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[lojban] Re: lojban logo

the quality of a logo is easily ascertained by asking for assessment any professional in the logo business. To have to state this like a defendant is really insulting.
the current situation, where a garbage logo is used while nobody sees wrong with it, in fact perhaps feel great about it, is a common phenomenon of the OpenSource situation, fill with ignorance and lies.
Following is a message about logos i wrote a couple years ago. It should give a indication of what is a good logo. (again: I have no expertise in logos. However, the following is basic about logos any person who have thought about it should know. It is insulting, that these days one have to state and argue for the most obvious things among the OpenSourcer ignoramuses and lies.
for those who may be offended here because what seems to be contrary opinion, i don't require you to be any expert or connoisseur in logos or design, but merely for you to think just 1 hour of your life about logo. Yes, just think about logos. Think about it in a serious way, as if your life depends on it. Go online and look at logos. Go to library and read about logo designs books & collections. Go outdoors and observe logos. Think about it just for 1 hour of your whole life's time. (as opposed to, say, graphics professionals who spend years thinking about it, or even a college student who did happen to have taken a course related to logo design or advertisement or philosophies of imageries) Then, if you find what i said about the lojban logo unreasonable or outrageous, then i'll accept it. 
)

some quick tips for good logos:

* good logo is not something generic, even if it is beautifully
rendered.
 Example of logos with this problem:

 old gnu hurd logo of just a generic sphere
  ( http://www.gnu.org/graphics/hurd-logo-sm.jpg )

 Fresco Window system of triangles ( http://fresco.org/ )
cvs's fish. ( http://cvshome.org/ http://xahlee.org/UnixResource_dir/gki/cvssmaller.gif) 

 bash of simplistic font (
http://cnswww.cns.cwru.edu/~chet/bash/bashtop.html )

 python of simplistic font ( http://python.org/ )

Better logos should be reminiscent to what it represents. Good
example's are SGI's computer rendered tube cube illusion, Sun Micro's
8Us that spells out Sun in 4 directions, Apple's bitten apple, Be
media company's eye-ear logo, NeXT's geometrical cube, X-Window's
sharp X, Redhat's redhat, GNU's gnu head, BSD's deamon tyke, Microsoft
Windows's window, Perl's ugly camel, nVidia's eye, GNU Hurd OS'
recursive arrows, Shell's seashell, McDonnald's M, Taco Bell's bell,
Honda's H, Yamaha's tuning forks ...

Good logo should be distinct, an impression lock, even if it isn't
reminiscent of what it represents. For example, AT&T's death star
(globe connotation), Apache feather (Native American, panache),
Linux's penguine tux (glut & sated), General Electric's curlicue font. Even 
font alone can do very good if in distinctive style: IBM stripped
blue, Coke drink's cursives, ATI's high-tech font, ebay and google's and yahoo's colorful fonts.
Note that the logo of popular corporations are not necessaily good. Examples 
are: SONY, JVC, TOSHIBA, RCA, Microsoft. These are just unremarkable.

Good logo should not be overly complex. It shouldn't be photographic
or complex drawings, in general.

many of the above mentioned logos are collected here:
http://xahlee.org/UnixResource_dir/freebooks.html
http://xahlee.org/UnixResource_dir/usoft.html
http://xahlee.org/UnixResource_dir/lambda_logo.html

-----------

about the loban logo:
Some logo don't have an idea behind it. Those do are usually better.
The idea behind the lojban logo is great, but the quality, its artistic merits, is worse than nothing.
There are really a lot of ways to arrive at a quality lojban logo. The gist of the problem really isn't about resources. It's about people — moron heads — in the aura of OpenSource milieu, because their grand vision who cannot see in the first place a shit thing is installed, and all the while wallow in the moronitude of “contribution”, “free”, “cooperation”, “goodness”, and with a fucking attitude and aggression about it too.
PS This message is not directed at any individual, and i have not one person in the lojban community in which i hold grudge. 

 Xah
 xah@xahlee.org
∑ http://xahlee.org/


On Aug 13, 2005, at 6:48 AM, John E Clifford wrote:

--- xah lee <xah@xahlee.org> wrote:


i just want to voice this again:

the lojban logo is really truly hideous.

it makes lojban like a fucking joke by the
OpenSource know-nothing
star-trekking tech-geeking morons.

I find lojban a significant scientific pursuit.
But its logo, and now
with the joe-blog look of the official website,
really makes me ashamed
to associated with it.

If the lojban org cannot have a professional
logo, please at least
don't use a juvenile one. It is better to have
no logo than that.

  Xah
  xah@xahlee.org


Gee, I kinda like it.  What specifically is wrong
with it and what would you recommend to improve
it (aside from doing without a logo altogether)?
It was the result of a contest (for which there
were not a lot of entires, admittedly) which it
won handily, so it seems to represent the best
thought and wishes of the membership at a certain
not to far past time.  But it is now, so mayhap
we need a new look for a new century (or some
such sloganny line) -- though I confess that I
see other things as being more pressing. (Would a
detailed expalanaton of the logo's meaning help
make it more appealing?)



 ☄



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