com wrote:

> I designed the suggested logo to reflect the identity.

My interpretation of the existing logo is a visualization of the Euler characteristic formula (pointing out edges and vertices). 

So it is a non-planar graph. I didn't know that for so many years! Still don't understand the "visualization"...

[Kwankyu Lee]

On Monday, October 21, 2024 at 8:42:44 PM UTC+9 kcrisman wrote:

On Monday, October 21, 2024 at 12:08:55 AM UTC-4 Kwankyu Lee wrote:

On Monday, October 21, 2024 at 8:47:02 AM UTC+9 Michael Orlitzky wrote:

* The icosahedron strikes me as an instance of "hey give me the name
of a cool math shape" that has nothing to do with sage itself

The icosahedron in the current logo looks broken to me. I wonder what was the intention. 

Somewhere on this list from years ago there is a description - I can't remember enough search terms to find it now, William may remember.  It is not an icosahedron.  (Plus, the Mathematical Association of America has that as their logo, so probably not get even closer to that.)

Sage logo is a recurrent theme :-)

https://groups.google.com/g/sage-devel/c/0Kffxxh8KDo/m/kamr2okAWw4J

https://groups.google.com/g/sage-devel/c/Zw4bUZe3Os4/m/1XLo17sNY1EJ

https://groups.google.com/g/sage-devel/c/3Hl1Hv6Nnpo/m/tC9rst4EDX0J

https://groups.google.com/g/sage-devel/c/yrZyICDCXys/m/RcxqRTvE53EJ

I like the MAA logo by the way.

[Kwankyu Lee]

This seems to contain a definitive answer to the question about the meaning of the logo:

https://ask.sagemath.org/question/7667/geometric-name-of-sage-logo-existence-of-dual/