[lojban] Lojban Designs

[Brandon Wirick <lojban-out@lojban.org>]

Xah has been expressing distaste for the Lojban logo, and it got me
thinking. I am not totally satisfied with the logo, but for different
reasons. I do not intend to bad-mouth anyone; I have a lot of respect
for Iojbo culture and the logo that flies as its banner. I just think
the purpose of the logo is undefined, and that shows in the design.
Corporations and products have logos for advertisement and branding
reasons. Nations have flags for cultural reasons. Lojban leans towards
both and so its logo seems to be in an awkward design-space between
flags and corporate logos.

The logo doesn't look like a flag. Compare it to the others on
lojban.org. Something about thin lines, arrowheads, and recognizable
symbols make it seem less than prestigious, like Lojbanistan is a
weak, weird nation. Ever since I saw the Rwandan flag, with the big
black 'R' in the middle, I thought Rwanda was some sort of wannabe
country. Although Lojbanistan is a virtual nation (I won't degrade the
culture by calling it an "imaginary country") it shouldn't give the
impression that it lacks authenticity.

The logo doesn't look corporate. Corporations spend money on artists
that craft imagery with precision and style, tucking away obvious
features and simplifying shapes in order to create interest. It is a
fact, not a judgment, that the LLG has not done this. This is not bad,
because what is the LLG selling? What is the LLG trying to brand? A
whole language? Hopefully not. However, it's not hard to create a
commodity based on a concept. Almost anything can be made into a line
of tee-shirts and a coffee mugs.

I think that eventually Lojbanistan and the LLG's endorsements should
become more visible than Lojban itself, so as to make people
subliminally embarassed for not knowing what Lojban is. As people
develop really neat technology built around Lojban, then people can
say, "What do you mean, 'What's Lojban'? Please tell me you've heard
of Project X... yeah, that's based completely on Lojban," and "Hey,
have you gotten any virtual citizenships yet? I applied in
Lojbanistan."

Just as a brainstorm, I made a couple designs based on the existing
logo, that kind of indicate where I see Lojban going in the future.
Here's a flag idea: http://www.calpoly.edu/~bwirick/jbolanci.gif
Here's, like, a tee-shirt design: http://www.calpoly.edu/~bwirick/jbocpi.gif
(Forgive the image quality; I don't have Illustrator)

If anyone out there is doing something relevant to either of these,
I'd love to know about it.

Brandon Wirick


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