[boost] Re: Logo voting procedures

From: Jonathan Turkanis (technews_at_[hidden])
Date: 2004-12-01 13:05:04

"David Abrahams" <dave_at_[hidden]> wrote :
> Jonathan Turkanis wrote:

> > 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.
>
> That may not even be neccessary.  Look at Adobe, Microsoft, Apple, UPS, ...

Good point. I guess I should have said "simple, elegant, visually distinctive
and possibly say something about Boost...."

> Even FedEx only makes the vaguest semantic connection.  I think visual
> distinctiveness is really the most important thing.  It's more important
> that the logo *not* communicate the things we don't intend (e.g.
> amateurishness).

Right.

> > 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.
>
> No real objections, but why?

I can't tell which point you're questioning, so I'll elaborate a bit on all of
them:

i) raster vs. vector: Some designs may be hard to represent as vector graphics.
I'm certainly not an expert, but it also seems to me that even for designs that
are representable in vector format, we might find that we have better control
over the rasterized versions that need to be used for various purposes if we
produce them by hand, assuming we know the range of sizes we need.

ii) 16x16: A lot of logos that look great  in medium size won't look good as
16x16 icons, so we're unnecessarily limiting ourselves if we require that the
16x16 version be a small version of the image we choose to display on the web
page itself. We have far more flexibility if we only require that we able to
design a 16x16 icon which looks good and bears some resemblance to the larger
logo.

iii) b&w: This is just for people like me who print web pages using a black and
white printer.

Jonathan