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From: Mark Blewett (boost_at_[hidden])
Date: 2005-03-09 21:57:37


At 01:57 10/03/2005, you wrote:

Firstly there are a lot of things I agree with you in your previous post...
and was responding to it because it was (I feel) it is good starting point
(because it summarized a lot of my concerns) to make the comments to the
list as a whole that I felt needed making, not against your own post...
perhaps I should of been clearer about that.

Unfortunately with a brief scan of your response.. your interpretation of
my post maybe different, I guess I have a lot to learn about posting
"correctly" here.

>My personal take is that it says "safety" to an industry that's anything but
>predictable. Which isn't to denigrate it. I like blue. Got blue color
>schemes on all my machines (or teal, which is close). It just seemed that
>no one had given it any thought,

That's what I'm trying to say.. (ok doing it badly)... about getting the
basics (things like colour / font / capitalization) sorted.. however
perhaps these will come out in post selection changes.

>and I was trying to, well, *goose* people a
>bit, maybe get someone to try something else. If you noticed it as it
>breezed past and sank, my one early attempt was blue, and I thought at that
>time (seem to recall some posts that made me think that) we were supposed to
>keep the old color, to minimize collateral changes to color in the page
>content.

I guess most of use like stability.. which is strange given the innovative
libraries in boost.

>As for "targeting the audience," I harbor a deep suspicion that just because
>coders work with text doesn't mean they'll necessarily *respond* positively
>to it. Sadly, I have a wee bit of experience to tell me that (don't ask,
>don't tell <g>). For one thing, yeah, we're working in a text medium, but I
>don't really think the bulk of us are really all that language-oriented.

That's actually a very good observation! I'd been thinking of the day to
day textual side.. not thinking of what goes on inside the mind.

>I'd wager that better than 95% of the people who track this list are male
>(which I do *not* say to belittle women, or even to suggest that the logo
>should just target males--I'm just talking numbers),

Unfortunately its the world we live in :o(

>which dictates a pretty
>strong statistical leaning towards problem-solving techniques based on some
>form of physical visualization. (About to commit the sin of generalizing
>from a single particular, but...) I'm about as language-oriented as it goes,
>with an advanced degree in writing and Lit, but when I code, I *picture*
>things. Abstract patterns of colored blocks, actually. It's subtle, but
>there. Now, after all that disquisition, I'll observe that a text logo can
>work. Good ones are pretty hard to do, but you can think of some if you
>try. However, apart from IBM, can you really think of many others? Look
>closely at HP's logo, or Motorola's, any of that ilk, and you'll see there's
>a graphic component even to them. Hell, there's one to IBM's. Check out
>what their trademark actually is. Block serif lettering in a particular
>shade of blue, broken by horizontal drop-outs. Hmmmn. I'm looking at the
>Dell logo on my monitor; not sure what it means to do. Looks like it's got
>"lazy E syndrome." <g> It may be that a large percentage of the submissions
>are text-based simply because that's the first idea anyone will have, on
>average.

I think you are right about the submissions, and right that perhaps (if I
understand you correctly) an abstract logo is a better way to go.

>I would say that, yes you *do* need to be thinking about all those
>foundations, if you expect to get it trademarked, because anything not
>explicitly specified in the description will *not* be considered part of the
>trademark. You also have to be careful not to over-constrain the
>definition, or you can arrive at situations where you can't claim copyright
>protection for certain usages. For instance, a logo I once did (still think
>it's my best) for a rock band was largely defined by a geometric pattern
>that surrounded and dominated the opening capital of the band's name. There
>was also a backdrop done in a flame scheme by airbrush, and I'd designed a
>custom font for the name that echoed patterns in the geometric figure. The
>description finally filed mentioned only the figure and the name. Including
>the font would have forced the band to always use only that font. Likewise
>the backdrop; that logo had to appear on a number of things, and lots of
>them wouldn't have been conducive to having a lot of deep saturated reds,
>oranges, and yellows on them. I'm speaking of US trademark law, of course.
>I don't know the conventions in other countries. But yeah, I do think of
>this process as "establishing a brand," in the full commercial sense.

That's one of the thinks I was questioning in my head.. what's a logo.. why
is a new one needed.. what I personally came back to each time was actually
we are trying to establish a brand.. and that the logo is just part of it.
Maybe my interpretation as a causal observer is wrong.

>Were
>I at liberty to drop names, I could tell you a tale of a company that
>neglected to trademark a very important part of what had come to be a
>long-established and well-known brand, and their main competitor simply
>appropriated it for their own advertising, undoubtedly luring customers who
>associated that very key thing with the wrong company. But I ain't. And I
>ain'ta gonna. <g> Okay, Boost isn't a "company" in the traditional sense.
>But it's got to work with laws designed for corporate protection, and that
>means really working with them.

That's an interesting comment, one which I'd never of thought of... has anyone?

>Yeah, it's personal. Since Boost isn't a company I "own" or do branding for
>though, I'm not emotional about it. If it's seemed that way, I apologize
>for the impression I managed to import into my messages.

Sorry what I meant was the choice of logo is personal and emotive to
everyone here.. everyone has their own reasons, its not (as) logical like
voting for a library submission.

>And yep,
>discussion is the key. Which is what we're doing, I thought. <g>

Yeah.. and you have made me think of a few areas, problems, and ideas which
I hadn't even considered before.

Thanks!

Regards
Mark


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