Identity, and Identity Guidelines

[AF]

This thread is quite worrying.

[Neuralize]

A poll has been posted, please review the first post of this thread and vote, thank you.

[Zpock]

I feel that if your serious about the spring community sticking to an identity you should closely follow the logo in the banner of this site, anything else would be hypocrisy. To me it looks far better then any of the other variants, but maybe more importantly its probably the most recognized and oldest of the sun logos. These are key elements that I think are important and give the logo a feel of balance, sharpness and harmony:

The sun should be centered, resting on the p and n.

The sun halo should be symmetrical and eight-sided (or pointed) including the invisible part, so that the half visible triangles are straight horizontal. like: <---->

The sun should be split exactly in half, at the points of the horizontal traingles.

[Neuralize]

I think the current banner is pretty trashy looking, someone just piled a bunch of layer effects in photoshop. Huge nono in design school. You get ripped apart in critiques if you do that. It also feels very left heavy.

[Zpock]

The banner itself maybe, but not the logo in it.

[SpikedHelmet]

3

[Neuralize]

Zpock:
Well, first it's not balanced at all. The capital S hogs all the attention and the g drops right off. No matter how close you put it to the n, it's going to feel like it's just hanging off the edge when you have both the sun and and the capital s. Your eye falls somewhere around the p, which is not the ideal place, the focal point in my opinion should be subtle suggestion around the i, which is the only vowel in the word and where the action is. If you wanted a perfect balance of hierarchy and harmony you have to balance that capital S out with something. I tried putting the sun in the center twenty time, never felt right.

I attempted a symmetric solution, making the s lower case, and alternatively making everything upper case, neither of them could be executed well with the typefaces I was using, and even after tweaking the paths of the type, those solutions did not satisfy what I felt was the classic "spring" feel.

Just in case people were wondering, I voted for number 3 too, but I like the others. I just want some standards and consistency 'round these parts.

[Erom]

You really need the correct edging from sun to word - a big strength of the current icon is the straight point-to-point split across the center of the sun. None of the top three you posted capture that for me.

FWIW, I think a lowercase s balances the current logo nicely.

[Neuralize]

I disagree Erom. I tried lowercase solutions, I presented them, they were met with lackluster results. When you look at it, your eye doesn't know where to go because nothing in the word spring stands out. All caps solutions result in too much boldness, it made spring hard to read fast and instantly.

These are the top three solutions from an original 20. I don't think a direct split across the middle of the sun is interesting at all. The symbol itself is quite boring if it's just a direct halving.

[rattle]

I don't really think it matters what the community thinks though. If I was to do this I'd pick the one I like the most and go with that. I mean this is an open source project after all, not some 5 billions heavy company where it matters what a couple of brainless goons in the management think.

[Neuralize]

Well, I realize all of this, but I don't want to do all this work and present something, and then people just blow it off, if I show how much I've done, and at least included some community participation I think my chances of success are much greater.

[AF]

I could have such a specification complete with masses of supporting media ready in 1-2 days, why should I or anyone else stay here and continue this?

[Neuralize]

If no one is looking at your work and you're the only one putting it together, you're not considering that there might be massive misconceptions about your work. Legitimate critique and feedback always lead to better solutions than keeping something to yourself.

Zpock brought up valid concerns, and had I not already experimented with that direction, I would have explored it.

Am I making anyone mad here? Is anyone afraid that Spring's popularity is going to plummet just because we standardize our look and show people that we can work together, rather then each individually working in the dark? Does anyone think I'm a bad designer and that I don't know what I'm talking about? I'm not doing this for fame, or to feel important, I'm taking my direct expertise and knowledge and applying it somewhere where I feel it's desperately needed.

[Zpock]

This is my shot:



A very traditonalist approach following the banner logo closely. I think it's balanced in the way that the S and g stick out equally, and the p and i balancing each other as well in "parts sticking out" in an nice alternating way. I guess I don't think much of the meaning of the letters just how they look.

Noone is gonna force people to use a logo they don't want in the end, this would just be a nice base people could use, then it won't harm that this is done.

Another reason to not put the sun straight on top of the i that I can think of is that if anyone ever makes an animated logo like commercial games have when they start up, I think the sun would interact with the dot on the i much better if it's not on top of it. Like a Rising sun casting beams of light off the edges of the letters, the beams would go to the side from the dot instead of straight towards the onlooker. Altough I guess that doesn't really matter when designing the normal logo, you could just change it around for the animated one...

[Hobo Joe]

I voted 3, but I think it still needs a dot on the 'i'.

[Sertse]

I support Zpock's, tbh.

[Neuralize]

New poll with Zpock's offering. Also, some Zpock inspired designs by me. Please vote.

[rattle]

Uh, none of them.

[Hobo Joe]

I think the off-center 'i' is bad. Really unbalances it.

[Erom]

I think the off-center i adds visual interest. The _only_ thing I would change about Zpocks is to make the inner diameter of the sun a little smaller so the symbol is just a smidge thicker and heavier.

Edit: I see you got there before me Neuralize - the bold variant was more along the lines of what I was thinking. I guess the sun get's too close to the i though... hrmmm...