Re: [Increasingly offtopic] Re: Artwork, branding, consistancey and stuff

From: ericzen (ericzen@ez-net.com)
Date: Wed May 14 2003 - 14:02:45 EDT

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    On 2003.05.13 06:17 Alan Horkan wrote:
    >
    >
    > The three biggest reasons against rebranding:
    >
    > I B M

    Actually, hate them or love them, the best three reasons are:

     S C O

    When Santa Cruz became "Caldera," they lost potential customers, because no one
    ever heard of Caldera, or thought some future dot-bomb bought-out and F*ed over
    the company.

    Anyhow, in reading some of the points and consideration, I kind of DO like the
    ant. I think my problem with abi has been the quality of the drawing*, and the
    limited imagination put into using it. There are more imaginative people using
    the GNU logo!

    The ant's potentially cute, but none of the icon references get to the overall
    point, total consistency. Whatever gets selected, preferably before 2.0, it
    should be THE logo, not just the .abw logo, not just binary logo, not just the
    website logo, THE OVERALL HONEST TO BOB EVERYWHERE logo. Of course, I'm a
    nutter, but I think there's a point to it. Perhaps the nederlander could use
    some of his doodle time in class (read: when the teacher's talking) to redraw
    either logo ;o)

    *quality of the drawing: No offence to the creator, but I'm thinking, "Maybe
    if it looked like the Tux logo..."

    Anyhow, I now also forward some thoughts from Jan: 

    --

    On 2003.05.13 11:06 Jan Christiansen wrote:

    <snip>

    Conclusion:
1) The "Official" Abiword  has "Swoosh". Present, there is no "official" and
the developers don't want that logo.
2) The "Personal" Abiword has "Pen" and "Ant". Developers tend to "pen", but
it's difficult....
3) The Windows release is a mix of "pen" and "ant", the other platforms have
been converted to "pen"
4) The webpages, bugzilla and more have "swoosh" - but why?!
5) The AWN has a new "Ant" picture, oops my fault - but I didn't know better!

    Overall favourite is the "pen" logo. I think, that the "ant" is more
outstanding, easier to remember (and all that stuff) - and it's easier to do
some artwork with the ant (fullsize, with arms/legs doing different things).
The "pen" looks familiar to me, maybe lotus, wp or ......... has used something
like that, I cann't remember. It tells me, that this is wordprocessing, but
it's still just a pen. But I'll accept the fact, that the "pen" is the one and
only - but we still need consistency!

    > Alan Horkan: I would be inclined to remove the Graphics from the About dialog
on windows
a) I do agree, no graphics, no problem! An alternative would be, to have the
program icon there. It would be easy to maintain, but on the other hand - no
graphics, no problem. One way or the other, the ant-poster is history.

    b) The Windows splash screen is the pen. The main program has a "pen" logo (but
no good on win9x). The install program needs a new logo. Even if the quality
isn't what we want, it's still better to have consistency than different logos.
We can always make a RFE-bug or a POW on that subject - if the result isn't
good enough.

    c) The web pages are full of "swoosh".
It looks like som kind of "pen" stretching. The result might not be useable, if
that's the case, then.....
> David Bolack: My wife is a graphic art type person and probably could be
persuaded into assisting.   

    d) The awn has the "ant-support" picture.
The current "pen" logo should be easy to modify

    Do we agree, that the "ant" and the "swoosh" logoes should be removed?
And do we know of other places than those mentioned above?

    BUT, there are some people out there (I'm one of them) that do prefer the ant -
and they have good arguments! As we now have written/read a lot of comments on
this subject (especially that one in bugzilla) - and that we could probably
continue, the rest of the year. I think, that someone (you know who) should end
this discussion and make a final statement: ant or pen! I'll be happy to do
some rework in either direction, as long as we have consistency!

    - Jan

    <me>
On now, I wrote:

    Just as an update, I was just sent some pen-logos as well.

    Anyhow, the other "solution" that no one in their right mind would do (but
significant others would recommend because they're more off the beam) is to
create a new logo that scales and is unique.  I'm thinking a breast, but you be
thinking an ant holding a pen for all it matters (just don't get sued by BIC).

    -Zen

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