Design A Standard For the Linux Standards Base

The widely reknowned HeUnique points to this LinuxWorld article, writing: "LSB wants to ask the Linux community people -- well, the artists among them -- to create an LSB logo." Rather cool to see a contest one of the rules of which is "All submissions must be created using Linux and native Linux tools. Frankly, most of us don't have a clue about how to check for violations. Just do it. We trust you." You've got until March 1st to submit two copies of your award-worthy artwork. See that LinuxWorld site for the full schmear, though. The LSB has been quiet for a little while, hopefully this contest hints (like the article does) at some action in the near future.

Comments

LSB held hostage...

[mr]

Look through their mail archives, and you will find the leaders of the LSB are all focused on making it easier for COMMERCIAL software companies to write Linux software.

Bah. The *ORIGINAL* selling out happened long before.
Just like the 1980's "Great Unix Unification" effort, when UNIX was going to have 'one interface' and be able to act as 'one market', the common binary on X86 effort was to obtain Unity. With this Unity, developers could be approached and told "write once, to this standard. Run all of these places."

The in-fighting and "use our implementation" ended up with "linux ELF" as the "standard". Ok fine.

The LSB group will NEVER obtain a workable standard because it is not SEEN to be in the interest of the bigger players in the linux market to allow the smaller players a "software stamp of approval". The "runs on redhat" stamp makes the use of RedHat a "supported option" instead of unsuported in the case of the other 180+ linux distros. And to choose "supported" or "unsupported" is an easy choice.

The LSB will only obtain the reluctant approval of RedHat and their bretheren when some outside force makes them feel their existance is threatened. At the moment, nothing like this exists. And the feeling that "Open source will take over - hence Linux will take over" makes a waiting game a win for RedHat and the other big players.

The LSB (or whatever standard replaces it) should be a standard anyone can Bake-Off their binary application against. And, any of the linux distros of the week should be able to run said application that was Baked-off VS the LSB.

If the "Linux community" (as opposed to the GNU/Linux community) wanted to show they had some balls, they'd:
1) Pubically throw up their hands and say "for 2+ years of effort, we have nothing to show, therefore this process is a failure."
2) Admit that "The goal however is worthwhile"
3) Point to the Linux emulation/compatibility modes of SCO/BSD/Sun and state "These are your bake off targets" under the idea that "If your Linux binaries can run on these machines, they should run anyplace else." Becasue for all the talk about how 'quickly' the 'open source world' can move, movement on the LSB has not happened. Code exists to provide a 'bake off' standard.

At a minimum, a "standard" would allow for more companies to have one less excuse to *NOT* produce programs that run on the "non Microsoft, non Macintosh" platforms. At a maximum, RedHat and others would see such a declaration as a 'threat' and actually MOVE to publish a "sanctioned standard". A standard the SCO/BSD/Sun would be able to get behind. A standard that can GROW the whole market.

My Entertainment for the day...

[NMerriam]

This is great fun watching slashdot folks talk about graphics. About as entertaining as listening to a bunch of graphic designers debate cobol versus Java, and just as accurate (see, the null pointer variable is creating an overflow into your read-only memory, dude!).

First: Its absolutely idiotic to demand the logo be created in Linux. I mean, I know there are a lot of k3w1 linux kids out there who just love to get down with the gimp, but lets face reality here: if your goal is to have a good, professional logo that reflects well on the companies and community, dont set artificial limitations on the toolset. If you want some half-assed gimp graphic ("Look, your logo's on fire!") then by all means eliminate from consideration anyone who knows what they are doing.

Second: Please, dear god, everyone stop talking about specs.

Having Petreley say "Four colors or less often works quite well" is as annoying to a designer as saying "Try to keep the buffer overflows to a minimum" would be to a programmer. If anyone is planning on using Hexachrome for their logo design (or more than 4 spots), I'd love to know about it so I can be sure to never, ever work on a project with you ("what do you mean my business card will cost $10,000 to print?")

For those of you who can't figure out the issue between eps and TIFF, don't sweat it but please stop suggesting that you can just resample a TIFF to make it fit at any size. You can't. Yes, you can put a TIFF in an eps (hell, you could put the entire encyclopedia brittanica in an eps -- its just a wrapper format, like quicktime), no it won't make it scale any better. We'll just assume that when they ask for an eps that they are really asking for some vector graphic file in an eps format.

For future Consideration:
The kinds of things that might actually get you a good logo are never mentioned, presumably because they don't know the questions to ask (consider someone telling you to write a program for them, telling how many lines the source should be, what compiler to use, and never telling you what its for!).

What is wrong/disliked about the current logo? It does look very MS-office-ish (similar to the intelocking puzzle pieces) but is that the only thing they didn't like? Do they want something that conveys cooperation, cutting edge technology, stability, or what? These are all very different concepts, with different ways of representing them. If you focus on making an identity that highlights cooperation, you're making a trade-off against a feeling of speed and cuttin-edge tech. So which do they prefer? Damned if I know, they just want it at 640x480.

We seem to go through these same messages every time an article on GUI, logos, etc comes up here -- its fine if programmers don't want to know about how that stuff works, but its more than just a "pretty picture". Fedex did not spend millions of dollars redesigning their logo in the 90s because they wanted it to be "prettier". Having a window manager with "more colors" does not enhace the GUI.

Focus on what you are actually trying to do, and what you want to communicate -- not what color it should be (here's a design hint: if it matters what color your logo is, your logo IS BROKEN)

In a typical identity project, this would be an iterative process -- you'd bring one design for "cooperaton", one for "high-tech", etc -- and discuss with the client which they prefer, why, and then go back and incorporate the feedback. This is a one-shot deal, equivelent to programming an application without ever talking to the user, without having a beta test, and just dropping off an executable, never to be seen again. Sounds like a project I'm sure most programmers would LOVE to work on, right? :)

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Re:My Entertainment for the day...

[NMerriam]

As the AC reply has pointed out, the millions wasn't spent on a logo alone, but on the complete corporate identity system.

That said -- yes, hundreds of thousands of dollars of time WAS spent on the logo alone. They went through I believe at least a few thousand different designs and permutations over the course of two years or so before the final was reached.

I understand that you think "creating a logo" means typing the company name in to a program, picking pretty colors and a kewl font, and calling it a day. That's exactly what my first post was about -- it is nothing like that at all, it is a rigorous process with many steps (assuming you want it to be successful).

AC also pointed out the forward-pointing arrow between the "e" and the "x" in FedEx, which is a fantastic design point that you don't appreciate consciously but is not insignificant. many of those kinds of decisions go into a decent logo.

This is one of the goals to creating a logo - to have people remember what it looks like

Not really, the goal is to have it associated in your mind with positive attributes and the company.

Remembering off the top of your head what FedEx's logo looks like is nowehere near as important to them as for you to see their logo and think "FedEx -- fast, forward-moving, modern, large, dependable, reliable, professional, international". You don't have to remember the Nike Swoosh to see it and think "Fast, agile, dynamic, energetic".

Basically if you are right about the money spent I believe it was a waste

You're not alone in this view -- which is a major reason (no I'm not eggagerating) of why Linux won't succeed in the consumer market. It looks unprofessional, it looks like a hobby, a toy, and totally unreliable. The logos are amateur scribblings of penguins that are badly rendered and put through cheap photoshop and gimp filters. For all the hundreds of window managers and desktops, not one of them looks professional and coherent. They all look like gee-whiz 3-d graduate student projects, not like finished products.

Basically if you are right about the money spent I believe it was a waste

Fedex saves several hundred thousand a year just from how much more efficient it is for them to print their paper forms after the redesign.

If you think design is only about Times versus Helvetica, though, I suppose you'd be right...

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Re:LSB Still Alive?

[be-fan]

Oh, god forbid that some Linux distros actually become COMPATIBLE and CONSISTANT. We UNIX grognards could never stand *anything* that was CONSISTANT. God help us, what are we going to do? People actually want to make MONEY of a good OS. How can we stop these capitalist bastards?

Good grief, quit complaining. If Linux get unified that would be a *good* thing, both for companies, and users. Not many people give a flying f*ck about tailoring their distro to their exact wants. Most people just want to use something that works well, without fussing with it. For these people, and LSB standard is a good thing. And for those people who couldn't stand a standard, well, Linux is free for a reason. The Debians and Slackwares of the world will always be around to annoy monolithic, all consuming companies like RedHat. Ideally, the LSB would write a strong standard, distros (but not all of them!) would follow it, and the free nature of Linux could be harnessed to keep the standard from becoming crappy.

When will they grow up?

[Nerds for News]

"All submissions must be created using Linux and native Linux tools." - That's the point where I stopped reading. It's just too silly for me.

I call this monopoly!!!

[Glowing Fish]

All submissions must be created using Linux and native Linux tools

Just another example of how the Linux industries discriminates and unfairly competes against those who choose not to use its tools.

sub Save your precious mod points, I am joking sub

Dumb

[Jon Peterson]

Rather cool to see a contest one of the rules of which is "All submissions must be created using Linux and native Linux tools."

Whoaaa, that's the dumbest thing I've heared for a long time. That's like Ford hiring a contract product designer to work on their new car and requiring that the product designer drive a Ford.

Now, if this were, say, the Gimp, looking for a new logo then there'd be _some_ sense in it. It would be like Ford requiring that their travelling sales staff drive Ford cars.

You know, I'd bet that 90% of all Microsoft Marketing output is done on Macs, since that's what most advertising creative departments use. And I bet Microsoft really doesn't care about that because it's looking for an end product that's of high quality, not high ideology.

Re:Dumb

[brad3378]

My sister ( a mac Guru ) told me a similar story.
as the story goes:
One of the old Macintosh computers was designed with a significant portion of development done on Cray computers.

Ironically, old Cray computers were developed using a lot of Macs.

IMHO, both the Crays and the Macs Were/are very significant computers in their time. Perhaps their success was due to a paradigm shift. Sometimes the best ideas happen because somebody thinks "outside the box".

LSB Still Alive?

[kdgarris]

The LSB is something that is very badly needed in the Linux community, but I have to ask: how long has the LSB been around, and to date has anything useful come from it (e.g. a distribution that actually follows the standard)?

-Karl

Sure it would, why not?

[Lonesmurf]

This is not a troll.

And why not? I am a graphic designer by trade and hobby, and I would love to submit something into this contest, but I can't because the tools and the operating system that I love and use (MacOS and adobe products) are not "supported".

The LSB is shooting itself in the foot with this one. I think that some of the most talented people out there are in a similar situation as myself and the LSB is going to end up with a subpar selection of logos to choose a winner from because of it.

Linux may be a great server, a wonderful programming environment and an OK desktop, but the one thing that it is not is a graphics workstation.

And until they have a decent, full featured vector illustration program you won't see me or much of my fellow trades(wo)men working on linux.

Rami
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Re:NewsForge

[god, did I say that]

There already is an LSB (Debian) and it already has a logo (a lame swirly thing.) Everything else is just commercial marketing fluff and intent.

You dont have have to agree, in which case you can revel in the irony that the gnu poster boy - Linux - is a cesspool of competing commercial insterests which serve no one but individual distributions.

Debian is as close to FreeBSD (in intent, not necessarily quality) as Linux is ever going to get. This LSB is wasted effort.

Fuck em.

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