[boost] Re: Re: Logo voting procedures

From: Jonathan Turkanis (technews_at_[hidden])
Date: 2004-12-01 05:00:01

"Aaron W. LaFramboise" <aaronrabiddog51_at_[hidden]> wrote in message
news:41AD82CE.30006_at_aaronwl.com...
> Vladimir Prus wrote:
>
> > How can you rationally decide if a nice colored rocket is better than b/w
> > logo from Joaquin that is beatifylly minimalistic? It's simply not
> > possible.
>
> I agree that "beauty is in the eye of the beholder."
>
> But we may not be looking for beauty.  Likely we are looking for a logo
> that meets a set of requirements, and further performs well versus a
> variety of useful tests.  I do not think objective evaluation of a logo
> is any more impossible than objective evaluation of libraries to be
> included with Boost.

I believe a logo should be simple, elegant, visually distinctive and say
something very straighforward about Boost, such as that it has to do with C++,
or has a relationship with the C++ standardization process. The differences
between

     (i) Boost expands on the standard library
     (ii) Boost aims to produce libraries which will be standardized
     (iii) Boost aims to produce libraries many but not all of which will be
standardized
     (iv) Boost aims to produce libraries of the same quality as the standard
library

are too subtle to reflect in a logo. If a logo requires detailed analysis to
understand, it's no good. It's like a movie score:  it makes you feel good, the
movie would seem bland without it, but if you notice it and have to think about
it the composer did a bad job.

So it seems appropriate to collect a reasonably large number of logo proposals
with very different designs and eventually vote on which is most pleasing.

The various graphic design requirements that have been suggested are a bit too
strict, IMO. It's not necessary for the logo to be in vector format, as long as
high-quality raster versions are available in various resolutions. It's also not
necessary that the logo should be renderable as a 16x16 pixel icon: it should be
sufficient that an alternate 16x16 logo is provided which has clear stylistic
connections to the main logo. The requirement that the logo look good in black
and white seems sound, though.

Best Regards,
Jonathan