Thanks for the feedback. It looked a lot better at 5AM in the morning
than it did after I was coherent and bounced it off some friends. ;-)
All of your suggestions are very good. I'll give it another pass
tomorrow or the following night.
Cheers,
--Steve
Ben Bederson wrote:
> Hi Steve, you know, I was just thinking that it was time for a logo -
> so *thanks* for pushing this forward! Over the years, I have found
> that I am definitely *not* an artist - which is why I never create a
> piccolo logo, but I am good at identifying usability issues and
> people's response to design - and thus have a few comments on the
> draft below:
>
> * I like the font and text rendering - but I'd suggest making the
> "2" read also to make "2D" stand out.
> * I think getting the tag line just right is important too, and
> I've iterated on that quite a lot over the user. I'm not too
> fond of "semantic zooming" as it doesn't mean anything to people
> that haven't dug into ZUIs. And not everyone uses piccolo for
> zooming. So I'd go back to what I've been calling it:
> "Structured 2D Graphics Framework" which is pretty descriptive
> to programmers.
> * The actual piccolo is pretty, but to be honest, it is very
> difficult to see behind the text - and when small (as I first
> saw it on my phone), I couldn't tell what it was at all - even
> after I read your message.
>
> One possibility is to move the flute out from under the text. Or, I
> wonder if it isn't better to show a little scenegraph as being more
> descriptive. The thing about logos is that they have to be
> immediately visually apparent when very small. And the should be
> printable, and visible in just a few colors. Thus, images of actual
> things are almost never used in logos. Thus, I think we should go
> with either a hand-drawn abstracted simple picccolo (which is probably
> impossible), or perhaps go for a scenegraph or other iconic
> representation...
>
> Sorry to be a bit harsh. I am thrilled you are working on this, but I
> think it is crucial to get the logo just right...
>
> - Ben
>
>
> On Sun, Jun 22, 2008 at 8:48 AM, Stephen Chin <s...@browsecode.org
> <mailto:s...@browsecode.org>> wrote:
>
> I probably should have spent my time coding, but I had a rare
> streak of artistic inspiration, and spent the night working on a
> logo design instead.
>
> Here is the end result:
>
>
> It is heavily filtered, but the picture in the background is a
> real professional-grade, handcrafted Piccolo (a Yamaha YPC-82 to
> be precise). I am also picky about transparency and resolution,
> so I made sure that the image shows up well on different types of
> backgrounds, and have the data to generate much larger versions
> images as well. The subtext is also easy to change if someone has
> a better idea.
>
> Let me know what you think...
>
> Cheers,
> --Steve
>
>
>
>
> --
> Ben Bederson
> Technology Director
> International Children's Digital Library
> +1 (301) 867-3838
> www.cs.umd.edu/~bederson <http://www.cs.umd.edu/%7Ebederson>
> bede...@childrenslibrary.org <mailto:bede...@childrenslibrary.org>
>
> Please support the ICDL with a donation by clicking on "Make a
> Donation" at www.childrenslibrary.org
> <http://www.childrenslibrary.org>. Every bit of help is greatly
> appreciated.
> >
Plus, it needs to print well in B&W.
- Will
--~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~
Piccolo 2D Developers: http://groups.google.com/group/piccolo2d-dev?hl=en
-~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
Much better. Logo's nice too, but you're right... what does a scene graph look like? That logo's pretty close.
Even incorporating a magnifying element with some rotation would do it. Like spinning and enlarging the red rectangle.
Good work.
I reworked the logo based on everyone's suggestions. The text is simpler with a basic drop shadow to make the 2D word stand out. I also replaced the Piccolo image with a scene graph depiction which can also double as an icon. (What does a scene graph look like anyway?)
Here is version 2:
<Piccolo-v2-merged.gif>
I also reworked a tiny version of this just to see what it would look like. Rather than just shrinking the image, this is completely re-rendered to keep sharp edges and fine detail.
<Piccolo-v2-small-merged.gif>
Tell me what you all think.
Cheers,
--Steve
Ben Bederson wrote:
Hi Steve, you know, I was just thinking that it was time for a logo - so *thanks* for pushing this forward! Over the years, I have found that I am definitely *not* an artist - which is why I never create a piccolo logo, but I am good at identifying usability issues and people's response to design - and thus have a few comments on the draft below:
One possibility is to move the flute out from under the text. Or, I wonder if it isn't better to show a little scenegraph as being more descriptive. The thing about logos is that they have to be immediately visually apparent when very small. And the should be printable, and visible in just a few colors. Thus, images of actual things are almost never used in logos. Thus, I think we should go with either a hand-drawn abstracted simple picccolo (which is probably impossible), or perhaps go for a scenegraph or other iconic representation...
- I like the font and text rendering - but I'd suggest making the "2" read also to make "2D" stand out.
- I think getting the tag line just right is important too, and I've iterated on that quite a lot over the user. I'm not too fond of "semantic zooming" as it doesn't mean anything to people that haven't dug into ZUIs. And not everyone uses piccolo for zooming. So I'd go back to what I've been calling it: "Structured 2D Graphics Framework" which is pretty descriptive to programmers.
- The actual piccolo is pretty, but to be honest, it is very difficult to see behind the text - and when small (as I first saw it on my phone), I couldn't tell what it was at all - even after I read your message.
Sorry to be a bit harsh. I am thrilled you are working on this, but I think it is crucial to get the logo just right...
- Ben
On Sun, Jun 22, 2008 at 8:48 AM, Stephen Chin <s...@browsecode.org> wrote:
I probably should have spent my time coding, but I had a rare streak of artistic inspiration, and spent the night working on a logo design instead.
Here is the end result:
<mime-attachment.png>
It is heavily filtered, but the picture in the background is a real professional-grade, handcrafted Piccolo (a Yamaha YPC-82 to be precise). I am also picky about transparency and resolution, so I made sure that the image shows up well on different types of backgrounds, and have the data to generate much larger versions images as well. The subtext is also easy to change if someone has a better idea.
Let me know what you think...
Cheers,
--Steve
--
Ben Bederson
Technology Director
International Children's Digital Library
+1 (301) 867-3838
www.cs.umd.edu/~bederson
bede...@childrenslibrary.org
Please support the ICDL with a donation by clicking on "Make a Donation" at www.childrenslibrary.org. Every bit of help is greatly appreciated.
Much b
Stephen Chin schrieb:
| I reworked the logo based on everyone's suggestions. The text is
simpler with a
| basic drop shadow to make the 2D word stand out. I also replaced the
Piccolo
| image with a scene graph depiction which can also double as an icon.
(What does
| a scene graph look like anyway?)
|
| Here is version 2:
| Piccolo Logo v2
|
| I also reworked a tiny version of this just to see what it would look
like.
| Rather than just shrinking the image, this is completely re-rendered
to keep
| sharp edges and fine detail.
| Piccolo v2 small
|
| Tell me what you all think.
I'm very pleased with the new version. I didn't really like the previous
one but had no contribution, so I shut up rather than just bitching.
Can you provide the image as svg - that's the image format naturally
related to 2d scenegraphs, isn't it?
I also dislike gif for traditional reasons - let's use png for cgi
bitmaps, ok?
M
- --
M. Rohrmoser
adresse: http://geo.mro.name
fon: +49 89 954 58 628
jabber: mrohr...@jabber.org
http://www.mro.name
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I noticed while working on documentation that it is sometimes difficult
to tell that the combined term Piccolo 2D refers to the project
depending upon the surrounding words. It is also more difficult to do
batch search/replaces on the project name, which I think will be
important to ensure we do not have a lot of references to "Piccolo" by
itself.
I could go either way, but we need to finalize this ASAP, because the
longer we take to decide, the more documents and artifacts need to be
updated.
Cheers,
--Steve
BTW- It's kind of late to bring this up, I suppose, but technically
Piccolo is what's often informally referred to as a "2.5D" system.
It's got z in the sense of layering and ordering, but it's obviously
not a full blown 3D system.
"Piccolo2.5D" doesn't ring as a product name, though. And it looks
like a version number.
- Will
Willis Morse schrieb:
| Personally, I vote for "Piccolo2D" with no space.
So do I.
| MUCH easier to search on.
Yes!!
| BTW- It's kind of late to bring this up, I suppose, but technically
| Piccolo is what's often informally referred to as a "2.5D" system.
| It's got z in the sense of layering and ordering, but it's obviously
| not a full blown 3D system.
Not to forget about time (animations). So it's really kind of 3D :-)
M
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"Piccolo2D" it is... I'll update the website/groups/docs/logo/etc.
Cheers,
--Steve
P.S.: Since this is a Photoshop job, SVG output is not going to be possible... sorry!